Charles Stewart Parnell: His Love Story and Political Life

by Kitty O'Shea

The house at Mottingham was damp, and we longed for the sea.

For various reasons we had been obliged to relinquish any idea of living in the little house we had finished, with so much pleasure, at Eastbourne, and at last we had removed the few things we had stored there, and in 1887 had finally decided to take the end house of Walsingham Terrace (No. 10), Brighton. Shortly after my aunt's death we went down to live there. The position then was attractive to us: cornfields from one side of the house away up to Shoreham basin and harbour, a waste of hay at the back of the house, an excellent train service and a sufficient distance from Brighton proper to enable us to avoid the crowd. While we were living there people used to walk and drive out to see "Parnell's house," but this was not particularly annoying, as when he was at home we went out early, or late—anyhow, at a time when the average person is kept at home by appetite. Personally, if it was not glaringly inconvenient, I was always rather proud and interested in the popular attention Parnell attracted wherever he went.

Here Parnell had the dining-room as his own sitting-room, where he kept the roll-top desk I had given him for all his papers and political work, while down in the basement there was a room in which he had a furnace fitted up, and where we used to burn the crushed ore before assaying it. We spent many hours down there, and I sometimes feared the excessive heat must have been bad for him; but he did not think so, and would become so absorbed in this work that I used to have the greatest difficulty in getting him out for the gallop on his horse President across the Downs, which did him so much good.

I found at length the only way was to get his cap and whip and show them to the dogs. Immediately I did this they would begin to bark wildly and jump up at him to make him start for the run they loved so much. Parnell would then say reproachfully, "Oh, Queenie, how can you deceive the poor dogs like that?" and I would answer that the only way to keep them believing in us was to go at once for that belated ride. Once started none of the party, dogs or horses, enjoyed it more than he.

In this house we had from the side windows of Parnell's and from my room in which he afterwards died, a view of the most wonderful sunsets I have ever seen in England. Then the whole west was a veritable fairyland of gold and crimson, and the harbour and Shoreham town, with the little country church of Aldrington against the setting of the Downs, were touched with a pearly mist of light that lifted them far out of the prosaic ugliness we knew by the blank light of midday. Parnell used to say to me as we walked away to the golden harbour, "Is it really like this, my Queen, or as we see it at noon?" I could only reply that it was both—the both that made life at once so interesting and so difficult.

Often in the following spring my King and I would drive out as far as the foot of the Downs near the training stables beyond Southwick; and then, climbing to the crest of the hills, go for long walks, away over the Downs, walking or resting as we felt inclined, returning as night fell, to drive home.

One sunny morning, lengthening into a brighter day, I especially remember, when the south-west wind sent the flickering shadows across the Downs where its sea-scents mingled with the sweet pungency of the young herbage. As we walked along hand in hand we were gay in the glorious spring of the year, feeling that while love walked so closely with us youth could not lag too far behind, and in the wide expanse of the South Downs, which appealed so much to both our natures, we forgot all care and trouble.

Very far away, standing clear against the skyline, there was a figure of a shepherd, his flock a little lower showed grey against the dull green distance. He stood motionless, as these lonely Down shepherds do. The tumbled heap by him, we said, was his dog. So we watched him some miles away for more than an hour. We wondered what he thought of, and whether all this lonely loveliness meant anything to him, or if he would be glad to change his quiet life for the rush and hurry of a town.

Presently, from where we sat, at the highest point of the hills, we saw some horses going at full gallop over the training ground, the horses straining at the bit, and seemingly glad to be alive. The dull thud of the hoofs came up to us to mingle with the incessant trilling of the skylarks and the bleating of the distant sheep. Now we turned seaward, overlooking Shoreham Harbour, and watched the vessels going out to sea on voyages fraught with unknown possibilities.

In spite of the excessive beauty of the scene, in the region of thought it had a saddening effect on us; and, as the last gleams of sunlight fell across the sea, lightly touching the sails as they slipped out of the light into the wider darkness of the leaden waves, we turned and retraced our steps, I leaning on his arm as we went down to the valley again.