BOOKS.
Viral Notice.]
IT is more than twenty-two years since the Parnell scandal- and its subsequent tragedy occurred. To most of us it would seem a pity now to raise the curtain for the review of incidents connected with that disreputable drama. The excuse given in the preface is a wish to refute the statement that Parnell was "rather the victim than the destroyer of a happy home," and to rehabilitate the character of the lato Captain William O'Shea. The tale now told achieves neither
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• Charles Stewart Parnell: his Love Story and Political Lila. By Katharine O'Shea. Photos and 16 Platen 2 vols. London: Cassell awl Co. [21a.
of those objects, but it does confirm and stamp with authen- ticity a good many of the stories and rumours current during Mr. Parnell's lifetime as to his habits, temperament, and idiosyncrasies. Anything tending to show the inner working of the mind of this most remarkable man is interesting even at this date. The position he occupied as a Parliamentarian and a politician was unique, not only on account of the absolute and unquestioned authority be exercised over his followers, but from his securing this supremacy by a total disregard, if not reversal, of the methods by which ordinary public men obtain popularity.
In the story before us the three main characters are the heroine, her husband, and her lover. A long and vivacious description of her girlhood depicts Katharine Wood as a good-looking and most attractive young woman, popular with all, showing aptitude and resourcefulness in many embarrassing situations; but with all these taking attributes there is associated a certain lack of delicacy which shows itself in various adventures.
William O'Shea, the husband, is introduced as a good-looking cavalry cornet, a fine horseman, a dandy, and a spendthrift As years roll on, he develops a superlative sense of his own aptitude, especially for political work, and he associates these pretensions with the most pachydermatous of hides. Their married life was marred by perpetual impecuniosity, which, when added to an inherent incompatibility of tem- perament, caused them to drift wider and wider apart. " What a curiously narrow life mine was—narrow, narrow, and so deadly dull," is Mrs. O'Shea's contemptuous description of her wedded lot, At her first meeting with Parnell, in June, 1880—which was one she insisted upon bringing about with him—he picked up a rose which she bad dropped and put it in his buttonhole. A short time afterwards he avowed his love and was assured of its return. Illicit as was this declaration, it is only fair to Parnell to say that from that day to his death he enveloped Mrs. O'Shea with an unspeakable wealth of affection and con- sideration. She became his ideal and worship; her happiness and health from that day forward became the primary object of his life.
Of all the great Parliamentary men of the last century, Parnell unquestionably was the most remarkable. The adored and omnipotent leader of the Irish Nationalists, he was personally in all his attributes the antithesis of the Irish Celt. Slow of speech, circumspect in his actions, devoid of sentiment or enthusiasm, he ruled mainly through the force of an indomitable and unscrupulous will, a prescient judgment, and an intimate knowledge of the weakness and vagaries of the Irish character. On both his father's and mother's side he came of an able but cranky stock, and this inherited crankiness developed in him a narrow but extraordinary intensity of purpose. He was the first Irish Member of Parliament to realize that the more he could insult and out- rage the House of Commons' traditions and regulations, the greater would be his influence in Ireland, and he remorselessly applied his rare practical powers to this object. Finding that the procedure and rules of the House of Commons gave him the means of stopping and upsetting all public business in that Assembly, he applied himself whole-heartedly to that task. To be successful in the role which he had adopted, he was obliged to be deaf to all appeals for fair play or justice, and to be callous to the personal annoyance be caused. He was, however, always ready to bargain, and good prices he got in exchange for his unscrupulous obstruction. His Parlia- mentary life was, therefore, one of extreme personal tension, and this strain was enhanced by his exclusiveness and his disdain of those whom he controlled. When he did thaw, all agreed that he bad an extraordinary charm. To such a man, worried and harassed on all sides wheraver he turned politi- cally, the companionship, the love and help of a beautiful and most capable woman must have been a real oasis in the desert of his public life:- " Why did she love him? Curious fool I—be still— Is human love the growth of human will ? To her he might be gentleness the stern Have deeper thoughts than your dull eyes discern, And when they love, your smilers guess not how Beats the strong heart though less the lips avow."
In these days, when there is a disposition in certain quarters to scoff at the permanence and sanctity of the marriage tie,
it may not be out of place to take the sad story under review as an illustration of what a permanent disregard of such ties entails upon those so misconducting themselves. The human telepathy between these two was complete; the circuit of their love was during their joint lifetimes never shortened or broken. He supplied to her what she wanted—a strong and indomitable will upon which to rest; she brought into his hard, drab life the colour and encouragement of a resourceful and quick-witted woman's love and devotion. If a disregard of the sanctity of the marriage law be permissible, could con- ditions more favourable for such an option be created ? From the day Parnell stepped into Mrs. O'Shea's life, their joint career became one of continuous duplicity and false- hood,' sham addresses and names, double envelopes and duplicate correspondence. There was hardly any transaction in the daily routine of their• lives that had not to be antioi• pated in order that it might be involved in secrecy or concealed by subterfuge. Bad as was the effect upon themselves, it was worse for those amongst whom they lived. Whether it was through wilful blindness, indifference, or connivance is immaterial, but the fact remains that Captain O'Shea, many of his wife's intimate friends, and the politicians between whom she was an intermediary by their attitude practically acquiesced in the intrigue. For nearly ten years this game of falsehood and degradation was played, and when the actual relations between the two were at last unmistakably revealed to the publio the obloquy and disgrace attached to them brought to a, premature and unhonoured death the strongest Irishman of the last century.
Parnell was not the man to lose time in the prosecution of any undertaking upon which he was bent. Within a few months of his introduction to Mrs. O'Shea he was writing to her as "My own love." During the autumn of 1880 she nursed him through an illness at Eltham with her husband's knowledge, and she shortly afterwards was placed in charge of his correspondence.
The Government instituted proceedings against the Land League chiefs, and Parnell was in hourly danger of arrest. He came down late at night to Eltham towards the end of the year, and it was arranged that he should be concealed in a boudoir opening out of Mr. O'Shea's room, and of which she always kept the key. There he remained a fortnight, spend- ing his time in writing seditious speeches and reading Alice in Wonderland. Mrs. O'Shea performed her task of waiting upon and watching over him so cleverly that no one had the least idea he was in the house, "The only comment I ever heard upon my prisoner's diet was that ' Mistress ate much more when she had her meals served in her sitting-room.'"
The prosecution failed, and a strenuous Parliamentary Session was largely occupied in passing a Coercion Bill for Ireland. Parnell was now an habitue! at Eltham, and Mrs O'Shea helped him with his speeches. A quotation supplied by her from Shakespeare came to an untimely end, and Parnell, with his inimitable nonchalance, thus described the failure: '" I lost the quotation you gave me and brought it out sideways, and there it was all the time crushed up in my hand, and I forgot the fellow's name and called him "The Poet." '—' Will Shakespeare can be called " The Poet,"' I would return, soothingly.— Yes, is that so ?'"
In the early months of 1882 O'Shea came down to Eltham, and, finding Parnell's portmanteau in his room, became exceedingly angry, sent the portmanteau away, and declined that he would challenge Parnell and shoot him. It was thoroughly characteristic of Parnell that he was more con- cerned at the loss of his portmanteau than at the discovery of his relations with Mrs. O'Shea, and, writing to the latter, he requests her to be "kind enough to ask Captain O'Shea where he has left my luggage." After a good deal of tall talk, no duel was fought. Mrs. O'Shea was recognized by her husband as Parnell's medium of communication with the Government, with the stipulation added that Parnell should not slay at Eltham. The meaning put upon this arrangement by the two concerned is thus expressed : "From the date of this bitter quarrel, Parnell and I were one without further scruple, further fear, and without remorse."
From this time onwards, for a number of years, Mrs O'Shea met and saw, as Parnell's plenipotentiary agent, Mr. Gladstone and the Whip of his party. The interviews were frequent, and the subjects discussed and requests proffered ranged from Home Rule and Tramway Bills to remissions of death sentences, applications for pensions, and posts such as the Under-Secretaryship of Ireland for O'Shea. The debates in the House of Commons daring this period were very heated and acrimonious. Parnell and his misdeeds were the subject of daily denunciation from the Ministerial benches. It would have been more than a shock to the orthodox Liberal of that day to have known that during all this period communications were taking place between Mr. Gladstone and a lady who was the mistress of the leader of the movement which he, the Prime Minister, had denounced as " marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire."
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