The news of our marriage was in all the evening papers, and already that night began the bombardment of telegrams and letters of congratulation and otherwise! The first telegram was to me, "Mrs. Parnell," and we opened it together with much interest and read its kind message from "Six Irish Girls" with great pleasure. The others, the number of which ran into many hundreds, varied from the heartiest congratulation to the foulest abuse, and were equally of no moment to my husband, as he made no attempt to open anything in the ever-growing heap of correspondence that, for weeks I kept on a large tray in my sitting-room, and which, by making a determined effort daily, I kept within bounds.
"Why do you have to open them all?" he asked me, looking at the heap with the indolent disgust that always characterized him at the sight of many letters.
"Well, I like reading the nice ones, and I can't tell which they are till they're opened," I explained. "Now here is one that looks the very epitome of all that is good and land outside-thick, good paper, beautiful handwriting—and yet the inside is unprintable!"
Parnell held out his hand for it, but I would not give anything so dirty into his hand, and tore it across for the wastepaper basket, giving him instead a dear little letter from a peasant woman in Ireland, who invoked more blessings upon our heads than Heaven could well spare us.
Little more than three months afterwards the telegrams and letters again poured into the house. This time they were messages of condolence, and otherwise. And again their message fell upon unheeding ears, for the still, cold form lying in the proud tranquillity of death had taken with him all my sorrow and my joy; and as in that perfect happiness I had known no bitterness, for he was there, now again these words of venom, speaking gladness because he was dead, held no sting for me, for he was gone, and with him took my heart.
The very many letters of true sympathy which reached me after my husband's death were put away in boxes, and kept for me till I was well enough for my daughter to read them to me. Among these were many from clergymen of all denominations and of all ranks in the great army of God. As I lay with closed eyes listening to the message of these hearts I did not know I seemed to be back in the little church at Cressing, and to hear my father's voice through the mists of remembrance, saying: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is Charity." ...
Among our many wedding presents was a charming little alabaster clock from my husband's sister, Emily Dickinson. It was a ship's "wheel," and we were very gay over its coming, disputing as to which of us should henceforth be the "man at the wheel." Parnell's mother also was very sweet and kind to me, sending me several much prized letters. Other members of my husband's family also wrote very kindly to me, and I can still see his tender smile at me as he saw my appreciation of his family's attitude.
The presents we liked best, after Mrs. Dickinson's clock, were the little humble offerings of little value and much love sent by working men and women, by our servants, and by others of far countries and near. Parcels arrived from the four quarters of the globe, and many were beyond recognition on arrival, but the fragments were grateful to me as bearing a message of true homage to my King.
Of other feeling there was little among these wedding gifts, though one evening my eldest daughter who was with me, remarked casually to me that she had confiscated a newly arrived "registered" parcel addressed to me. "Oh, but you must not," I exclaimed, "I want them all!" But she answered gloomily that this parcel had contained a mouse, and "not at all the kind of mouse that anyone could have wanted for days past." So I subsided without further interrogation.
Once when Parnell and I were staying at Bournemouth we became very fond of some old engravings hanging in our hotel sitting-room, illustrating "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow," and now, through these fighting months in Ireland, we used this old ballad as a medium for private telegrams, as we could not be sure they would not fall into other hands. The idea took root when he first left me to attend what I feared would be a hostile meeting in Ireland. He had wired the political result to me, but had not said how he was feeling. I telegraphed to him: "O gentle wind that bloweth south," and promptly came the reply to me: "He fareth well."