PARNELL
The man most talked of in '88-'90 was not Mr. Gladstone but Mr.
Parnell. The Parnell Commission "had shaken the earth", as an Irish
writer said in a moment of unusual restraint. And during its
long-drawn life, as during the events which immediately had preceded
it, "the uncrowned king of Ireland" was the foremost topic of
conversation and of newspaper attention. From the ordeal of the
Commission he emerged with triumph, a triumph which in its turn caused
some planetary commotion, only to be met with the divorce suit of
Captain O'Shea, and the subsequent storms, and snarls, and hopeless
desertions of Committee Room Fifteen. Thence to heartbreak and death
was but a short and rapid decline.
I knew Parnell but slightly; no one knew him well. Lord Salisbury did
not know him at all, had never taken the trouble to cross the lobbies
between the Houses of Lords and Commons and look at him or listen to
him. "I have never seen him," said Mr. Gladstone's rival. And it was
common report that the men who knew Parnell least of all, and least of
all about him, were his own {241} followers. Even that is possible, if
it seems unlikely. One of his most conspicuous followers, who wrote
conspicuously and talked about him and about Home Rule, I knew very
well, and for years I wondered if he really knew as little as he said
he did about his chief's ways and work and wisdom. He made a great
mystery of them, as many of the Irish members did, or pretended to do.
They told you that he kept them at arm's length, scarcely nodded to
them, or, if he nodded, did so in a manner that was cold and distant
beyond belief. They were the dust beneath his feet. But they told you
that they did not resent this treatment; it showed the superiority of
the man.
Whether they resented it or not, you may form your own opinion by what
they did to him when they got the chance. But before the squalls and
gales arose in Committee Room Fifteen, he had held them together; they
were a disciplined body. No man before his day had been able to hold
them together, to discipline them, to force his will upon them. No
other parliamentary leader of the Irish before him produced results.
But he produced them. His followers feared him, and they feared him
because he was so unlike themselves, so un-Irish. His "mystery" lay in
his immense capacity for holding his tongue; in his aloofness; in his
concentration. He knew how to get from the rest of the United Kingdom,
from the English and Scotch and so on, what he wanted; as a rule, his
followers did not. He knew how to play the political game in the
British way, with additions of his own; his {242} followers did not.
They had not the patience; they may have had other qualities more
captivating than his, but they had not the patience or the art of
command.
There was a time when I doubted that he was really so elusive as
political persons said. And if he were so, why? It could not be for
the mere pleasure of eluding, or deluding people. There would be very
little pleasure in that. Well, one day my doubt was dispelled.
Parnell had made an appointment to see me at the House of Commons. It
was not for the purposes of a newspaper interview, for he would not
have given himself the trouble on that account. It was not for any
purpose or interest of my own. I had conveyed to him a proposal from
an American editor. It was a proposal which Parnell had not only not
declined, but which he was considering with some favour. I was to meet
him again and discuss it further. The time and place were of his
choosing. I was punctually there, only to be met with the message:
"Mr. Parnell is not in the House."
That may have been technically true, as Mrs. A. may be technically "not
at home" to Mrs. B. But he was somewhere on the premises, because I
saw him enter them. There were good reasons for assuming that the
appointment had not slipped his mind, or his memoranda. And so I
thought that the person who told me Parnell was not in the House might
have invented the reply he gave. He knew of the appointment, and,
though he did not know its purpose, knew that Parnell had wished to
{243} see me; why, then, should he give a reply which might put his
Chief in the wrong. But then, why had not Parnell sent word or left
word, making another appointment? He would scarcely have declined the
proposal from America without the courtesy of another meeting. Indeed,
he had promised that.
"Very well," I said, "I will wait."
But the agreeable gentleman could not assure me that Mr. Parnell would
be at the House that day.
"Has he been here?"
"I believe so."
It was too early to go away. Question time was not over. I decided to
wait. Mr. Parnell's representative withdrew. After a while I thought
there had been a mistake somewhere. Then I remembered that the
emissary "could not assure" me, etc. I thought this odd, in the
circumstances, and concluded not to wait any longer. The affair was
Parnell's, not mine. But if he had decided to decline the proposal
concerning which he had invited me to call upon him, it was not
particularly civil of him to take this offhand way of doing so. I left
the House and went toward the Westminster Bridge station of the
Underground Railway, just opposite the Clock Tower of St. Stephen's.
Turning the corner by the gates of Palace Yard, I saw Parnell, ahead of
me, cross the street and enter the railway station. He took an
eastbound train. I was just in time to catch the same train but not to
catch him.
He alighted at the next station, Charing Cross. So did I, intent on
overtaking him. But there was {244} a blocking crowd at the exit
stairs where tickets were collected, and he was away first. Up
Villiers Street I followed him to the top at the Strand, where he
turned into the South Eastern Railway station. This was interesting.
Why had n't he, I wondered, taken the outside stairs that led from
Villiers Street into the station?
"Possibly he has caught sight of me," I thought. "Is he trying to
elude me? Let's see."
He entered the South Eastern station at the left-hand door. He left it
presently by the door on the other side of the cab yard and crossed the
Strand to the telegraph office, which at that time was exactly opposite
the cab entrance to the railway. I withdrew into the tobacconist's
pavilion at the gate and there awaited Parnell's exit from the
telegraph office. But he didn't recross the Strand to the station. A
hansom was passing the telegraph office door. Parnell ran out, hailed
the cab, entered it, and drove eastward along the Strand. I took
another cab and kept his in sight. His cab was held up by a block a
little to the west of Wellington Street, where a long stream of traffic
was crossing to Waterloo Bridge. Parnell left his cab in the crush and
disappeared in the pack of humans and vehicles. I left my cab, walked
back a short distance along the south side of the Strand, and there
turned down by the Savoy Theatre, lingering a little, and then down the
steps to the Embankment, keeping inside the gardens. My guess was
right. Parnell passed within a few feet of me. He was walking
westward. I walked inside the gardens, {245} he outside and well in
advance. He reached the Underground station again, passed through it
to Villiers Street, walked up Villiers Street to the wooden stairs of
the South Eastern, while I remained at the entrance of the Underground.
Then I took a cab to my Club in Piccadilly.
If Parnell thought that he had the best of the chase, that he had given
me "the slip", he had another opinion, probably, when, as he was about
to enter a suburban train, he was approached by a courteous young man
who introduced himself as my assistant and said how fortunate it was
meeting like this, because it gave him the opportunity to ask if Mr.
Parnell would send me the reply which he had promised for that day, as
I wished to cable it to New York.
"Parnell did n't turn a hair," said my assistant, when he reported to
me at the Club a few minutes later. "If he were surprised, he did n't
show it. But he narrowed his eyes and said, in a frigid way that
brought down the temperature of that cold station, 'I will write.' And
then the train started."
"And he with it?" I asked.
"No. It left both of us on the platform. I bade him good afternoon
and came here. I suppose he took the next train."
I made no comment, but calling for a cable form, wrote on it this
message for New York:
"Parnell declines."
"But he has n't declined," my assistant exclaimed.
{246}
"No, but he will. You can keep that cable message in your pocket until
he does."
The reason I had not followed Parnell into the South Eastern station
was that in the train from Westminster to Charing Cross I had told my
assistant what to do, and where I thought Parnell was going.
For Parnell's reply I did n't care one way or another. But I thought
that I was even with him for his evasion of me at the House, of his
treatment of an appointment which he had made, and of a courteous
proposal. My method of letting him know, without having said so, that
I was not entirely ignorant of his reasons was, in the circumstances,
quite legitimate. He could not and did not take open exception to it.
And for nearly thirty years I never mentioned it. I do so now simply
to illustrate what I mean by his elusiveness. It may interest the few
who remember some of his traits. It is quite erroneous to suppose, as
many souls not altogether simple seem to do, that a journalist always
tells all that he knows.
But I might throw in here this remark: In all that promenade and hide
and seek in London streets, nobody seemed to recognise Parnell, nobody
turned to look at him. He was merely a passerby like another. Crowds
stare, they do not observe. They see only what is pointed out to them,
what they expect to see,--and not always that.
Two or three days later, in reply to a telegram of inquiry, Parnell
declined the proposal from America. My assistant sent both the inquiry
and my cable. Concerning the latter, he asked me:
{247}
"What made you certain in advance?"
"A rule known to astute politicians--2 and 2 make 4. It is not altered
by Home Rule, or other matters."
I have often observed, with forty years of opportunity for doing so,
that few persons know so little of conditions in Ireland, of Irish
conditions in Parliament, of the "Irish movement", whatever that may be
at any given time, as the Americans, and particularly the Irish in
America. I have had my share of rebuke for mentioning this. An
illustration will serve.
During the summer of 1890 I had a few weeks in the United States. One
evening in Boston I happened to meet, as I was passing his office, a
man whom I knew well, Jeffrey Roche, Editor of _The Pilot_, an Irish
paper and the principal organ of Roman Catholicism in New England.
Roche had been the assistant, and later became the successor, to the
late John Boyle O'Reilly, and like him was a delightful and lovable
fellow and the writer of charming verse. He hated England, of course,
and as I did not, we had many tilts, in print and out of it, but we
were always good friends.
"Hullo, Jeffrey," said I.
"Hullo, my enemy," said he, laughing as we shook hands.
"Why 'enemy'?" I asked. "Has poor old Ireland another grievance?"
"You wronged Parnell!"
"Sit down and tell me about it," said I.
And we went to dine at the nearest restaurant where the dear fellow
explained that an article of {248} mine, sent from London and published
in the _Boston Herald_ during the previous February, had "scandalised
all Irishmen" and "imperilled the chances of Home Rule."
"Dear, dear," said I, "that's a lot for one man to do! How did it
happen?"
"Your article said that an action for divorce had been entered by a
Captain O'Shea who named Parnell as corespondent."
"Well, what of it? Everybody knows it."
"I don't know it. We don't know it here. Nobody knows it."
"And you 're an editor, Jeffrey! Is that the way you keep the run of
the news?"
"Such a case has never been tried."
"It has not _yet_ been tried, you mean. Of course not; it has to take
its turn. It will come on in the autumn."
"Who is O'Shea?"
I stared at Roche in amazement. And then I laughed.
"Jeffrey," said I, "you do it very well."
"Do what? No," said he, "it is n't acting. Who is he?"
I told him, and added that the question had been put differently by the
Irish members of Parliament a long time ago. They asked at one
time--"Why is he?" After a while they asked nothing.
"And your article said that the Irish party would turn against Parnell
if the case were tried, and that the English Liberals would throw him
over, and the Home Rule cause would go to pieces."
{249}
"Pardon me, Jeffrey, my article said that those would be some of the
results if O'Shea won his case, not if the case were tried."
"Gladstone would n't turn against Parnell!"
"Jeffrey, if that's all you know about the Irish Question, take my
advice and return to Ireland by the next ship and study it on the spot.
Then go to Westminster and study it there. Learn what the Unionists
think, what Liberals think, and what Mr. Gladstone, as leader of the
Liberal Party, has to think, and--"
"It's another Piggott trick! Parnell's defence will show it all up."
"Suppose he should n't defend himself?"
"That's unfair!"
"Let me tell you a thing or two. Make a note of 'em, and see what
happens within a year!"
In the course of the next two hours Roche heard more of the inside of
Irish and English politics than I would have supposed could previously
have escaped an editor's mind. It was clear that the comings and
goings of Irish parliamentarians bent on propaganda and money-raising
had not left behind much information that could guide a distant editor
over a course abounding with obstacles. My experience with Roche that
evening resembled all the experiences I have ever had in the United
States when talking on the Irish question with persons who seemed
really anxious for information. And the situation is much the same at
this hour, differing only in kind, not in degree.
The events of November and December, 1890, {250} proved to my doubting
friend the truth of all I had told in print or out of it during the
preceding months. But he was as much surprised at the end of the year
as he had been when I talked with him in May. Roche died years ago;
perhaps he knew by that time how matters stood. At all events, perhaps
he knows now. The Irish in America were not in those days, and have
not been since then much or far behind the scenes of a certain
political stage. They have paid their money, and, like other
audiences, have remained in front to watch, to listen, to applaud, or
to hiss. If they have frequently applauded or derided in the wrong
places, other audiences beholding other dramas have done no less.
The conditions in Ireland, and concerning Ireland, are not new to me.
I have known them pretty well for forty years. If I were an Irishman I
would think, no doubt, on most points political, with other fellow
countrymen of my party. But what party would that be? I might answer,
if you could tell me where I would have been born and of what religious
faith. My sympathy with Ireland is deep; it would be so, if only for
the matchless, the invincible stupidity with which she has been and is
still governed. But her "injustices" and "woes" have long since been
wiped out. That is one thing they do not know in America. But it is
unnecessary to go beyond certain Nationalist speeches in the House of
Commons to learn as much. John Redmond said a good deal on that point.
But now there are no Nationalist speeches, no Nationalist members to
speak of. The Nationalist Party is dead. The {251} Irish seats in the
House of Commons are empty, voluntarily empty. Had Ireland done her
share in the War, she would have had Home Rule before the Armistice.
But she would not do her share, and she does not appear to desire Home
Rule, and Great Britain did not try to force her. In America the
meaning of this is not quite understood. While Great Britain was
sending millions of men to the front, while her manhood was everywhere
conscripted, while her fathers and sons were fighting the malignant
German, while she was depriving herself of money, food, clothing,
economising in the very necessaries of life, not merely in order to
provide for her armies, but to aid her allies, Ireland did nothing.
Ireland's food was not rationed; she had plenty and to spare; plenty to
eat, plenty to drink, plenty to wear; petrol and motor cars were not
forbidden her, they were forbidden to Britain; the luxuries which
Britain denied herself were abundant in Ireland; she was, in fact, the
most favoured country in Europe. She was never so prosperous as
throughout the war.
But not a hand would she lift to defend her soil against the Germans.
Thousands of Irishmen were at the front; they fought splendidly, but it
was not in accordance with the will of Ireland that they fought. It
was because they willed it themselves. Ireland was exempted from
conscription. Englishmen and Scotsmen, Welshmen and Cornishmen, all
the men and all the women from Land's End to John O'Groat's have long
memories for things like that. And so have many Americans.
{252}
It is useless, I suppose, to say that Parnell's course had he lived to
and through the war time, still leading Irish politics, would have been
this, or would have been that. He did not have to face such
conditions; they were not forward in his time, but they were always at
the back of the minds of some British statesmen, and he knew it. He
knew that the dominant reason which stood between Ireland and
Independence was the need of Great Britain to guard herself against
attacks and invasions from the Continent. France was thought to be the
potential enemy then, as she had been supposedly since the days of
Napoleon I. Well, we know what Germany did. England could no more
allow the island on her western flank to become an independent power
than the United States could permit any of her forty-eight States to
break away from the family roof. Are arguments for separation based on
racial and religious differences more valid in the case of Ireland than
they are in the case of the United States? What are the racial
differences between Ireland and Great Britain compared with the racial
differences in the United States, differences which arose through
conquest and purchase, not alone through immigration? The Indians, the
Mexicans, the Spaniards, the French, the Negroes? And then the welter
of immigrations on top of these? And is the argument for majority
rule, based, as it is usually, upon the majority in Ireland, more
valid? Ireland is, and has been for centuries, an integral part, a
vital part of the political organism known since 1801 as "the United
Kingdom", and {253} of that organism the Irish population, in Ireland,
is but a small minority of the whole! In an age of democracy shall a
minority rule? In the United States we know something about secession;
we have clear and firm opinions on it now. Why should we expect
Britain to permit the secession of Ireland? And if the Ulster problem
presents such "vast difficulties", what becomes of the famous
panacea--Self-Determination? Won't the panacea work in Ulster's case?
These points were just as clear in Parnell's day as they are this
morning. The Home Rule cause was one thing; the Separatist,
Independence case was quite distinctly another thing. Parnell knew
that he could never satisfy Ireland if Independence were what she
wanted. The hot-heads in her politics were seeking that and not Home
Rule. Home Rule was almost won by Parnell; after him it was thrown
away by bitter dissensions within his party. Thirty years more were
required to bring the factions to a point where they could pull
together. Then the inevitable dissensions broke out anew. The power
that had been John Redmond's slipped away, and Redmond's party went to
pieces as Parnell's had done. It is folly to put the blame on the
Nationalists alone, or on the Ulstermen alone. The conditions do not
mix. They are antagonistic.
And, though the ideals of Ulster are not the ideals of the rest of
Ireland, must Ulster be punished for her ideals? Ulster asks the
privilege of being loyal to Britain. Must she then be punished for her
{254} loyalty and punished by Britain? That is a question which
Americans who are so frequently called upon to interfere in the Irish
question never ask themselves, because it is never presented to them.
But if they were to ask it concerning any State in the American Union
in its relation to the Government at Washington, there is no doubt what
their answer would be.
What of the rest of Ireland? At present the Sinn Feiners have the
floor. They proclaim openly what the Nationalists, or most of them,
are said to have concealed; their object,--Independence. But they know
that if Ireland should become an Independent Power, she must meet her
obligations of financial maintenance. She could not meet them without
drawing upon, or absorbing the revenues of Ulster. And she might not
be able to meet them then. Are these matters, and matters such as
these, to be settled, or even helped by pious resolutions passed in
Madison Square Garden, or Faneuil Hall, or the Congress at Washington?
It might be thought that the ingenuity of man, to say nothing of his
justice, could find a way out of this age-long dilemma. It can be seen
that the dilemma is not quite so simple as at a distance it has been
commonly supposed. And it can be said that difficult as the problem
is, it has become none the less difficult through the conflict of views
and policies of Sinn Feiners, clericals, Home Rulers, Ulstermen, the
Asquith government, or the Lloyd-George government, politicians in
America, or rhetoricians anywhere.
{255}
I find that thirty years ago I wrote in an American newspaper: "Parnell
puzzles the British mind, because measures proposed in behalf of
Ireland are rejected whether they come from Mr. Gladstone or from Mr.
Balfour. It has not yet dawned upon the British mind that Parnell
means that Parliament wastes its time over land bills and other
remedial legislation; that the Irish mean to settle the land question,
and all other Irish questions, without English assistance. What he
wants is Home Rule and not land acts. What he wants beyond Home Rule
he does not say, and no one is in his confidence."
It was all very well, but he could not prevent the Briton from bringing
gifts, nor could he avoid him. The world has moved a long way since
Parnell died and has brought changes of which he did not dream. But
there, stripped of detail, was his object. If the ultimate object were
not set forth, it was because he wanted Ireland to get Home Rule first.
The difficulties of the step beyond that he knew well and appreciated
thoroughly. Perhaps it was because he knew the British view so well,
and could understand it so well because he was half-English and
half-American, that his point of view was not limited by Irish
experiences and aspirations. It may be that he did not expect
Independence in his time, perhaps not really at any time. But whether
he did or not, he said in the House of Commons, in April, 1890, "We
have not based our claims to nationhood on the sufferings of our
country." Well, if they were based on other {256} grounds, it is
likely that he saw insurmountable obstacles in their way.
I am far from agreeing with the conventional assertion that Parnell
wrecked his party and postponed Home Rule by a generation. Such
assertions are made easily, and they are easily accepted by the crowd.
They ignore many other factors, even factors that I have suggested
here. And they ignore the necessity which all politicians were under,
or supposed themselves to be under, of claiming a virtue, though some
had it not. I think of some politicians who were professionally
horrified over the O'Shea case, although their own lives would not have
borne the examination of a divorce court, and who had not in their
lives the mitigating circumstance that Parnell had,--an absorbing love.
And I think of the politicians who were professionally "surprised" but
who had had a long preparation for what was coming. All the forces of
hypocrisy and cant were let loose at that time, all the forces of envy,
hatred, malice, and uncharitableness; and they did not rest until
Parnell was crushed and dead. The spectacle was enough to make one
nauseated forever with politics--and some other things.
Mrs. Parnell's book on her husband, published in 1916, throws a clear
light upon that chapter in Parnell's life. I see no reason to doubt
its statements and conclusions; I see many reasons for accepting them.
They confirm the impressions that many of us had thirty years ago, and
relate facts that some of us more than surmised at that {257} time, and
before it. It is scarcely possible for them to deal with the hypocrisy
and jealousy, revengefulness and cant that broke a man's life and a
nation's cause. These were not in Ireland alone. Britain and America
had their share.
Was Parnell a great man? I am inclined to think that he just missed
greatness. If he had won, there would be no doubt, I suppose. That he
was the man for his time there can be no denying. It is idle, I
suppose, to speculate whether he would have been the man for the time
after Home Rule had been gained, for then the duties would have been
vastly different. And yet they would have called for qualities not
common among Irishmen, among political Irishmen in Ireland, I
mean,--the qualities that made him eminent and successful as a leader.
He was not eloquent, but eloquence is not essential to greatness. He
did not inspire affection, devotion. To this it may be answered that
the people of his country loved him. So they did. But a great many
politicians who were his followers did not. Some of them entertained
for him emotions quite opposite to love. Of course he inspired
respect; more than that, he instilled fear into the hearts of his
parliamentary army. They feared him then. But if his aloofness, his
detachment from the usual, even the unusual, affairs of society and
human interest, was one of his most remarkable characteristics, it was
in his favour rather than against him, it contributed to "the mystery"
in which his personality was shrouded, a mystery cultivated less by
himself than by legend. {258} An eminent politician whose life is
isolated must be "mysterious" to the crowd.
He did not care for the play, for music, for pictures, or for
literature, excepting when literature bore upon the work in hand. He
did not care for society, for sport, for games of any kind. And so he
was a mystery to more countries than one. He was easily bored; the
ordinary life of politics bored him, his followers bored him; it often
bored him to make a speech. His power was in his set purpose, his
concentration upon it, his absolute disinterestedness. Save in one
instance, he ground no axe and was not the cause of axe-grinding by
others.
Although he was not an orator, he could and did put a case plainly,
strongly, indeed with very great strength. He was cool when it paid to
be cool, vigorous when vigour was required; he was seldom impassioned.
When he was angriest he was least stirred. Internally he might rage,
as when under general attack, when the assailants were, in a double
sense, offensive, but outwardly he would be calm and pale. You would
know when he felt the fiercest stress, not by his voice nor by his
actions, but by his pallor. It was only in the last months of his life
that he gave his temper free rein, let himself go, fiercely lashed his
opponents, hitherto his partisans. There was something of revenge in
this, of resentful wrath long pent up. Who shall say it was not
justified, or that it was unnatural?
What he would have been as an administrator we have no means of
knowing. What he would {259} have been as the leader of an Irish
parliament we may at least imagine. He had always been in Opposition.
What he would have been in power we may guess but never know. But his
lot would not have been enviable. It was never enviable. His death,
in 1891, was a happy release.
{260}