"I am a poet myself; give me a pencil and paper." And, throwing himself down beside me, he wrote down the following verse proudly. "It came to me while I was digging," he said as he tossed it over to me, "and it is a real poem, and makes me a real poet. It's as good as any of Tom Parnell's stuff!"
I was forced to confess that I agreed with him, as I do now, that it was and is as good as, and better to me than, any of Thomas Parnell's stuff, or "the stuff" of any poet who ever graced the world with song. This is it:—
"The grass shall cease to grow,
The river's stream to run,
The stars shall ponder in their course,
No more shall shine the sun;
The moon shall never wane or grow,
The tide shall cease to ebb and flow,
Ere I shall cease to love you."
CHAS. PARNELL.
One evening in 1886, on his return from town, Parnell told me about Mr. O'Brien's Plan of Campaign. He did not approve of it, and said that he did not wish to have anything to do with the working of it, adding: "I shall let O'Brien run it by himself."
Parnell was looking and feeling very ill at this time, and when Mr. O'Brien took upon himself to call at my house to see him, entirely uninvited, Parnell was not really well enough to see him. He was suffering from nervous breakdown, chiefly brought on by gastric trouble, which in its turn was produced by overwork and the strain of political life. All through his life Parnell was delicate. From 1880, when I first met him (and nursed him into health) to 1891, when he died, it was only by incessant watchfulness and care that I was able to maintain his health at all. It is certainly the fact that only his indomitable will and power of mind rendered him capable of enduring the strain of his public life and of the feats of strength that few men of far greater physique would have attempted.
It was in allusion to this illness at the time of the visit of Mr. O'Brien that Parnell said in his speech at the Eighty Club (May 8, 1888): "I was ill, dangerously ill; it was an illness from which I have not entirely recovered up to this day. I was so ill that I could not put pen to paper, or even read the newspaper. I knew nothing about the movement until weeks after it had started, and even then I was so feeble that for several months—absolutely up to the meeting of Parliament—I was positively unable to take part in any public matter, and was scarcely able to do so for months afterwards. But, if I had been in a position to advise, I candidly submit to you that I should have advised against it."
Mr. O'Brien called again to see Parnell during the time he was so ill, and he left his room for the first time to go down to the sitting-room to see him. They had a long talk over the Plan of Campaign and other matters, and the interview left Parnell so exhausted that he was very ill again for some days afterwards.
Long after he told me, "All I got for getting up to see O'Brien was that he went about telling people that I was insane."
Mr. Parnell had been feeling low and depressed all through the summer of this year, and towards the autumn I became very much worried about his lassitude and general feeling of illness. I tried different diets without effect, and, thinking it might be better for him to go straight to bed after "the House," I took a house in London for him and settled him there, but he could not bear the loneliness and came back to Eltham as usual after a few nights. In November he became worse, and I insisted upon his consulting a doctor, suggesting Sir Henry Thompson, as I had heard he was very clever. I took him to London on the afternoon of November 6, in a closed carriage, and he was feeling so weak and nervous that he asked me to go in and see Sir Henry first for him. His nerves had completely broken down and I felt terribly worried about him. He stayed in the waiting-room while I went into the consulting-room. Here Sir Henry hurried in from dinner, extremely irritable at being disturbed at such an unseemly hour for a "Mr. Charles Stewart," whom he did not know. "Look, look, look! Look at the clock! What's the matter? I have a consultation in a few minutes!"
I was very glad that the door between the rooms was shut, as I felt that such a reception in his state of nerves would have caused Parnell to leave the house without waiting for an interview. I began to point out that "my" patient could not, in such a low state, face such an ungenial reception. So he permitted me to explain a little about Mr. Stewart's ill-health, and as he was kindness itself, losing every trace of impatience, he helped Parnell into his room, where, after receiving a smile of assurance from Parnell, and having seen the relief in his face, I left them together, feeling what an inestimable blessing it was to have placed Parnell's health in such a haven of security in so far as human skill could aid it.