Charles Stewart Parnell: His Love Story and Political Life

by Kitty O'Shea

"You are prodigiously kind, dear Mr. Meredith, but I should prefer Molière to-day."

While Willie and I were still living in London we went down one day to see a furnished house we wished to rent for a few weeks, and, remembering my Aunt Ben's injunction to convey her "felicitations to her dear Mr. Meredith," we called on him.

I had not before met George Meredith, and had only read one of his works—and that "behind the door" when I was very young, owing to some belated scruple of my elders. I remember, as we neared the house, asking Willie the names of Meredith's other works, so that I might be ready primed with intelligent interest, and Willie's sarcastic little smile, as he mentioned one or two, adding, "You need not worry yourself; Meredith will soon enlighten us as to his books. They say it's the one thing he ever talks about." But we spent a delightful afternoon with Mr. Meredith, who showed us all his literary treasures and the little house at the end of the garden where he wrote. While we sat in the lovely little garden drinking tea our host descanted on the exquisite haze of heat that threw soft shadows about the house and gave the great trees in the background the appearance of an enchanted forest. George Meredith was "reader" to Chapman and Hall in those days, and he spoke to me appreciatively of the work of my mother and sister, who published with Chapman and Hall.

In these days at Eltham I learnt to know George Meredith very well, as I saw him almost every week when he came down to read to my aunt. The old lady did not like triangular conversation, so as soon as they were fairly launched in reading or conversation, I would gladly slip away to my own occupations. To Aunt Ben, Meredith appeared to be a very young man indeed, and in her gentle, high-bred way she loved to tease him about his very great appreciation of his own work—and person. Meredith took her gentle raillery absolutely in good part and would hold forth upon what the literary world "of all time" owed him in his books, and also upon what Lady This-or-that had said in admiration of his good looks at such-and-such a gathering. My aunt used to delight in these tales, which were delivered in the mock serious manner of a boy telling his mother of his prowess, real or imagined; and after a time of listening to him, with only her gently modulated little bursts of laughter to encourage him, she would say, "Oh, my dear Mr. Meredith, your conceit is as wonderful as your genius!"—bringing forth from him the protest, "My dear lady, no! But it is a pleasure to you to hear of my successes and to me to tell you of them." And so I would leave them to their playful badinage and reading.

Meredith was very fond of his old friend, and always treated her with the chivalrous and rather elaborate courtesy that he well knew she delighted in. His weekly visits were a great pleasure to her, and although she would not allow him to read anything modern and never anything of his own work, I think he must have enjoyed his reading and talk with this clever old lady, for often the stipulated two hours of the "classics and their discussion" lengthened into the three or four that caused him to miss all the most convenient trains home.

One evening as I was going into the house I saw him standing on the terrace gazing after the retreating form of my little girl Carmen, then about six years old. As I came up he pointed at the stiff little back and said, "She was flying along like a fairy Atalanta when I caught her, and said, 'What is your name?' 'Miss Nothin'-at-all!' she replied, with such fierce dignity that I dropped her in alarm."

I called the child to come back and speak politely to Mr. Meredith, but, to his amusement, was only rewarded by an airy wave of the hand as she fled down a by-path.

As I sometimes chatted to Mr. Meredith on his way through the grounds to the station, he would tell me of "that blessed woman," as he used to call his (second) wife, already then dead, and of how he missed her kind and always sympathetic presence on his return home and in his work. Sometimes the handsome head would droop, and I thought he looked careworn and sad as he spoke of her, and in doing so he lost for the moment all the mannerisms and "effectiveness" which were sometimes rather wearisome in him. As my aunt grew very old she—in the last few years of her life—became unequal to listening and talking to her "gentlemen readers," and to me she deputed the task of telling them so. In the case of George Meredith it was rather painful to me, as I feared the loss of the £300 a year my aunt had so long paid him for his weekly visits might be a serious one to him. But he, too, had aged in all these years, and perhaps his visits to his old friend were becoming rather irksome to him in their regularity. Curiously enough, I shared my aunt's inability to enjoy his work, and to the last I met his mocking inquiry as to my "progress in literature" (i.e. his novels) by a deprecating "Only 'Richard Feverel.'"

The house my aunt bought for me was just across her park, and she had a gate made in the park fence so that I might go backwards and forwards to her house more quickly. My house was a comfortable villa with the usual little "front garden" and larger one in the rear. There were excellent stables at the end of this garden. The house, "Wonersh Lodge," had the usual dining-room and drawing-room, with two other sitting-rooms opening severally into the garden, and a large conservatory, which I afterwards made over to Mr. Parnell for his own use. My aunt furnished the house, and we were most comfortable, while my children rejoiced in having the run of the park and grounds after the restraint of town life.

Willie was very much in London now, and occupied himself in getting up a company to develop some mining business in Spain. He always drew up a prospectus excellently; on reading it one could hardly help believing—as he invariably did—that here at last was the golden opportunity of speculators. Some influential men put into the Spanish venture sums varying from £1,000 to £10,000. Our old friend Christopher Weguelin took great interest in it, and eventually Willie was offered the post of manager, at La Mines, at a good salary. It was a very acceptable post to Willie, as he loved the life in foreign countries. There was a very good house, and he had it planted round with eucalyptus trees to keep off the fever so prevalent there, and from which the men working the mines suffered greatly.