His dislike of social life was so great that he would never accept any invitation that could be in any way avoided; and if sometimes I absolutely insisted upon his going to any reception or dinner party, he would go with the grim determination of one fulfilling a most unpleasant duty. He often told me that it was because he hated "Saxons" (a hatred which years of tradition had fostered) so much, and felt ill at ease in any gathering of English people.
He certainly did not feel this with the working classes, with whom he would constantly converse and watch at work when we were out together. Agricultural labourers did not interest him so much, but he used to spend hours talking to mechanics of all classes, seamen, road-menders, builders, and any and every kind of artisan. To these he always spoke in an easy, friendly way of their work, their wages, and the conditions of labour, and I never remarked that suspiciousness and reserve, characteristic of the English wageworker, in these men when Parnell talked with them. They seemed to accept him, not as one of themselves, but as an interesting and an interested "labour leader," who had the unusual merit of wishing to hear their views instead of offering them his own.
Parnell was intensely superstitious, with all the superstition of the Irish peasant, and in this he was unreasoning and unreasonable. This trait was evidently acquired in earliest childhood and had grown with his growth, for some of these superstitions are the heritage of ages in the Irish people, and have their origin in some perfectly natural fear, or association, that has, generation by generation, by alteration of habit or circumstance, lost its force while retaining, or even adding to, its expression.
Parnell would agree perfectly that this was a fact, nevertheless to do so-and-so was "unlucky," and there was the end of it—it must not be done. Certain combinations of numbers, of lights or circumstances, were "omens," and must be carefully avoided. Evidently, as an intelligent child will, he had eagerly caught up and absorbed all and every suggestion offered him by the converse of his nurse and her associates, and the impressions thus made were overlaid, but not erased, as he grew up isolated, by the very reticence of his nature, from his fellows. His dislike of the colour green, as being unlucky, he could not himself understand, for it is certainly not an Irish feeling, but it was there so decidedly that he would not sit in any room that had this colour in it, nor would he allow me to wear or use any of the magnificent silks or embroideries that were so often presented to him, if, as was generally the case, they had green in their composition.
Parnell had no religious conviction of creed and dogma, but he had an immense reverence, learnt, I think, from the Irish peasantry, for any genuine religious conviction. He personally believed in a vast and universal law of "attraction," of which the elemental forces of Nature were part, and the whole of which tended towards some unknown, and unknowable, end, in immensely distant periods of time. The world, he considered, was but a small part of the unthinkably vast "whole" through which the "Spirit" (the soul) of man passed towards the fulfilment of its destiny in the completion of "attraction." Of a first "Cause" and predestined "End" he was convinced, though he believed their attributes to be unknown and unknowable.
As I have said before, he was not a man who read, or sought to acquire the opinions or knowledge of others, unless he had some peculiar interest in a subject. He considered, and formed his own beliefs and opinions, holding them with the same quiet, convinced recognition of his right of judgment that he extended to the judgment of others.
Parnell's moral standard was a high one, if it is once conceded that as regards the marriage bond his honest conviction was that there is none where intense mutual attraction—commonly called love—does not exist, or where it ceases to exist. To Parnell's heart and conscience I was no more the wife of Captain O'Shea when he (Parnell) first met me than I was after Captain O'Shea had divorced me, ten years later. He took nothing from Captain O'Shea that the law of the land could give, or could dispossess him of, therefore he did him no wrong. I do not presume to say whether in this conviction he was right or wrong, but here I set down Parnell's point of view, with the happy knowledge that never for one moment have I regretted that I made his point of view my own in this as in all things else.
Parnell's political life was one single-minded ambition for the good of his country. He was no place or popularity hunter. Stung to the quick in early manhood by the awful suffering of the Irish peasantry and by the callous indifference of the English Government, he, with all the pure chivalry of youth, vowed himself to their service, and, so far as in him lay, to the forcing of the governing country to a better fulfilment of her responsibilities. In the course of years the gaining of Home Rule for Ireland became for him the only solution of the problem. To this end he devoted all his energies, and for this end men became as tools to him, to be used and thrown aside, so that he could carve out the liberation of Ireland from the great nation whom he declared could "rule slaves as freemen, but who would only rule free men as slaves."
Some have said that Parnell was avaricious. He was not. In small matters he was careful, and on himself he spent the very smallest amount possible for his position. He indulged himself in no luxuries beyond the purchase of a few scientific books and instruments, on which indulgence he spent many moments of anxious deliberation lest he should need the money for political purposes. His own private income was spent in forwarding his political work, in the "relief funds" of Ireland's many needs, and on his estates in Ireland, where he did his utmost to promote industries that should prove to be of real benefit to the people. To his mother and other near relations he was always generous, and to the many calls upon his charity in Ireland he was rarely unresponsive.
In temper Parnell was quiet, deep and bitter. He was so absolutely self-controlled that few knew of the volcanic force and fire that burned beneath his icy exterior.