Charles Stewart Parnell: His Love Story and Political Life

by Kitty O'Shea

Sometimes I was not well enough to go to London with him, and on these occasions comforted myself as much as possible with a compensating interest in the habits of the Rev. Thomas Grosse, who took my father's place at Cressing. He was very good and kind to me, and in the summer evenings, when he knew I was missing my father, he would take me out to look for glow-worms, and show me the stars, teaching me the names of the planets. Years afterwards the knowledge I thus gained became a great happiness to me, as I taught Mr. Parnell all I knew of astronomy, and opened up to him a new world of absorbing interest.

Friends of my brother Evelyn frequently stayed at Rivenhall, and one of them, a colonel of Light Dragoons, was engaged to one of my elder sisters. This gentleman appealed to my youthful mind as being all that a hero should be, and I used to stick a red fez on my golden curls and gallop my pony past the dining-room windows so that he might see and admire the intrepid maiden, as the prince in my fairy book did!

I loved the winter evenings at Rivenhall when my brothers were not at home. My father used to sit by the fire reading his Times, with his great white cat on his knee, while I made his tea and hot buttered toast, and my mother and sister Anna read or sketched. I used to write the plots of tragic little stories which my "Pip"[[1]] used to read and call "blood-stained bandits," owing to the violent action and the disregard of convention shown by all the characters concerned.

However, these childish efforts of mine led to greater results, as one evening my mother and sister laughingly offered to buy my "plot" in order to "write it up" into a novel. I was, of course, very proud to sell my idea, and thenceforth both my mother and sister wrote many successful novels, published by Chapman and Hall—and, I believe, at prices that are rarely realized by present-day novelists.

I was thus the unwitting means of greatly relieving my parents' anxiety of how to meet, with their not very large income, the heavy expense of educating and maintaining my brothers, and the responsibilities of their position.

My brothers loved to tease me, and, as I was so much younger than they, I never understood if they were really serious or only laughing at me. Evelyn was specially adroit in bewildering me, and used to curb my rebellion, when I was reluctant to fetch and carry for him, by drawing a harrowing picture of my remorse should he be killed "in the next war." The horror of this thought kept me a ready slave for years, till one day, in a gust of temper, I burst out with: "I shan't be sorry at all when you're killed in a war cos' I didn't find your silly things, and I wish you'd go away and be a dead hero now, so there!" I remember the horrified pause of my mother and sister and then the howl of laughter and applause from Evelyn and Charlie. Evelyn was very good to me after this, and considered, more, that even little girls have their feelings.

As a matter of fact, my mother was so entirely wrapped up in Evelyn that I think I was jealous, even though I had my father so much to myself. My mother was most affectionate to all her children, but Evelyn was her idol, and from the time when, as a mere lad, he was wounded in the Crimean War, to the day of her death, he was first in all her thoughts.

Of my brothers and sisters I really knew only four at all well. Clarissa had died at seventeen, and Fred when I was very young; Frank was away with his regiment, my sister Pollie was married and away in India before I was born, and my sister Emma married Sir Thomas Barrett-Lennard while I was still very young. She was always very kind to me, and I used to love going to visit her at her house in Brighton. Visiting Sir Thomas Barrett-Lennard's country seat, Belhus, I did not like so much, because, though Belhus is very beautiful, I loved Rivenhall better.

My mother was a fine musician, and as I grew older, I began to long to play as she did. There was a beautiful grand piano in the drawing-room, and I used to try to pick out tunes upon it. My mother had spent much money on her eldest daughter's—Maria's (Pollie)—musical education. At the end of this Pollie said she detested it, and would never play a note again if she could help it. When I asked that I might be taught to play my mother said, "No. There is the piano; go and play it if you really want to learn." In time I could play very well by ear, and began to compose a little and seek for wider knowledge. My love of music led me to try composition, and I used to set to music any verses that took my fancy. Among these I was much pleased with Longfellow's "Weariness," and was so encouraged by my mother's praise of the setting that I sent the poet a copy. I was a very happy girl when he wrote to thank me, saying that mine was the best setting of his poem he had ever heard.

Armed with the manuscript of this music and some others, the next time I went to London with my father I went to Boosey's, the musical publishers, and asked their representative to publish them.