Mr. T. P. O'Connor's Reminiscences

Ma. T. P. O'Corson, as becomes an Irishman, has a way with him." He has the gift, or it may he he has acquired the art, of fluent narrative which is invariably readable and some- times exciting. It must be admitted, however, that he has not mastered political narrative in its highest form ; he never seems to be moving reasonably about among ideas, but writes of the Irish question as though it were admittedly a matter of a crushed but deserving people carrying on an heroic battle, or developing highly honourable intrigues, against a pitiless oppressor. Whatever we may think of the Irish question, that conception does not represent the truth. We often used to wonder twenty or thirty years ago why the Home Rulers in Ireland had not a good enough sense of proportion to set a time limit to grievances. Acts of oppression two or three hundred years old never had much to do with a modem political situation. Englishmen might, with as much justice, have attacked the Roman Catholic Church because three or four hundred years before Englishmen had been done to death by the Inquisition.

Mr. O'Connor nevertheless chose terrible England as his home, and we are glad to be able to think that he has always been happy here. The combination of circumstances by which he was able to entertain us all by his writings while he earned . his living by the same means was a happy one ; but nearly all that he:said and wrote on politics was based on the assump- tion that the character of England was truly symbolized by the " cruel red." He has written so many biographical sketches that he was never prevented from coming up to the scratch through such a trifling disadvantage as scarcity of information. To take an instance—an extreme one no doubt. When he is writing about the famous Mrs. O'Shea he confesses that he never saw her, but goes on :—" I recollect once seeing Parnell climbing the stairs of the Ladies' Gallery—there was no lift in those days—with a lady. He had a certain depreca- tory smile which I had already recognized in his moments of artial embarrassment. I do not think the lady beside him could have been Mrs. O'Shea, for my recollection in a very passing glance was of a woman whose main characteristic was stoutness and who rather puffed as she climbed the stairs." That seems hardly enlightening enough about Mrs. O'Shea. But, after all, little islands.of insufficiency and banality like this float along in a roaring torrent of events by which we can assure the reader he also will be carried along.

r These two volumes cover the years 1870 to 1891, that is, to say, the period from Mr. O'Connor's arrival in London to the death of Parnell in 1891. Mr. O'Connor first sat in the House of Commons in 1880, and he has sat continuously ever since. He is now the Father of the House. His early years in London were years of anxious hardship, though he has no complaint to make against Englishmen on the score of kind-heartedness— indeed he tells us that it was a revelation to him to discover that an Englishman was capable of weeping with emotion when he saw 'his mother after a long separation. Journalists in the early 'seventies of last century spent most of their spare thne, according to Mr. O'Connor, in public houses.

Irishmen in London who, were carrying, on the " Repeal" movement, of Daniel O'Connell seem also to have held most of their meetings in public houses, and it was at these meetings that Mr. O'Connor practised oratory with such success that hi reputation spread and he was invited, much to his surprise, to stand for Parliament. We note that the doubtful text of one of his public-house speeches was English provocation in pre, venting dissident young Irishmen from carrying fire-arms. Having, probably listened to more speech-making than any living Parliamentarian, Mr. O'Connor has a sound right to an opinion on the foundations of oratory. He evidently does not believe in fortuitous inspiration ; he attributes solid success to practice ,ancLto nothing else. His own first success in writinc was his Life of -Disraeli. It was invective from beginning to end, but for some years it provided the Liberal Party with an

invaluable handbook. . .

One personality broods over the greater part of these two volumesthe personality of Charles Stuart Parnell. It is plain that Mr. O'Connor was fascinated, and politically enslaved, by this able and inscrutable man with the mysterious . eyes. If Mr. O'Connor had not been so much under a spell, . his book would have been written with much less passion and the reader would have been the loser. He ridicules the notion: that Parnell was an aloof aristocrat, despising yet using the Celtic Irish. He says on the contrary that Parnell would converse with anybody without the least trace of condeseen., sion, and he dismisses as absurdly untrue to Parnell's character the notorious story that when an Irish Member addressed his leader as " Parnell," Parnell icily reproved him with " Mr, Parnell."

Parnell's political vehemence was very much to • the, taste of Mr. O'Connor,. who saw that the Mirabeati7like bridge: building of Isaac Butt was of no avail. The, whole story of Parnell's affair with Mrs. O'Shea and the Parnell. Commission is well told at a rattling speed. The split in the Irish Party left Mr. O'Connor as strong a devotee as ever of Parnell. He profoundly admired the inexplicable poWer to command which resided in his enigmatic leader. Nothing. seems to have impressed him more than the fact that even . the sources the corrosive acid of Mr. T. M. Healy's speeches could be dried up by a glance from the quelling eyes of Parnell.

Yet Mr. Healy was by no means quelled always. Witness the memorable conference of the. Irish Party in, Committee Room 15, when the O'Shea affair was the inevitable cause of the Irish split Ma. HEALY : On that occasion be [Parnell] said he undertook to hold aloof from all English parties until an English partS, would concede to Ireland the just rights of the Irish people.

PArmixr.r. : Hear, hear. ' •• Ma. HEALY : Will he cheer what follows ?

MR. PARNELL : Every word of it. Read it.

MR. HEALY : Every precious word.' (Reading): ' That time

has since come.' Where is-the cheer for that ?

MR. PARNELL : Hear, hear. •

. M.R. HEALY : I have extracted it at last, rather feebly, I suggest: (Reading): That time bas Since come' ab6ut wheia an English party—a- great English party, under the 'distinguished - leadership of Mr. Gladstone—has conceded tolrelan,d those rights, and has enabled us to enter into an honourable alliance, honourable and hopeful for our country.' With a " garrulous old man.' IA

previous gibe- by Parnell.] • . Ma.. -PARNELL That is interpolation.

Mn. HEALY : (Reading) ; Honourable for that great English party an 'alliance which I venture to believe will Wt.' What

bioke it off Y • t • Mr. Parnell, Colonel Nolan, and Dr. 'Fitzgerald each replied: ' Gladstone's letter.' . Mx. HEALY : It perished in the stench of the Divorce Court."