I began to think I was the interviewed and not the interviewer; but Mr. Fortescue was ready enough to answer questions in his turn. It was quite true, he said, that the land question and the question of higher education in Ireland bristled all over with difficulties. If the demands of the tenant-farmers in Ireland were granted, a precedent would be set up that might be attended with most inconvenient consequences in England; if Mr. Gladstone were to propose a measure for university education in Ireland that would be satisfactory to Cardinal Cullen, he would encounter a storm of opposition from the Irish and English Protestants, and from the even then rapidly-growing secularist party in England, that might overwhelm him. I remember the earnestness with which Mr. Fortescue refuted a chance suggestion of mine that Mr. Gladstone was at heart a foe to the Catholic Church. The very contrary was the case; he leaned, if anything, too much the other way. Archbishop Manning was his near and dear friend. He incurred the suspicion and the latent enmity of the ultra-Protestants, and especially of the Nonconformists, by his unconcealed anxiety to compensate the Irish Catholics for the wrongs they had suffered in the past, and to make the future equable and pleasant for them. In Mr. Fortescue’s belief, an American having it in his power to influence and enlighten American opinion, and especially Irish-American opinion, respecting the real wishes of the leaders of the Liberal party regarding Ireland, could not do a better work than to impress upon the minds of his countrymen the fact that England—at least the England of that day—was heartily and sincerely anxious to do justice to Ireland. The success of the then contemplated measures of the government would depend very much upon the spirit in which the Irish people received them.
Mr. Fortescue was evidently not thoroughly satisfied with the state of feeling in Ireland, and he made some remarks concerning the Irish press that it is not necessary to repeat. He returned again, however, to the subject of the influence that Americans, and Irish-Americans in particular, had upon Irish opinion; and his observations upon this point convinced me that the secret-service department of his bureau was not badly conducted. Towards the end of our conversation I mentioned that I had a letter of introduction to him from ——, and presented it, explaining why I had not done so in the first instance. We had a laugh over what he called my “un-American scrupulousness,” and we parted very good friends. Mr. Fortescue is the possessor of very enviable qualities. I was quite convinced of his sincerity; but I reflected that the fascination of his manner when he was aroused and anxious to make a point might easily blind the judgment. We met occasionally after this from time to time; and I last saw him at his residence at Strawberry Hill, where his wife, the Countess Frances Waldegrave (whose own history is a romance), is the centre of a circle of no small political and social importance. The future of which we had talked in our first interview had become the past: Mr. Gladstone had played his trump cards and had lost his game, Mr. Disraeli reigned in his stead, while Mr. Fortescue had become Lord Carlingford and was not unhappy. But Ireland was not happy yet; and I ventured to say so to his lordship. “What would you have?” he asked—“Catholic university education on Cardinal Cullen’s plan; a tenant-right law that would make the landlord the slave of the occupier; and Home Rule, under which the tragedy of the Kilkenny cats would be enacted all over Ireland until none were left to tell the tale, or tails. Ce n’est pas possible, mon ami.”
The words “Home Rule” recall the memory of a very dear friend whose acquaintance I made in London, and who has now gone to rest. With sad but pleasant reminiscences I rummage through my letter-cases, filled with cherished epistles, until I come upon a packet tied with black tape and labelled “John Francis Maguire.” He was a splendid man, impulsive and quick, but with a sound judgment that held his emotions under sufficient control; full of lofty and poetic aspirations for his country’s future, but guided in his actions by the most sober and practical common sense. In the midst of arduous political and professional labors, all the more severe from the pressure of a constant struggle with inadequate pecuniary resources, from the demands of an exacting constituency, and from the burning passion of his soul for the happiness of Ireland, he found time for literary work that was at once a source of profit and of pleasure to him. Every one will remember his Irish in America and his Pontificate of Pius IX.; but it is with a pang that I remember the pages of manuscript that he read to me on my last visit to him. They were portions of a novel he was writing—and it was to be a Jesuitical novel. What Eugene Sue had done to vilify and traduce the Society of Jesus he would do to vindicate and exalt it. He described to me the plot; disputed with me over the proposed dénouement; laughed over the skill with which he had introduced well-known personages into the story; and asked me if, under the disguise of Sir Guichet de Nouvelle, I recognized that Don Quixote of Protestantism, Mr. Newdegate.
Mr. Maguire died before his novel was completed—at least, I never heard of its completion. When I first knew him he lived in pleasant apartments in Bessborough Gardens, and there it was I last parted from him. The presentation of my letter of introduction resulted in an invitation to dine with him the next day; and this was the first of a long series of little banquets that we had together, alternately at his apartments and in a cosey room on the third floor of the London Tavern, Fleet Street, where I played the host. Charming were these symposiums, generally held on Saturday nights, because the House was not then in session, and sometimes lasting far beyond midnight. I remember one of these occasions, on a lovely night in June, when, having sat together until two o’clock in the morning, I proposed that we should walk to Pimlico together, where I would leave him at his door. Our route took us through Temple Bar, up the Strand, down Parliament Street, past the Parliament houses and Westminster Abbey, and through St. James Park. The morning air was delicious. At this season of the year the night in London is very short; one can see to read without gaslight as late as nine o’clock, and the stars begin to pale as early as two o’clock in the morning. They were beginning to pale as we left the tavern and began our walk. The moon, hastening to hide itself before the sun arose, threw a soft light over the scene; all that was ugly and commonplace in the glare of day was hidden or disguised; all that was beautiful was arrayed in new and seductive splendor. The Strand was almost deserted; here and there a policeman paced his beat; here and there the form of some poor wretch glided out of the shade of an archway, lingered a moment, and disappeared. Trafalgar Square was glorious; the fountains made music for Marochetti’s lions at the base of Nelson’s pillar, and the little lion on the top of Northumberland House seemed to wag his tail as if beating time to the melody. Presently the grand vista of the Abbey and the Parliament houses opened before us; but scarcely had I glanced at it ere Mr. Maguire hurried me through a narrow passage to the left. “Come,” said he, “let us see where a king’s head fell.” I had seen it before—the little square in Whitehall where Charles I. was beheaded, and where the statue of James II. stands, the king pointing with his sceptre to the spot where the head of his father fell. In the daytime the place has a mean and squalid appearance, although the Crescent and gardens around it are handsome and trim enough. At this moment the surroundings of the place were bathed in a light that hid their deformities and enhanced their beauties, and the memories of the tragic scene enacted there had nothing to disturb them. The ghastly drama re-enacted itself before our mental vision. There was the window of Whitehall Palace in front of which the scaffold had been erected. From this window the king emerged; he stood on the scaffold, with his head erect, wishing to address the people; but the troops filled the place, and the populace were kept at a distance. “I can be heard only by you,” said the king to the soldiers; “I will therefore address to you a few words.” And he repeated to them a little speech which he had prepared. A curious discourse it was—grave and calm, “even to coldness,” as Guizot has it. He had been in the right, he said; every one else was in the wrong; the deprivation of the rights of the sovereign was the true cause of the unhappiness of the people; the people should have no voice in government; it was only on this condition that the kingdom could regain peace and liberty! While he was speaking some one touched the axe. “Do not dull the axe,” he exclaimed; “if it is dull it will hurt me.” The executioner directed him to gather up his long hair under a silk cap which he wore, and the Protestant Bishop Juxon assisted him to arrange it.
“I have,” said the king, “a good cause and a clement God.”
“Yes, sire,” replied Juxon. “There is only one more step before you; it is full of agony, but it is short, although it will transport you from earth to heaven.”
The king replied: “I pass from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown; there I shall fear no sorrow.” Then, after asking the executioner if the block was firmly fixed, and saying to Juxon the mysterious word “Remember!” he knelt down and extended his head upon the block. “I shall say a short prayer,” said he, “and when I extend my hands, then—” In a few moments the king stretched out his hands; the executioner struck, and the head fell directly over the spot where we were then standing.
“It was a wretched piece of work,” said Mr. Maguire as we walked away; “but the men who did it had the courage of their opinions. Who has the courage of his opinions now?”
“Mr. Gladstone, perhaps,” I suggested.
“Yes, no doubt; but what are his opinions? Those of to-day will be discarded to-morrow. He is all on our side now; there is nothing he would not do for us to-day; but to-morrow, if affairs go wrong, he will throw us over, and Ireland and the church may find in him their worst foe. The man wants a balance-wheel,” continued Maguire, warming with his theme as we walked on, “and only the grace of God can give it him. I think sometimes that he will have it yet. I admire him, I esteem him. If he were only a Catholic he would have a guide that would keep him from mischief. There,” said he, as we came to the end of Whitehall—“there is Westminster Hall, where Charles I. received his sentence; and there is Westminster Abbey, where his body was carried in the face of a blinding snow-storm and buried with maimed rites. There, too, is the door through which they carried the body of his murderer, Cromwell, to bury it among the kings. But the ashes of the kings are yet there, while Cromwell’s grave was broken open, his body dragged out and hung upon a gallows in Tyburn. He deserved it, the brute! Do you know the story of how, after his post-mortem execution, his head was cut off and stuck upon a spike on the top of Westminster Hall, just there in front of us, and how it remained there, blackening and withering in the air, until one stormy night it was blown down and picked up by the sentry on guard, who was an old Cromwellian himself? He hid the precious relic under his jacket, and afterwards sold it to a gentleman in Kent, in whose family the skull still remains.”