All the world knows how Parnell brought his action against The Times and how Pigott broke down in the witness box and shortly afterwards shot himself in Madrid. But the hatred of Parnell was so pronounced in England that in due time his enemies induced O'Shea to begin his action for divorce and make Parnell the co-respondent. Parnell believed, and said openly, that the result of the case would be to show that he was not guilty of the grave accusation of having brought disunion between husband and wife: it was perfectly well known that the O'Sheas were practically separated before Parnell came upon the scene, but any weapon is good enough to beat a dog with, and so the dispute was given an exaggerated importance by the English press.
Gladstone threw up his hands in holy horror and pretended to be shocked at Parnell's sin; I called Gladstone an 'old hypocrite' and stated that on more than one occasion he had sent to Mrs. O'Shea for intimate information about Parnell and his views. In her book on Parnell and their mutual love, Mrs.
O'Shea tells the plain truth.
For ten years Gladstone had known of the relations between Parnell and myself, and had taken full advantage of the facility this intimacy offered him in keeping in touch with the Irish leader. For ten years! But this was private knowledge. Now it was public knowledge, and an English statesman must always appear on the side of the angels.
So Mr. Gladstone found his religion could at last be useful to his country.
Parnell felt no resentment towards Gladstone. He merely said to me, with his grave smile: 'That old Spider has nearly all my flies in his web,' and, to my indignation against Gladstone, he replied: 'You don't make allowances for statecraft. He has the Nonconformist conscience to consider, and you know as well as I do he always loathed me. But these fools who throw me over at his bidding, make me a little sad.'
On the next page she tells of the traitorism of certain members of the Irish Party, when those who owed most to the great Chief turned most currishly against him. Mrs. O'Shea adds, 'How long the Irish Party had known of the relations between Parnell and myself need not be here discussed. Some years before certain members of the party opened one of my letters to Parnell.'
As I wrote at the time, this traitorism signed the death warrant of Irish Home Rule for a generation at least.
In December, 1890, a vacancy occurred in Kilkenny, and Parnell went over to support his nominee. Miss Katherine Tynan gives a great picture of the scene before his speech in the rotunda at Dublin.
It was nearly eight-thirty when we heard the bands coming. Then the windows were lit up by the lurid glare of thousands of torches in the street outside. There was a distant roaring like the ocean. The great gathering within waited silently with expectation. Then the cheering began, and we craned our necks and looked on eagerly, and there was the tall, slender, distinguished figure of the Irish leader making its way across the platform. I don't think any words could do justice to his reception. The house rose at him; everywhere around there was a sea of passionate faces, loving, admiring, almost worshipping that silent, pale man. The cheering broke out again and again; there was no quelling it. Mr. Parnell bowed from side to side, sweeping the assemblage with his eagle glance. The people were fairly mad with excitement. I don't think anyone outside Ireland can understand what a charm Mr. Parnell has for the Irish heart; that wonderful personality of his, his proud bearing, his handsome strong face, the distinction of look which marks him more than anyone I have ever seen. All these are irresistible to the artistic Irish…
I said to Dr. Kenny, who was standing by me, 'He is the only quiet man here.'
'Outwardly,' said the keen medical man, emphatically. Looking again, one saw the dilated nostrils, the flashing eyes, the passionate face.
When Mr. Parnell came to speak, the passion within him found vent. It was a wonderful speech; not one word of it for oratorical effect, but every word charged with a pregnant message to the people who were listening to him, and the millions who should read him. It was a long speech, lasting nearly an hour, but listened to with intense interest, punctuated by fierce cries against men whom this crisis has made odious, now and then marked in a pause by a deep-drawn moan of delight. It was a great speech-simple, direct, suave- with no device and no artificiality. Mr. Parnell said long ago, in a furious moment in the House of Commons, that he cared nothing for the opinion of the English people. One remembered it now, noting his passionate assurances to his own people, who loved him too well to ask him questions.
I went across to Ireland for the Kilkenny election. Parnell was stopping in the hotel. In public he wore a bandage over his right eye, saying that some one had thrown quicklime in it and injured it. But when he received Harold Frederic and myself in the inn he had laid aside the bandage and his eye seemed altogether uninjured.
One incident took place then which I shall never forget. Frederic, the American journalist, was a great friend and loyal supporter of Parnell, and the chief therefore talked with us naturally and without pose. But I was shocked by the deep shadows under Parnell's eyes and a look of strain- I had almost said, of wild fear in his eyes. He had been through deep waters!
Suddenly, while we were chatting, there came some noise from outside, and before we could interfere Parnell had whipped outside the window and was standing on the balcony. A funeral was passing down the street in solemn silence. Everyone knows how seriously death is regarded in Ireland.
Suddenly Parnell cried at the top of his voice: 'There goes the corpse of Pope Hennessy,' his opponent in the electoral struggle. In a minute some friends came and helped Frederic to drag him into the room, reminding him that he had forgotten his bandage, which he wore even a week later. The loss of selfcontrol, so marked in so proud and masterful a man, made a deep impression on me. I told Frederic that night that Parnell had serious nerve trouble and would go mad soon if be didn't take care.
Fate was more merciful to him. He returned to his adoring wife at Brighton, but in spite of all her care and devotion, died in her arms in October, 1891, aged just 45. They had been lovers eleven years.
Parnell was a great character, if not a great intellect. But it was natural that England, which couldn't use the far greater man, Burton, couldn't use Charles Parnell. And the whole misery and disunion in Ireland today conies from this fact. Parnell ought to have been an English hero. His love for Mrs. O'Shea was the love of his whole life, and he gave himself to her with the same singlehearted devotion he had vowed in political life to the cause of Ireland.
Almost everyone took for granted that Gladstone was the greatest Englishman of his century, but in my heart I have always regarded him as negligible. His political achievements were merely parochial.
The insane misjudgment of Gladstone reminds me of a dinner I was asked to in London where Mr. Chauncey Depew was to appear for the first time. Every one was agog to hear the man who came to London with the reputation of being the best after-dinner speaker in America.
After dinner Mr. Depew got up, heralded with fantastic praise and applause, and began a long series of platitudes punctuated with age-worn anecdotes, chestnuts familiar to me in boyhood. He went on interminably while the applause grew fainter and fainter. At length, I said to my vis-d-vis, a wellknown judge, 'Haven't you had enough of this?' He replied, 'Enough for a life tune,' and we both got up and left the room.
Years later I told this to a young friend from New York, one Allan Bowling. 'I once heard Depew,' he said, 'in New York, say the most stupid thing conceivable. 'The greatest American I ever met,' he said, 'was undoubtedly Abraham Lincoln; the greatest man was William Gladstone!'' For monumental stupidity, the remark would be hard to beat.
When I told Lord Wolverton, a great friend of mine, how Chamberlain had cast me off, and the Fortnightly Review, because of my views against Free Trade, he immediately proposed that I should see Gladstone and put him in Chamberlain's place. 'Then,' the banker said, 'you can have whatever money you want, and I think you will have a much greater success with Gladstone behind you than you have had with Chamberlain.' That I admitted at once. So it was arranged that I should go out to Combe and meet Gladstone and have a talk.
I went out in due course, but I was not impressed much with Gladstone's talk at the dinner. He held forth on every subject that came up, and talked well, but his eagle face and luminous eyes were finer than anything he said. He had read widely, I saw, but it seemed to me that he had thought very little for himself.
At the end of the dinner he went off with an Eton boy and played 'Beggar My Neighbor.' About ten o'clock the Eton boy went up to bed, and Gladstone came over to half a dozen of us standing in front of the fireplace.
'Did you get much out of the game?' asked his host, Lord Wolverton.
'A great deal,' said Gladstone. 'The boy taught me that four knaves can beat the whole pack.'
I could not resist the temptation. 'Good God,' I interjected, 'I should have thought that your experience, Sir, would have shown that one knave was able to do that.' He glowered at me and said nothing; he evidently took my
