A few more sentences will end this chapter in Mr. Gladstone's life. As we have seen, an election took place in the closing days of December 1890. Mr. Parnell flung himself into the contest with frantic activity. A fierce conflict ended in the defeat of his candidate by nearly two to one.[281] Three months later a contest occurred in Sligo. Here again, though he had strained every nerve in the interval as well as in the immediate struggle, his candidate was beaten.[282] Another three months, then a third election at Carlow,—with the same result, the rejection of Mr. Parnell's man by a majority of much more than two to one.[283] It was in vain that his adherents denounced those who had left him as mutineers and helots, and exalted him as “truer than Tone, abler than Grattan, greater than O'Connell, full of love for Ireland as Thomas Davis himself.” On the other side, he encountered antagonism in every key, from pathetic remonstrance or earnest reprobation, down to an unsparing fury that savoured [pg 459]
Death Of Mr. Parnell
of the ruthless factions of the Seine. In America almost every name of consideration was hostile.
Yet undaunted by repulse upon repulse, he tore over from England to Ireland and back again, week after week and month after month, hoarse and haggard, seamed by sombre passions, waving the shreds of a tattered flag. Ireland must have been a hell on earth to him. To those Englishmen who could not forget that they had for so long been his fellow-workers, though they were now the mark of his attack, these were dark and desolating days. No more lamentable chapter is to be found in all the demented scroll of aimless and untoward things, that seem as if they made up the history of Ireland. It was not for very long. The last speech that Mr. Parnell ever made in England was at Newcastle-on-Tyne in July 1891, when he told the old story about the liberal leaders, of whom he said that there was but one whom he trusted. A few weeks later, not much more than ten months after the miserable act had opened, the Veiled Shadow stole upon the scene, and the world learned that Parnell was no more.[284]
Chapter VI. Biarritz. (1891-1892)
Omnium autem ineptiarum, quæ sunt innumerabiles, haud sciam an nulla sit major, quam, ut illi solent, quocunque in loco, quoscunque inter homines visum est, de rebus aut difficillimis aut non necessariis argutissime disputare.—Cicero.
Of all the numberless sorts of bad taste and want of tact, perhaps the worst is to insist, no matter where you are or with whom you are, on arguing about the hardest subjects to the full pitch of elaboration and detail.