I waited in the hansom cab a little way off the house for a considerable time, and at last Parnell came out with an amused expression on his face. As we were driving home he said:
"We can never satisfy English politicians! They imprisoned me for causing agitation in Ireland, and now they want agitation, if not outrage. Morley said to me: 'The people must be made to wake up a bit; can't you do anything to stir them up?'" Then with a laugh: "If they knew how easy it was for me to stir Ireland up, and how confoundedly difficult I have found it to quiet her down again, they would be very careful before giving me such an invitation!" And, with the experience of the past to give force and conviction to his words, he had shown Mr. Morley the extreme danger of Mr. Gladstone's suggestions.
[[1]] The letters of Captain O'Shea preserved by Mrs. Parnell throw some light on Mr. Chamberlain's mind. In December, 1884, Chamberlain dealt at length with the Nationalist movement and the sentiment behind it, and unfolded his plan for a "National Board" for Ireland. In March, 1885, he was discussing the possibility of an arrangement with the Irish Party to get the Redistribution Bill and the Crimes Bill quickly into law on condition that the Government brought in Local Government Bills, including one for Ireland. In May, Captain O'Shea wrote that Gladstone was strongly in favour of this solution, and that, to Chamberlain's surprise, Lord Hartington did not reject the proposal off-hand, as expected. He added that the Cardinal had power to assure Parnell and the Government of the full support of the Catholic Church. Captain O'Shea's personal interest in the abortive scheme is revealed in the following passage from a letter of May 4, 1885: "The reason I am anxious about the Local Self-Government scheme is that if Chamberlain has power, which I think he will in the next Parliament, he will offer me the Chief Secretaryship, or the equivalent post if the name is abolished, if the boys will let me have it."
CHAPTER XX
MR. PARNELL IN DANGER—FOUNDING OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE
"He who for winds and clouds
Maketh a pathway free,
Through waste or hostile crowds
Can make a way for thee."
—PAUL GERHARDT.
One morning in 1882 I saw in the morning papers a cable message announcing the death of Miss Fanny Parnell. Mr. Parnell was at my house at the time, but asleep. After an all-night sitting I would never allow him to be roused until four in the afternoon, when he would have breakfast and chat with me until it was time to go to the House. On seeing the newspaper cable from America about his sister I thought it better to wake him and tell him of it, lest he should read it while I was away with my aunt. I knew that Fanny Parnell was his favourite sister, and he had told me that she was the cleverest and most beautiful woman in his family. This I knew was high praise, as Willie had met Mrs. Thomson—another of Parnell's sisters—and had told me that she was the most strikingly beautiful woman he had ever met.
I woke him and told him of his sister's death as gently as I could, but he was terribly shocked, and I could not leave him at all that day. For a time he utterly broke down, but presently a cable arrived for him—sent on from London—saying that his sister's body was to be embalmed and brought to Ireland, and his horror and indignation were extreme. He immediately wrote out a message for me to cable from London on his behalf, absolutely forbidding the embalmment of his sister's body, and saying that she was to be buried in America.
The idea of death was at all times very painful to him, but that anyone should be embalmed and taken from one place to another after death was to him unspeakably awful. For this, amongst other reasons, I could not bear to have him taken to Ireland—to Glasnevin Cemetery—after his death. My desire was to have him near me and, as he would have wished, to have taken care of his grave myself. But I gave way to the longing of the Ireland he had lived for, and to the clamour of those who had helped to kill him. How they dealt with him alive is history now, but how they dealt with him in death is not so well known; and I give an extract from the message of a friend, who had gone to see his grave a few short years after his death: "Your husband's grave is the most desolate and neglected spot in the whole cemetery, and I grieve to tell you of the painful impression it made upon me."