KITTY O'SHEA
E,—Having lived in Ireland the greater part of my life, much of what
• Harold Nicolson says in his " Marginal Comment " in the issue of The Spec razor of March 27th last seems to me to be as wide of the mark his shots from an air-gun appear to have been. On one point he its that he is in some doubt, and it is of that matter that I write.
I knew his grandmother extremely well and admired her as she deserved be admired—I cannot think that she would have pointed out "Kitty Shea :" the whole of that pitiful episode caused grief even to those views were entirely opposite to those of Charles Stuart Parnell. t do I think that there would have been any opportunity in this try of so doing. Mrs. Charles Parnell came over to Ireland after her d's death, a visit unknown to most people ; she looked at his grave Glasnevin, and found it covered with coarse weeds and neglected. did come over in Parnell's lifetime, but that was to stay at Avonrnore, Place as remotely situated in County Wicklow as any I know of. Sle was an Englishwoman, Cathrine Wood, a sister of Sir Evelyn Wood, aPPily married to a Capt. O'Shea. The epithet " Kitty O'Shea " I believe, coined by Tim Healy ; she was not called "Kitty " by Parnell. After Parnell's death, his sister, Anna Parnell, was much in this neighbourhood ; in my childhood one often saw her driving about in her high " trap." I think that she sometimes drove tandem. I have no doubt but that she was the woman Harold Nicolson saw. Mrs. Rowan Hamilton may have said: " There is a woman who did more harm to the cause Charles Stuart Parnell adopted than even Mrs. O'Shea." She was an extremist, mentally unbalanced, and Parnell himself sup- pressed organisations she had founded and which were injuring his cause. My recollection is that people shunned her and that poor and rich laughed at her eccentricity. Many wore " gay " hats and " tight " bodices in those days!—I remain, Sir, yours obediently, Wilford House, Bray, Co. Wicklow. CHARLOTTE S. FOWLER.
Previous page
