HOBBIES AND A CHALLENGE
"_Admire, exult--despise--laugh, weep--for here
There is much matter for all feeling: Man!
Thou Pendulum betwixt a smile and tear._"
--BYRON.
In the early summer of 1881 my aunt had one of her old friends to
stay with her, and I seized the opportunity of freedom to take my
children to Brighton for a month, after settling the old ladies
together. I had gone down before the children to take rooms for
them, and was walking across Brighton Station when I was suddenly
joined by a tall man whom I did not recognize for a moment until he
said quietly, "Don't you know me?" It was Mr. Parnell, who had
slipped into the train at Clapham Junction, knowing that I was going
to Brighton, and had cut off his beard with his pocket scissors in
the train in order to avoid being recognized at Brighton. He had
wrapped a white muffler round his throat, and pulled it as high as
possible over the lower part of his face, with the result that the
manageress of the hotel he stayed at was certain that he had an
infectious illness of the throat, and rather demurred at letting him
in. It was only by the expedient of complaining loudly at being kept
waiting in the draught with his "raging toothache" that "Mr. Stewart"
was reluctantly admitted. I could not bear his appearance neither
bearded nor shaven--so he went off soon after arrival, was properly
shaved, and relieved the {99} hotel staff by discarding the muffler
and assuring them that he was free from pain now his "tooth" was out.
He went to Cork soon after this and, to please me, was photographed
without his beard and with the ring I had given him on his finger.
We had had a little quarrel, and were very unhappy until we had made
it up again, and he had this photograph done to remind me that he
wore my ring. He also gave sittings to Henry O'Shea (no relation of
Captain O'Shea) for a portrait (pencil) at this time, and this was
sent to him while he was in Kilmainham. He liked this sketch much,
and wrote to the paper for which it was done to this effect. When he
left the prison he brought this sketch home to me, and I have it now.
It hung in our dining-room till he died, and he always liked it, but
I still think it a little hard and expressionless; the eyes are too
large and empty. There was a painting done of Parnell years
afterwards, and here also the artist failed with the eyes. This
latter portrait was not, I think, done from life, but from
photographs, so there was reason for the failure in this respect,
photographs making unsatisfactory studies. The artist who painted
this last picture gave Parnell blue eyes; presumably following the
idea that Parnell was an Irishman, and must therefore have blue eyes,
whereas the facts were that Parnell was not an Irishman, but the son
of an Englishman resident in Ireland and his American wife, and had
brown eyes, not large, but with the smouldering fires in them that
gave character to his cold, high-bred face.
Parnell had so many hobbies and interests in his home life that it is
difficult to enumerate them all. He once said rather wearily that if
he had not "taken off his coat" in the Irish cause and for the Irish
people he could have been {100} always happy at home working at
things so much more congenial to him.
At one time he took up all the intricacies of bookkeeping in order
that he might check his Irish agent's accounts, and many weeks he sat
immersed in double entry, estate accounts keeping, commercial
booking, etc., in the evening, while I sat near him typing replies to
his letters ready for his signature. He used to threaten me with
lessons in book-keeping, so that I might be ready to help him with
the estate management at Avondale when we went to live there; but I
felt that my duties as his extra and most private secretary were
sufficiently arduous, and declined instruction in account-keeping.
Many hours were also spent in architectural drawings, which
interested him greatly. At that time Brighton Station was being
rebuilt, and Parnell was intensely interested in getting the "span"
of the roof. He spent hours at odd times pacing the station,
measuring distances, heights, depth of roof, etc., etc., and in
drawing up plans in order that he might build a cattle shed on the
same lines at Avondale. These plans he afterwards submitted to a
well-known architect for his opinion on them, and they were returned
as absolutely correct in every detail. He then reduced the whole
thing to scale and had the cattle shed made from these plans at
Avondale.
I well remember his look of reproach at me when I laughed while
reading him a letter from his agent at Avondale the following winter.
The agent said that Mrs. Delia Parnell (Parnell's mother) had arrived
unexpectedly at Avondale, and, after seeing the new cattle shed, had
at once decided to give an entertainment in it. This she had done,
having the cattle shifted from their comfortable {101} quarters, the
place boarded in, and a temporary floor laid down.
Parnell did not see that this expensive and troublesome eviction of
his cattle for so frivolous a reason was in the least funny, and was
very greatly annoyed at the whole proceeding. He was always most
chivalrously kind to his mother, however, and his protest on this
occasion was very gentle, though coupled with firm insistence, on the
instant restoration of the cattle-house to its tenants.
Another of his hobbies was the "assaying" of small pieces of quartz
from the stream at Wicklow, and I used to help him for hours at this,
keeping his blow-pipe constantly at work, while he, silent and
absorbed, manipulated the crucibles. When we went to live at
Brighton, after my aunt's death, he had a furnace fitted up in one of
the rooms so that he could work on a larger scale. His endeavour to
obtain gold from this quartz was rewarded to a certain extent; but
the working was, of course, far too laborious and expensive to be
profitable otherwise than as a hobby. However, Parnell for five
years worked at it in various odd hours till he had extracted
sufficient gold to line my wedding ring, even though his hope of
getting enough for the whole ring was not fulfilled.
When working at these things Parnell was absolutely oblivious to the
passing of time, and it was with difficulty that I prevailed upon him
to take sufficient exercise, or even to take his meals before they
were spoiled by waiting. He would order his horse, "President," to
be taken to a certain place about a half-mile from the house, at the
hour he wished to ride, and then become so absorbed in the particular
hobby of the moment that even I could get nothing from him but an
abstracted smile and a gentle {102} "Is that so?" in answer to the
intimation that his horse had been waiting some two hours or more for
him.
Many a day I have let him work up to the last possible moment, and
then literally pulled off the old "cardigan" jacket he worked in, and
forced him into his frock-coat for the House; and it happened more
than once that he was due to attend a meeting in Ireland, and when I
had packed his things and had the carriage at the door ready for him
he would throw himself into a chair and with his slow, grave smile
say, "You are in a hurry to get rid of me; I will not go yet. Sit
down and let me look at you a bit, my Queen." I would protest that
he must go, that he would lose the mail train. "Then I'll be no use
at the meeting, for it will be over!" he would mockingly reply; and
so, when the last possible chance of his being in time had vanished,
he would sit opposite me through the evening talking of politics,
Avondale, the assaying--of anything that came into his head always
watching me with that intent, considering gaze that was my
bewilderment and my joy.
When he failed a meeting like this, where hundreds of people were
waiting for him--or other appointments, private or public--I
sometimes would want him to telegraph, or write, apologizing or
excusing his non-attendance, but this he would never do, saying, "You
do not learn the ethics of kingship, Queenie. Never explain, never
apologize"; adding, with his rare laugh: "I could never keep my
rabble together if I were not above the human weakness of apology."
When Parnell came home from Ireland after these meetings he would sit
smoking and watching me as I went through the pockets of the coats he
had worn while away. It was a most interesting game, and he enjoyed
it {103} as much as I when I brought out a new trophy from the depths
of the deepest and most obvious side pocket. It was a point of
honour that he should not "feel or look" till he got home to me, and
I have a dear little collection of souvenirs now from these
pockets--little medals with the images of various saints, scapulars
and badges, slipped in by the deft, modest fingers of sweet-faced
nuns, in the crowds, whose startled, deprecating blushes when he
turned and caught the delinquent in the act always won a courteous
bow and smile from the heretic "Chief" whose conversion their
patriotic hearts so ardently desired. I found also odds and ends
pressed upon him by the hero-worshipping peasants, some gruesome
scrap of the rope that had hanged some unknown scamp and hero, so
"aising to the bone-pains, an' his riv'rance not looking, a bit of a
twisht roun' yer honour's arrm!" or perhaps a flattened old bullet
that had gained some fancied power in its evil journey through a
man's heart. Then there were the brand-new kerchiefs of most vivid
green, most beautifully embroidered by the clever fingers of
"herself," and so many four-leaved, and therefore "lucky," shamrocks
from the "colleens," who went singing all the year if they thereby
earned a smile from the Chief. Even the little children used to make
sudden, shy offerings to their hero; a "quare bit ave a stone," a
"farden me mither giv me," or some uneasy looking fragment of what
might once have been a bird's egg. Of sticks, blackthorns and
others, I once had an enormous collection brought back to me at
various times by Parnell, but these, together with the two
riding-whips I had myself given him, were stolen from me some ten
years ago, when I was moving from one house to another. The two
riding-whips I prized very highly, for Parnell was so pleased {104}
when I gave them to him. One was gold-mounted, the other
silver-mounted, and each had "C.S.P." engraved upon it.
Among my stick collection was one made of horn--a curious thing,
carved and inlaid with ivory, sent him by some unknown American
admirer. He used this stick on his last journey upstairs from the
sitting-room to the bed where he died.
In January of 1881, Willie, who had rooms then in Charles Street,
Haymarket, came down to Eltham suddenly, very angry indeed with me
because he had seen some men watching his lodgings, and imagined that
I had engaged a detective to do so. As I had never had an idea of
doing anything of the sort I was extremely annoyed, and a violent
quarrel was the result. As a matter of fact, the men were watching
the upper floor, where a friend of Willie's lived, and this friend's
wife afterwards divorced him.
All these months, since my first meeting with Mr. Parnell, Willie
knew at least that I frequently met him at the House. He had invited
him to Eltham himself, though when the visit was first proposed I
said my house was too shabby, the children would worry so nervous a
man and we had better not break the routine of our (Willie's and my)
life (which by then was tacitly accepted as a formal separation of a
friendly sort) giving any and every excuse, because of the danger I
knew I was not able to withstand.
But Willie was blind to the existence of the fierce, bewildering
force that was rising within me in answer to call of those
passion-haunted eyes, that waking or sleeping never left me. Willie
then, as always, was content that what was his, was his for good or
ill. He knew {105} that men, in our past life together, had admired
me, even that some had loved me; but that was to their own undoing,
an impertinence that had very properly recoiled upon their own heads.
His wife could not love anyone but himself; perhaps unfortunately she
did not even do that, but after all "love" was only a relative
term--a little vulgar even, after girlhood had passed, and the mild
affection of his own feelings towards her were no doubt reciprocated,
in spite of the unfortunate temperamental differences that made
constant companionship impossible.
So Parnell came, having in his gentle, insistent way urged his
invitation, and from Willie. And now Willie and I were quarrelling
because he, my lawful husband, had come down without the invitation
that was now (for some years) understood as due to the courtesy of
friends, and because he had become vaguely suspicious. Flying
rumours had perhaps reached his ears; and now it was too late, for he
dared not formulate them, they were too vague; too late, for I had
been swept into the avalanche of Parnell's love; too late, for I
possessed the husband of my heart for all eternity.
I had fought against our love; but Parnell would not fight, and I was
alone. 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.
{106}
"My dear Mrs. O'Shea," wrote Parnell from London on the 7th of
January, "will you kindly ask Captain O'Shea where he left my
luggage? I inquired at both parcel office, cloak-room, and this
hotel at Charing Cross to-day, and they were not to be found."
Willie later challenged Parnell, sending The O'Gorman Mahon to him as
his second; but the duel was not fought. My sister, Mrs. Steele,
came down to see me, and patched up a peace between myself and
Willie; and Mr. Parnell, while making arrangements to go abroad to
meet Willie, explained to him that he (Parnell) must have a medium of
communication between the Government and himself, that Mrs. O'Shea
had kindly undertaken the office for him, and, as this would render
negotiations possible and safe, he trusted that Willie would make no
objection to his meeting her after the duel.
"I replied to Captain O'Shea's note yesterday," writes Parnell, "and
sent my reply by a careful messenger to the Salisbury Club; and it
must be waiting him there.
"He has just written me a very insulting letter, and I shall be
obliged to send a friend to him if I do not have a satisfactory reply
to a second note I have just sent him."
Willie then thought he had been too hasty in his action, and, knowing
I had become immersed in the Irish cause, merely made the condition
that Mr. Parnell should not stay at Eltham.
From the date of this bitter quarrel Parnell and I were one, without
further scruple, without fear, and without remorse.
The following are "cypher" letters of private messages to me bearing
upon the matter of the threatened duel:--
{107}
_July_ 20, 1881.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,--Just a line to say that I am very well and
wondering when I shall see you again.
I hope that your cold is better.--Your very truly, CHAS. S.
PARNELL.
HOUSE OF COMMONS,
_Thursday night, July_ 22, 1881.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,--I have received both your very kind letters
quite safely, and am looking forward to seeing you somewhere or
somehow to-morrow.
I am very much troubled at everything you have to undergo, and
trust that it will not last long.--Yours always, CHAS. S. PARNELL.
I am still quite well. Thank you very much, for enclosure.
WESTMINSTER PALACE HOTEL,
VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, S.W.
_Sunday evening, July_ 25, 1881.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,---I write to ask you to send my travelling
cap, if it is at Eltham, to me here, as I may have to go over to
Paris or Boulogne some day this week.
I hope your eyes are quite well again and that you are enjoying
these cool times.
I have been very lonely all to-day and yesterday. Have not seen
anyone that I know.--Yours always, CHAS. S. PARNELL.
_July_ 26, 1881.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,--I am still staying at the same address, and
have postponed going to France, so you need not send my
cap.--Yours always, CHAS. S. PARNELL.
{108}