KITTY O'SHEA "
SIR,—This correspondence seems to be losing its head. My friend, Mrs. E. M. Delafield, who has evidently not read the whole of it, boldly shifts the scene from Ireland to Hove, forgetting, if she ever knew, that Mr. Harold Nicolson began the discussion by stating that his grandmother, whom he was visiting in Ireland, had pointed to a beautiful lady and said that that was Mrs. O'Shea, the womaa who had prevented Home Rule. Mrs. Delafield's parents might often have seen the Parnells in Hove, for they lived there, both before and after their marriage, and it was in Hove, in October, 1891, that Parnell died ; but that is not the argument, and I repeat my statement that Mrs. Parnell, or, as she was popularly called, Kitty O'Shea, though neither she nor any person connected with her ever used that name, never in her life visited Ireland. There is not a single word in Charles Stewart Parnell by Katharine O'Shea to show that she ever set her feet on Irish soil in Captain O'Shea's time or in Parnell's. Her relationship with the Irish leader forbade a visit to Avondale, Parnell's Wicklow home, and her book makes it perfectly plain that she remained in England every time he went to Ireland. It must be remembered that he died four months after he married her. She had intended to visit Glasnevin to see his grave, but a report that it was sadly neglected made her change her mind. I had this information from her son-in-law, the husband of one of her daughters by Parnell. I am almost certain that Mrs. O'Shea never met any of Parnell's brothers and sisters.
The probability that Mr. Nicolson ever saw Mrs. Parnell anywhere is slight. He certainly did not see her in Ireland. Mr. Nicolson was born in Persia in 1886. He was five years old when Parnell died in 1891. Mrs. Parnell was then in her forty-sixth year, and was not the dazzling beauty he supposes himself to have seen. It is true that she lived until 1921, her age being seventy-six when she died, but she had been in retirement for a very long time, and the fact that she was still alive was scarcely known. I do not know what age Mr. Nicolson was when his grandmother drew his attention to the mysterious lady, but the dates I have given will, I do not doubt, assist him to believe that she, was mistaken. Whether or not the lady he saw was Miss Maud Gonne (Madame MacBride), as Mr. MacDonagh suggests may have been the case, I cannot tell ; but she was not Kitty O'Shea.—Yours
sincerely, ST. jOHN ERVINE. Honey Ditches, Seaton, Devon-.
[This correspondence is now closed.—En., The Spectator.]
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