I tried again and again to get Arthur Walter to see Parnell as he was, but all my efforts were in vain. He was always resolved to regard Parnell as a revolutionary and Irish hater of England.
On the other hand, I had a certain admiration for Parnell and some liking. It was Verschoyle who gave me the first idea of him as a great fighter. He told me a story of his youth in the Shelbourne hotel in Dublin. One day Verschoyle and some of his family were in the hotel and at the next table a tall man was talking what they considered treason. At length Verschoyle's cousin, a notorious athlete and boxer, got up, went over to the next table and said, 'If you want to talk treason, you had better get a private room, for I won't listen to it in public.'
'Mind your own business,' said the tall man, getting up, and the next moment they were hard at it. Verschoyle said, 'I was utterly astonished to find that my cousin did not win. The tall man was just as good as he was or a little better. There was the dickens of a fight. When the waiters came in and the police and separated them, we found that the man's name was Parnell, Charles Parnell.'
The first time I met Parnell with Mrs. O'Shea was at a dinner given by dear old Justin McCarthy. It must have been pretty early in Parnell's acquaintance with Mrs. O'Shea, for she was seated opposite to him, and Parnell scarcely ever took his eyes from her face. At this time she seemed to me a sonsy, nice looking woman of thirty- three or thirty-five with pretty face and fine eyes, very vivacious, very talkative, full of good-humoured laughter.
Now and then, picturing a woman, she exaggerated, I thought, her Irish brogue with some artistry to bring out a characteristic; evidently a lively, clever woman and excellent company. All the while she talked, the dour, silent, handsome man opposite devoured her with his flaming eyes. I remember saying in fun to Justin afterwards, 'If she were as much in love with him, as he is with her, it would indeed be a perfect union.'
But kindly Justin would not admit the liaison. 'He's attracted,' he said. 'I think we all are. She's an interesting woman.' Soon, however, everybody knew that they were lovers and lost in a mutual passion. Parnell was tall and well-made, but he seemed to me too slight to be very strong; but Mrs. O'Shea, whom I questioned on the subject, told me his mere physical strength had astonished her time and again, and she did not dwell on it at all unduly.
Parnell was of the stuff of great men through greatness of character, but as a political leader he was curiously ill-read and ill-informed. Time and again I am compelled to draw attention to the ignorances of English politicians. Even the example of Bismarck and the astounding growth of modern Germany have taught them nothing.
I always felt there was an insane streak in Parnell, though Mrs. O'Shea never hints at such weakness in the two great volumes she dedicated to their love story. His superstitions showed, I thought, mental weakness. I remember walking with him once to his house to dinner. At the door he stopped and would not enter. Muttering something under his breath, he said, 'Do you mind walking a little more before going hi?' I didn't mind a scrap, though already we were somewhat late, but after a turn he was still dissatisfied and went on for another stroll. This time he was successful. 'I hate four and eight,' he said, 'but when my last step brings me to the count of nine, I'm happy.
Seven, even, will do, but nine's a symbol of real good luck and I can go in rejoicing!' And with a smiling face in he went.
But he knew no economics and had no idea of any remedy for Irish poverty. If he had ever won to complete power in Ireland, he would certainly have disappointed his followers.
In these first two or three years in London something happened of incalculable importance to my whole life, and the lesson came to me without any warning. I had grown accustomed to go on Saturday and Sunday to Lord Folkestone's to lunch, and after lunch Lady Folkestone used to give us coffee in the drawing-room. With the coffee there was always a pretty liqueur decanter full of cognac-really good fine Champagne. One day Lord Folkestone came away with me after lunch and said, 'I wonder will you forgive me, Frank, if I tell you something purely for your good?'
'I should hope so,' I replied. 'I can't conceive of anyone telling me something for my good that I'd resent.'
'I'm glad to hear you say that,' he rejoined. 'I'm much older than you know; life has taught me certain things, but I am a bad hand at beating about the bush, so I will tell it you straight off. I noticed yesterday that you drank five or six glasses of cognac with your coffee. Now no one can do that without ruining his constitution. You took enough today to make most people drunk; you showed no sign of it, but it will certainly have its effect. When you consider it, I think you will know it's sheer affection that makes me tell you this.'
'I'm sure of it,' I said, but I spoke only from my lips, for I was mortally hurt and angry; a little while later we separated and I went on home. I took the affair terribly to heart; I could not but recognize the kindness of Lord Folkestone, the sympathy that had prompted his warning, but my vanity was so great that it hurt me desperately. That evening I came to a saner view. The best thing I can do, I said to myself, is to take the warning to heart. The way to prove that I have self-control is to show it. For one year, then, I won't drink a drop of wine or spirits. I'll stop everything.
Within a week I recognized how right Lord Folkestone had been to warn me.
My whole outlook began to alter. I saw many things more quickly than I had seen them before, and I noticed that not only had I been getting stouter, but that I had been getting more lazy and more self-satisfied.
I began to take exercise and found it at first extremely hard to walk five miles in an hour or to run a quarter of a mile without ill effects, but soon I began to get back to my former strength and health. In three or four months I found out a great many things-found that health of mind and quickness of wit depended, too, on health of body in my case. In three months I began to do my work easier, all work; and as I did away with the drink, the fat literally fell from me. I lost a couple of stone in three or four months and began to walk everywhere instead of driving, and took long walks on Sundays instead of lazy excursions in a carriage.
Before the end of the year I told Lord Folkestone that I owed him more than I owed anyone in the world for his kind warning. 'It is eleven months since you warned me,' I said, 'and I am resolved to go on for another year and drink nothing this next year too.'
He was delighted. 'You don't know how much better you look,' he said. 'We have all remarked that you have gone back to the old energy and vigour that you used to have. I am more than glad, but I found it very difficult to tell you. I was so afraid of losing your friendship.' I took up his hand and kissed it-one of the few men's hands I have kissed in my life.
Most of this early time in London was brightened by occasional meetings with Oscar Wilde. As I have told in my book about him, I was introduced to him at Mrs. Jeune's; and I was surprised first of all by the kindness of his literary and artistic judgments and then by his wit and humour. 'Did I know Frank Miles?' he asked shortly after we first met. 'We are living together; he's one of the finest artists of this time,' and nothing would do but we must look out Miles in order that I should be introduced to him then and there.
Frank Miles was at this time, in the early eighties, a very pleasant, handsome, young fellow who made a sympathetic impression on everyone. I went to see them in Chelsea and bought a drawing of Lily Langtry by Miles that I thought wonderful: the same head, life-size, twice-once in profile and the other almost full face.
What has become of it I really don't know. In a year or two I discovered in it Miles's limitations as an artist: it was pretty and well drawn, but hardly more.
Miles declared that he had discovered and immortalized Mrs. Langtry, and at once Oscar stuck in gravely: 'A more important discovery than America, in my opinion; indeed, America wasn't even discovered by Columbus: it has since been detected, I understand,' and we all laughed. His fun was irresistible.
Partly through the apotheosis of Mrs. Langtry, the Prince of Wales was a frequent visitor in their house; and Miles had commissions from every pretty woman in society, including the famous Mrs. Cornwallis West. What a charming, artistic home it was: Oscar and Miles invited me to tea and we were waited on by a pretty girl about sixteen years of age, most fantastically attired, whom they called Miss Sally. Sally Higgs soon became famous for her rare beauty and was painted by Leighton (afterwards Lord Leighton) as Daydreams and by Marcus Stone, the Academician, and a host of others.
Sally was astonishingly pretty and charming to boot. I heard of her often afterwards; a couple of years later she married a boy just down from Eton, the son of a rich man. The father shipped the boy to the States and gave Sally a couple of pounds a week as solatium, but she soon found a rich protector and indeed never had any pecuniary difficulty, I imagine, in her whole sunny life.
