Enigma

by Paul Bew

  The parliamentary debate on the Home Rule Bill revealed more than Parnell’s strengths and weaknesses as a nationalist leader. It also revealed the widening gap between Parnell’s vision of a self-governing Ireland and that of some of his principal lieutenants. We can take the example of T. P. O’Connor’s speech, which is significant as T.P.—unlike, for example, Tim Healy’s ‘Bantry Boys’—was one of the most cosmopolitan of Irish MPs:

  Let me make the ambitious attempt to forecast the near future of Ireland under Home Rule. . . . The landlords are not now a very widespread class in the new Irish nation. What, then, is the nation we have in Ireland? It will be a nation of small farmers—one vast widespread universal petite bourgeoisie. Well, Sir, we know perfectly well the main features of the petite bourgeoisie. The cheekbone, the hard mouth, the sunken cheek, the keen and almost cunning eyes. . . . The farmer is frugal to avarice; his industry degenerates into drudgery; his wisdom into cunning; and above all things he has the hatred, the dread and the despair [towards] the revolutionary.59

  This speech requires some clarification. Already in 1886 the Home Ruler O’Connor saw the Irish landlord class as merely a relic of the past. Parnell, on the other hand, dreamed and continued to dream of their re-emergence ‘as individuals’ in the life of the nation. No such idea appears in T.P.’s speech. The idea of an Ireland dominated by a narrow-minded, grasping rural petite bourgeoisie would have been deeply repugnant to Parnell—and yet how near the independent Ireland of the next century sometimes came to this fate! We may suspect that the rather metropolitan T.P. was perhaps frightening himself a bit. Certainly he was pleading a special case—in order to downplay the likelihood of separation or revolution. There is more than a little artifice in this picture. It is redolent of the studies of the French peasantry in the writings of Balzac—one of T.P.’s favourite novelists. It also reflects, as he explicitly said, the paintings of Irish farmers by Aloysius O’Kelly, brother of J. J. O’Kelly, his Irish Party colleague. It does not allow sufficiently the differentiation of the Irish peasantry. Yet, for all that, it is a striking image.

  O’Connor’s speech was received rather badly on his own side, though not within Liberal government circles.60 The tone was regarded as less than ‘manly’. Parnell regarded it as the speech of a politician who was an English Liberal first, and an Irish patriot second. William O’Brien, in his diary, called it the ‘worst speech of his life or of anybody else’s’.61 The Tories tended to agree. Sir Richard Temple noted that O’Connor’s speech was a ‘hideous travesty’.62 Certainly the interpretation O’Connor offered of the paintings of Aloysius O’Kelly is rather odd: O’Kelly’s paintings present on the whole a noble and heroic picture of Irish peasant life.63 The portrait at the Royal Academy to which O’Connor appears to have been referring was, in fact, a portrait of a Breton or a Vendéan, and not an Irish person at all. O’Connor solved this problem by suggesting that the mindset of the small peasantry throughout Europe was a similar one.

  Following numerous defections from his party to the new Liberal Unionist grouping, Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill was defeated. This was followed rapidly by a general election in July 1886 and the return of the Conservatives to power on a 3.7 per cent swing. T. P. O’Connor noted: ‘Parnell, with the strange obtuseness which was part of his tenacious character and of his ignorance of English life, pressed Gladstone to meet the parliament in spite of this defeat [i.e. to insist on being voted out of office instead of resigning], but, of course, Gladstone could not consent to so obviously foolish and futile a course.’64

  As an explanation for the defeat, it became a commonplace in Liberal and Home Rule ranks to insist that the British mass electorate—as opposed to the elites in politics and academic life—was largely uninterested in the Irish issue per se but that it could be mobilised against Home Rule on the grounds of the expense to the British taxpayer of Irish land reform. Liberal Unionists in particular exploited the issue, with Joseph Chamberlain in the van proposing a scheme for Irish land reform to be financed out of purely Irish resources—a scheme regarded in most of Ireland as equivalent to feeding a dog on its own tail (to use the bitter phrase of Jasper Tully of the Roscommon Herald). But there was no denying the reality of the expense issue.

  Parnell personally despised this skinflint attitude. Privately he believed—as was eventually revealed in April 189065—that the imperial taxpayer had a duty to assist the solution of the Irish question. It was, in the Irish leader’s view, an unavoidable historical responsibility. However, for much of the period from 1886 until the split in 1890 Parnell had to appear to sympathise with Liberal parsimony. He actually went so far in early August 1886 as to present himself as the defender of the imperial taxpayer as against the rapacious claims of his own class, the Irish gentry.66 The primacy of the Home Rule issue and the maintenance of the Liberal alliance left him with no other choice.

  For Parnell this can only have been deeply frustrating. He had come close to obtaining what he felt was a good deal for the Irish landlords. Even more disastrous for his vision of an Irish society in which this group would continue to play a significant role, influential leaders on his own side were actually beginning to speak of hotting up the agrarian struggle. Parnell did nothing to encourage them—indeed, in 1886 he wryly spoke of locking up Michael Davitt (!) in the event of Home Rule. Remarks of this type, as well as his general demeanour at this time, reveal that Parnell’s interest in a further bout of agrarian radicalism was non-existent.

  This was not the only problem Parnell faced. After the defeat of Gladstone’s original attempt to link the Home Rule project with land reform, Parnell was placed in a difficult position. He had come close to a superb triumph, but he had failed. And in the wake of his failure there remained one vital legacy of the Home Rule crisis. The Conservatives, after a brief flirtation with Parnell, had rejected the principle of Irish self-government. Gladstone, on the other hand, had accepted it, even at the cost of a large-scale defection from his own party. The implication was clear: Parnell’s socially conservative and Protestant model ‘Grattanism’ of 1885 was dead.

  It should be noted, however, that Parnell was quick on his feet, ideologically speaking. In Portsmouth in late June 1886 he admitted that he had been a supporter of the ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ concept. He still felt that Grattan’s Parliament gave more external power to Ireland—for example, he claimed, the power not to support England in foreign wars. But, on the other hand, the Gladstonian model conceded far more domestic power within Ireland itself. It was, therefore, a superior model. This indicates an important point about Parnell: he had his decided ideological preferences (‘Grattanism’ was certainly one), but when circumstances changed, he moved rapidly on. Nonetheless, Parnell’s conception of his party was fatally undermined. He had stood always for the principle of ‘independent opposition’. The Irish Party, in this view, was to ally itself with either of the two main parties, according to which came nearer to meeting Irish demands. After 1886 this was no longer possible. Home Rule could only be obtained from the Liberals, and as a consequence the Liberal alliance was essential to the Irish Party. Parnell was later to say that, while an alliance was desirable, the fusion which he alleged had taken place was not. However, he was as much as anyone inclined to accept the implications of the Liberal alliance in the period 1886–90. Nonetheless, it appears to have given him but little emotional satisfaction. In particular, the ‘partnership’ with Gladstone was problematical. The two men were never really at ease with each other. Gladstone was a man of culture and scholarship with a profound knowledge of history, and also possessed a deep religious seriousness. Parnell was generally ignorant of literature and was given over to curious superstitions and rather more striking intuitions. (They did both share a predilection for night-time prowling around some strange London addresses, but in Parnell’s case this was determined by the need to preserve anonymity, whereas with Gladstone it was more to do with his passion to rescue ladies of the night.)67 The son of Pa
rnell’s friend, John J. Horgan of Cork, summed the matter up rather well:

  In Ireland, Gladstone’s name was honoured and his picture became a familiar sight in the homes of the people; but Parnell remained distrustful and suspicious. On one occasion my father, noticing his silence about Gladstone, asked what he thought of the old statesman. ‘I think’, he answered coldly, ‘of Mr Gladstone and the English people as what I have always thought of them. They will do what we can make them do.’ This answer revealed the gulf which still yawned, and was indeed never bridged between the English statesman and the Irish leader. It was the atmosphere which helped make possible the disaster of 1890. Parnell, in fact, stood apart from his party in those years. He disliked going on English platforms, he shunned English society. He sought no advice and relied on is own strength and judgement. Bad health and his relations with Mrs O’Shea, which were now notorious in political circles, helped to accentuate these tendencies. It seems clear that they were further aggravated by his fear of Gladstone’s political ability and experience, which gave him a feeling of inferiority.68

  Chapter 6

  ‘THE BITTERNESS OF PARTY CONFLICT’: ‘PARNELLISM AND CRIME’

  A Special Commission of three judges [was set up] to inquire into the truth of a Times pamphlet challengingly entitled ‘Parnellism and Crime’. At that moment, the bitterness of party conflict had developed to a dismal degree: and even customarily honourable men did not hesitate, in their heated partisanship, to circulate mean and disgusting slanders on political opponents.

  SIR ALFRED ROBBINS, PARNELL: THE LAST FIVE YEARS (1926)

  1

  In his interpretation of the politics of the period 1886–91 Sir Alfred Robbins lays particular emphasis on its unusually bitter tone. This was partly due to the fact that the Irish issue was a highly charged one. In itself it involved not only the issue of national identity but the question of social order and land in Ireland during the ‘Great Depression’. It was also perceived by parliamentarians as fused with other major British political concerns, including the church question, foreign policy and imperialism.

  But there is another aspect of the matter which requires emphasis. The outcome of the 1885–6 crisis in British politics was a severe defeat for the ‘rising stars’ of British politics: the Whig Lord Hartington, the Conservative Lord Randolph Churchill and the Radical Joseph Chamberlain. The established leaders of the main parties, Salisbury and Gladstone, both played the 1885–6 crisis in such a way that they consolidated their hold over their followers. So, for that matter, did Parnell. But for Hartington, Churchill and Chamberlain it was a crushing blow to their leadership prospects. For Chamberlain, also, there was a bitter sense of resentment against Parnell, who appeared to have thrown him over. Not surprisingly, they focused much of their resentment on the issue and the man who had been the occasion of their setback. Home Rule was denigrated and Parnell accused of incorrigible political dishonesty. Robbins reminds us: ‘It was the maddest of all political worlds just then, and those taking very leading parts in it lost for a time their tact, their tempers, and even their taste.’1 He is surely right to link this with the fact that Chamberlain in particular was a ‘defeated’ and ‘disgruntled’ man. Parnell became the target of much jealous abuse. He had done what both Churchill and Chamberlain had tried but failed to do. He had achieved leadership—and unchallenged leadership at that—of a major political party. Early in his career he had correctly intuited the political stance which most facilitated this achievement. Partly through luck, he had achieved precisely that sort of realignment of political forces in his own favour which had eluded both Churchill and Chamberlain.

  Parnell felt the heat intensely. This was particularly so as regards Chamberlain. Parnell regretted the fact that, in his view, some of his followers had needlessly antagonised Chamberlain in 1885, but he nevertheless regarded the Birmingham leader with intense suspicion. He saw Chamberlain’s hand in the early moves made in 1887 to link him personally with crime. Later one of Parnell’s followers, Henry Harrison, claimed that Captain O’Shea’s divorce action had actually been instigated by his associate, Chamberlain, with the definite objective of ruining both Parnell and the Home Rule movement. Neither charge can be proven. But there is a broader, less precise sense in which the Parnellite perception of the situation is undoubtedly true. From 1886 to 1891 the gloves were off in British politics. Unorthodox methods would certainly be used by those who felt, rightly or wrongly, that Parnell had been the occasion of their humiliation. The mood of bitterness dictated a series of moves against Parnell and the use of every available weapon. Robbins was correctly interpreting the situation when he wrote: ‘Eighteen hundred and eighty-seven is a date always to be specially noted in our political history because it saw the opening of a dramatic series of events which, as they developed, first shocked and finally shattered the power of Parnell.’2 Some might see this as imposing an undue continuity on Parnell’s last four years of political life. After all, the Irish leader emerged from the initial attacks in this period in an even stronger position. But in reality the intensity of emotion surrounding the Home Rule issue, and the more general corruption in the conduct of political debate caused by the personal disappointments of Chamberlain in particular, provide full justification for Robbins’s view. In short, Parnell was under siege.

  There is a further consideration involved here. To the list of disgruntled politicians must be added the name of W. H. O’Shea. Up to 1886 he had convinced himself that he was in the running for the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland. But after this date even that incurable optimist O’Shea must have realised that a major political career was not to be his. Either Unionism or Home Rule would win out in Ireland: the days of Whig wheeler-dealers in the O’Shea mould were over. He had, of course, a more personal reason for turning against Parnell.

  Until 1886 O’Shea had been prepared to exploit the Parnell connection for political advancement; yet only four months after his election at Galway he refused to vote on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill and resigned his seat. After that he could expect no further favours from Parnell. It was also clear that he had now decided that he did not put any great premium on Parnell’s patronage. Parnell therefore knew that the way was open for O’Shea to pay off old scores. Only one factor restrained O’Shea: Katharine’s ‘Aunt Ben’ was expected to leave a large sum to her niece. If Katharine was still his wife at the time of her aunt’s death, O’Shea could reasonably expect to obtain this money. However, this restraining factor was not expected to operate for long: in 1886 Aunt Ben was already ninety-three.

  2

  Parnell must have felt that he was always at the mercy of some twist of fortune. It is not always appreciated how difficult daily life must have been for him. How did he feel, for example, when he emerged from the Eltham house one day in December 1886 to find a Central News reporter in the driveway? The ever present danger of exposure must have been oppressive. His behaviour became both obsessive and abstracted. He saw O’Shea’s hand in every move against him. His manners towards his parliamentary colleagues deteriorated. It is from this period that many of the stories of snubs originate. The ill-kept secret of his private life dominated his thoughts and fears and left him with little inclination to turn on the charm of earlier years. Instead Parnell became more and more inaccessible. The signs of strain were visible. His standard of personal grooming began to deteriorate. In 1886 T. P. O’Connor noted that ‘his dress, which had steadily become shabbier, seemed shabbier than ever, and it was a rather coarse tweed’.3 A female observer agreed: ‘There was no mistaking him for anything but a gentleman, and I should have said a self-respecting gentleman, if it had not been for his habitual untidiness, his hair was always unkempt, looking as if it had been accidentally overlooked in the morning’s toilet, while his clothes might have been put on with a pitchfork; this did not seem to run kindly with self-respect.’4 He exhibited a constant fear of being followed and made attempts at disguise which only served to giv
e him a sinister appearance. ‘Do not go into the East End or you will be taken for Jack the Ripper,’ Labouchere advised on one occasion. Parnell continued to feel that he was being persecuted; nor was he without reason.

  One anecdote related by Zubof offers an illustration of the point. It reveals how Parnell was constantly the subject of malicious humour:

  I never could forget the amusement we derived from some of our Unionist friends at Dublin in the winter of ‘86, when Mr Parnell had suddenly disappeared from public notice and nobody knew of his whereabouts. One day Mr T. W. Russell, whose dyspepsia has even embittered his conscience, came in to my room with a most peculiar expression on his sepulchral countenance.

  What was it?

  He had just come from the Castle, where he had been informed on most excellent authority that Parnell was mad.

  Mad!

  Yes, mad; and in a lunatic hospital in Spain!

  Gracious and merciful powers! We discussed the situation quietly; who was likely to be his successor and so forth. Healy was out of the question of course. So was Sullivan. Dillon the nominal, Sexton the practical leader of the party—that is more likely.

  At all events they were in a fix, assured me the Honourable Member for South Tyrone.

  I went down to the Contemporary Club and told the news to the members, all of whom became incredulous but astonished. The Tory papers in their eagerness to believe it reported it as a fact. Finally, a member of the Contemporary wrote to assure us that Mr Parnell was at the Euston Hotel recovering from gastric fever but refusing to send out any contradictions to the widespread rumour. Two months afterwards I was over in London and in the members’ lobby of the House of Commons. Mr Parnell was leaning against the bar drinking a cup of beef tea and talking pleasantly to Mr Justin McCarthy. I met there Mr T. W. Russell and glancing at him tapped my forehead. He laughed but at heart felt sorry.5