PARNELL AS I KNEW HIM
"_If I must speake the schoole-master's language, I will confess that
character comes of the infinite moode_ [Greek: charázo], _which
signifieth to ingrave or make a deep impression._"--(CHARACTERS)
OVERBURY.
When I first met Mr. Parnell in 1880 he was unusually tall and very
thin. His features were delicate with that pallid pearly tint of
skin that was always peculiarly his. The shadows under his deep
sombre eyes made them appear larger than they were, and the eyes
themselves were the most striking feature of his cold, handsome face.
They were a deep brown, with no apparent unusualness about them
except an odd compulsion and insistence in their direct gaze that,
while giving the impression that he was looking through and beyond
them, bent men unconsciously to his will. But when moved by strong
feeling a thousand little fires seemed to burn and flicker in the
sombre depths, and his cold, inscrutable expression gave way to a
storm of feeling that held one spellbound by its utter unexpectedness.
His hair was very dark brown, with a bronze glint on it in sunlight,
and grew very thickly on the back of the shapely head, thinning about
the high forehead. His beard, moustache and eyebrows were a lighter
brown. His features were very delicate, especially about the
fine-cut nostrils; and the upper lip short, though the mouth was not
particularly well shaped. His was a very {302} handsome,
aristocratic face, very cold, proud and reserved; almost all the
photographs of him render the face too heavy, and thicken the
features.
He had an old-world courtliness of manner when speaking to women, a
very quiet, very grave charm of consideration that appealed to them
at once in its silent tribute to the delicacy of womanhood. I always
thought his manner to women, whether equals or dependents, was
perfect. In general society he was gracious without being familiar,
courteous but reserved, interested yet aloof, and of such an
unconscious dignity that no one, man or woman, ever took a liberty
with him.
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.
Yet I have known him expand and be thoroughly happy, and even boyish,
in the society of men he trusted. Immensely, even arrogantly proud,
he was still keenly sensitive and shy, and he was never gratuitously
offensive to anyone. In debate his thrusts were ever within the
irony permitted to gentlemen at war, even if beyond that which could
be congenial to the Speaker of the House or to a chairman of
committee.
He was never petty in battle, and all the abuse, hatred and
execration showered upon him in public and in private, whether by the
opponents of his political life or by the {303} (self-elected) judges
of his private life, caused no deviation in the policy that was his
or on the path that he meant to tread. His policy was the outcome of
long, silent deliberation, with every probable issue considered,
every possible contingency allowed for, and then followed up with
quiet, unwearying persistency and determination. When he succeeded
in forcing his will upon the House it was well, but he was not
elated, passing on to the next point to be gained. When he failed,
he had done his best; but "the fates" willed otherwise than he, and
again he passed on to the next thing without perturbation. 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."
In regard to "Nationalization," he declared that, while there must be
growth, there could be no change, and when I would point out in
friendly malice that his "nationalism" of one year need not
necessarily be that of another, and could very easily be less
comprehensive, he would answer with smiling scorn, "That only means
that lack of judgment is righted by growth in understanding!"
Parnell went into nothing half-heartedly, and was never content till
he had grasped every detail of his subject. For this reason he gave
up the study of astronomy, which had become of engrossing interest to
him, for he said that astronomy is so enormous a subject that it
would have demanded his whole time and energy to satisfy him. He
{304} was constitutionally lazy, and absolutely loathed beginning
anything, his delicate health having, no doubt, much to do with this
inertia, of which he was very well aware. He always made me promise
to "worry" him into making a start on any important political work,
meeting or appointment, when the proper time came, and often I found
this a very sad duty, for he was so absolutely happy when working at
one of his many hobbies, or sitting quietly in his chair "watching"
me, and talking or keeping silent as the mood possessed him, that it
was misery to me to disturb him and send him off to do something that
was not interesting to him. He used to comfort me by assuring me
that it was only the "beginnings" he hated, and that he was all right
when he was "once started."
He was extraordinarily modest about his own intellectual ability, and
decidedly underrated the wonderful powers of his mind, while he had
the utmost admiration for "brain," whether of friend or foe.
Frequently he would say that that "Grand Old Spider" (his private
name for Mr. Gladstone) was worth fighting because he was so
amazingly clever. His own followers he picked with careful
consideration of their usefulness to his policy, and appreciated to
the full the occasionally brilliant ability some of them showed. His
mind, in politics at least, was analytical, and he would sift, and
sort, and mentally docket each member of the Irish Party, in company
with the more prominent of the Liberal Party, till the whole assumed
to him the aspect of an immense game, in which he could watch and
direct most of the more important moves. The policy of the
Conservatives he considered to be too obvious to require study.
In character Parnell was curiously complex. Just, {305} tender and
considerate, he was nevertheless incapable of forgiving an injury,
and most certainly he never forgot one. 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; but
his self-control was so perfect that never by word or deed did he
betray the intense effort and real loathing he suffered when obliged
to attend a funeral, or to be in any way brought into contact with
death or the thought thereof. Whenever we passed, in our drive, a
churchyard or cemetery he would turn his head away, or even ask me to
take another road. The only exception to this very real horror of
his was the little grave of our baby girl at Chislehurst, which he
loved; but then he always said she did not die, "she only went to
sleep."
Oppression of the weak and helpless, or any act of cruelty, filled
him with the deep hatred and indignation that had first led him to
make the cause of his hapless country his own, and he would spend
hours in silent, concentrated thought, altogether oblivious of his
surroundings, working out some point or way to lift a little of the
burden of the wronged.
Parnell was very fond of animals, and was their very good friend
always, taking every care himself to see that his horses and dogs
were properly looked after. During one of the last meetings he
attended in Ireland he jumped {306} off his car in the midst of a
hostile crowd to rescue a terrier that was being kicked and run over
by the mob.
His will was autocratic, and once he had made up his mind to any
course he would brook no interference, nor suffer anything to stand
in his way. 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 ventured to point out that this
man might be dangerous as an enemy, and he answered: "While I am
leader they (the Party) are my tools, or they go!" From his servants
also he exacted prompt, unquestioning obedience always, but he was
the most gentle and considerate of masters, and they, as a rule,
almost worshipped him.
He had much pride of family and family affection, but he was utterly
undemonstrative and shy. Even when he nursed his brother John
through a long and painful illness, caused by a railway accident in
America when they were both very young men, the wall of reserve was
never broken down, and I do not think his family ever realized how
strong his affection for them was.
Parnell was not in the least a well-read man. His genius was natural
and unaided; he was a maker of history, not a reader of it. He took
no interest in literature as such, but for works on subjects
interesting to him--mining, mechanics, or engineering and (later)
astronomy--he {307} had an insatiable appetite and such a tremendous
power of concentration that he absolutely absorbed knowledge where he
chose. I have known him to argue some intricate and technical point
of engineering with a man of thirty years' practical experience (in
America and India), who at length admitted Parnell to be right and
himself mistaken, though on this particular point Parnell's
deductions were made from a two hours' study of the subject some
three years or more before.
For pictures he cared not at all, and music he absolutely disliked;
though to amuse me he would sometimes "sing," in a soft undertone and
with much gravity, funny little nursery rhymes and snatches of the
songs of his college days.
His dislike of social life was so great that he would never accept
any invitation that could be in any way avoided; and if sometimes I
absolutely insisted upon his going to any reception or dinner party,
he would go with the grim determination of one fulfilling a most
unpleasant duty. He often told me that it was because he hated
"Saxons" (a hatred which years of tradition had fostered) so much,
and felt ill at ease in any gathering of English people.
He certainly did not feel this with the working classes, with whom he
would constantly converse and watch at work when we were out
together. Agricultural labourers did not interest him so much, but
he used to spend hours talking to mechanics of all classes, seamen,
road-menders, builders, and any and every kind of artisan. To these
he always spoke in an easy, friendly way of their work, their wages,
and the conditions of labour, and I never remarked that
suspiciousness and reserve, characteristic of the English wageworker,
in these men when Parnell talked {308} with them. They seemed to
accept him, not as one of themselves, but as an interesting and an
interested "labour leader," who had the unusual merit of wishing to
hear their views instead of offering them his own.
Parnell was intensely superstitious, with all the superstition of the
Irish peasant, and in this he was unreasoning and unreasonable. This
trait was evidently acquired in earliest childhood and had grown with
his growth, for some of these superstitions are the heritage of ages
in the Irish people, and have their origin in some perfectly natural
fear, or association, that has, generation by generation, by
alteration of habit or circumstance, lost its force while retaining,
or even adding to, its expression.
Parnell would agree perfectly that this was a fact, nevertheless to
do so-and-so was "unlucky," and there was the end of it--it must not
be done. Certain combinations of numbers, of lights or
circumstances, were "omens," and must be carefully avoided.
Evidently, as an intelligent child will, he had eagerly caught up and
absorbed all and every suggestion offered him by the converse of his
nurse and her associates, and the impressions thus made were
overlaid, but not erased, as he grew up isolated, by the very
reticence of his nature, from his fellows. His dislike of the colour
green, as being unlucky, he could not himself understand, for it is
certainly not an Irish feeling, but it was there so decidedly that he
would not sit in any room that had this colour in it, nor would he
allow me to wear or use any of the magnificent silks or embroideries
that were so often presented to him, if, as was generally the case,
they had green in their composition.
Parnell had no religious conviction of creed and {309} dogma, but he
had an immense reverence, learnt, I think, from the Irish peasantry,
for any genuine religious conviction. He personally believed in a
vast and universal law of "attraction," of which the elemental forces
of Nature were part, and the whole of which tended towards some
unknown, and unknowable, end, in immensely distant periods of time.
The world, he considered, was but a small part of the unthinkably
vast "whole" through which the "Spirit" (the soul) of man passed
towards the fulfilment of its destiny in the completion of
"attraction." Of a first "Cause" and predestined "End" he was
convinced, though he believed their attributes to be unknown and
unknowable.
As I have said before, he was not a man who read, or sought to
acquire the opinions or knowledge of others, unless he had some
peculiar interest in a subject. He considered, and formed his own
beliefs and opinions, holding them with the same quiet, convinced
recognition of his right of judgment that he extended to the judgment
of others.
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. I do not presume to say whether in this conviction he was
right or wrong, but here I set down Parnell's point of view, with the
happy knowledge that never for one moment have I {310} regretted that
I made his point of view my own in this as in all things else.
Parnell's political life was one single-minded ambition for the good
of his country. He was no place or popularity hunter. Stung to the
quick in early manhood by the awful suffering of the Irish peasantry
and by the callous indifference of the English Government, he, with
all the pure chivalry of youth, vowed himself to their service, and,
so far as in him lay, to the forcing of the governing country to a
better fulfilment of her responsibilities. In the course of years
the gaining of Home Rule for Ireland became for him the only solution
of the problem. To this end he devoted all his energies, and for
this end men became as tools to him, to be used and thrown aside, so
that he could carve out the liberation of Ireland from the great
nation whom he declared could "rule slaves as freemen, but who would
only rule free men as slaves."
Some have said that Parnell was avaricious. He was not. In small
matters he was careful, and on himself he spent the very smallest
amount possible for his position. He indulged himself in no luxuries
beyond the purchase of a few scientific books and instruments, on
which indulgence he spent many moments of anxious deliberation lest
he should need the money for political purposes. His own private
income was spent in forwarding his political work, in the "relief
funds" of Ireland's many needs, and on his estates in Ireland, where
he did his utmost to promote industries that should prove to be of
real benefit to the people. To his mother and other near relations
he was always generous, and to the many calls upon his charity _in
Ireland_ he was rarely unresponsive.
In temper Parnell was quiet, deep and bitter. He was {311} so
absolutely self-controlled that few knew of the volcanic force and
fire that burned beneath his icy exterior.
In the presence of suffering he was gentle, unselfish and helpful.
Indeed, I may say that at all times at home he was the most unselfish
man I have ever met.
Of his moral courage all the world knows, yet no one, I think, but
myself can know how absolute it was; how dauntless and unshaken, how
absolutely and unconsciously heroic Parnell's courage was. Through
good report, or ill report, in his public life, or in his private
life, he never changed, never wavered. 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. In his childhood, in his boyhood, and in his manhood
Parnell was "apart." I was the one human being admitted into the
inner sanctuaries of his soul, with all their intricate glooms and
dazzling lights; mine was not the folly to judge, but the love to
understand.
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