Enigma

by Paul Bew

  28. Morning Post, 9 May 1888.

  29. The Times, 9 May 1888.

  30. Irish Times, 10 May 1888.

  31. [Menzies], Memories Discreet and Indiscreet, p. 272.

  32. Robbins, Parnell: The Last Five Years, p. 94.

  33. Garvin, Chamberlain, ii, 394.

  34. Andrew Dunlop, Fifty Years of Irish Journalism (Dublin, 1911), p. 246.

  35. New York Herald, 6 Feb. 1889.

  36. Richard Burdon Haldane, An Autobiography (London, 1929), p. 28.

  37. Freeman’s Journal, 19 Mar. 1889.

  38. R. B. O’Brien, Parnell, ii, 219.

  39. O’Shea, Parnell, ii, 138.

  40. Spectator, 25 Oct. 1890.

  41. Ibid., 31 May 1890.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Roscommon Herald, 13 Dec. 1890.

  44. Robbins, Parnell: The Last Five Years, p. 109.

  45. Freeman’s Journal, 8 Oct. 1891.

  46. D. W. R. Bahlman (ed.), Diary of Sir E. W. Hamilton, 1885–1906 (Hull, 1993), p. 100 (7 July 1889).

  47. Ibid. (6 July 1889). Parnell duly kept the Nationalist MPs in line, to the annoyance of the Radical dissidents. One of these, Edward Pickersgill (Bethnal Green, sw), while lamenting ‘English Radicals, who have made great sacrifices in order to promote the cause of Home Rule, will regret that on this question, which is to them a very important, if not a vital, one, those hon. Gentlemen should have separated themselves from us’, ingeniously took the opportunity to argue (citing Daniel O’Connell’s royalism) that the Irish were naturally conservative and would display this more fully under Home Rule: ‘Chivalric devotion to persons and great respect for hereditary rank have been, and still are, more powerful factors with the Irish race than they are with ourselves. . . . This is another illustration of the folly of the advisers of the Crown who, through many generations, have adopted every possible means calculated to alienate a people whose national disposition would be to support the Crown even when extravagant and ill-advised claims are put forward on its behalf’ (Hansard 3, cccxxxviii, 1333 (25 July 1889)). For a summary of the Royal Grants controversy see Benjamin Sacks, ‘The Prince of Wales’s Children Act, 1889’, Albion, v, no. 4 (winter 1973), pp 326–54.

  48. The Nation, 27 July 1889.

  49. O’Shea, Parnell, ii, 41–2. For Parnell’s hopes that the Conservatives might offer a Catholic university see his parliamentary question to Balfour on 15 July 1889 (Hansard 3, cccxxxviii, 404) and his intervention in the debate on the consolidated fund (ibid., cccxl, 762–4 (28 Aug. 1889))—all the more notable because Parnell rarely spoke in parliament in 1889.

  50. Matthew (ed.), Gladstone Diaries, xii (Oxford, 1994), p. 252.

  51. Frank Callanan (ed.), Parnell: A Memoir, by Edward Byrne (Dublin, 1991), p. 22.

  52. Jasper Tully, ‘How Parnell was Entangled with Mrs O’Shea’, Roscommon Herald, 6 Jan. 1940.

  53. O’Shea, Parnell, ii, 138.

  54. Patrick Maume, ‘Burke in Belfast: Thomas MacKnight, Gladstone and Liberal Unionism’ in Boyce and O’Day (eds), Gladstone and Ireland, pp 170–71.

  55. Matthew (ed.), Gladstone Diaries, xii, 130 (3 July 1888).

  56. Ibid., p. 256 (23 Dec. 1889).

  57. Irish Times, 20 Dec. 1890.

  58. For example, see The Nation, 24 Jan. 1891.

  59. Report of Major Gosselin, 7 June 1888 (TNA, 30/60/13/2/70987).

  60. Roscommon Herald, 4 Aug. 1889.

  61. Freeman’s Journal, 30 Dec. 1889.

  62. Truth, 15 Oct. 1891.

  Chapter 7: ‘Sticking to His Corner’

  1. Spectator, 6 Dec. 1890.

  2. Ibid., 22 Nov. 1890.

  3. Frank Callanan, The Parnell Split, 1890–1891 (Cork, 1992), p. 19.

  4. Lyons, Parnell, p. 519.

  5. Freeman’s Journal, 11 Dec. 1890.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Matthew (ed.), Gladstone Diaries, xii, 353–4.

  9. Horgan, Parnell to Pearse, p. 47.

  10. Frank Harris, My Life and Loves (new ed., 5 vols in 1, London & New York, 1964), p. 626.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Callanan, Parnell Split, p. 71.

  13. Waterford Star, 27 Apr. 1895.

  14. William O’Brien, The Irish Revolution (London, 1923), p. 158.

  15. O’Shea, Parnell, ii, 264.

  16. Freeman’s Journal, 8 Oct. 1891.

  17. John Morley, Recollections (2 vols, London, 1905), i, 245.

  18. Hansard 3, cccxliii, 978–94 (21 Apr. 1890), cited in Callanan, Parnell Split, p. 282.

  19. Roscommon Herald, 21 Feb. 1891.

  20. Connaught Telegraph, 9 May 1891.

  21. Spectator, 24 Jan. 1891.

  22. Ibid., 19 July 1891.

  23. For a powerful recent treatment see David Lawlor, Divine Right? The Parnell Split in Meath (Cork, 2007).

  24. Roscommon Herald, 20 Dec. 1890.

  25. Maura Murphy, ‘Fenianism, Parnellism and the Cork Trades, 1860–1900’, Saothar, v (May 1979).

  26. Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, pp 636–7.

  27. The Nation, 29 Mar., 4 April 1891.

  28. Witness, 29 May 1891.

  29. The Nation, 22 July 1889.

  30. Ibid., 14 Mar. 1891

  31. Witness, 29 May 1891.

  32. Northern Whig, 23 May 1891.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Cork Examiner, 25 May 1891.

  35. Cork Weekly Herald, 30 May 1891.

  36. Munster News, 23 May 1891.

  37. Derry Standard, 25 May 1891.

  38. Northern Whig, 23 May 1891.

  39. O’Shea, Parnell, ii, 153–4.

  40. [Menzies], Memories Discreet and Indiscreet, p. 276.

  41. Henry Lucy, A Diary of the Salisbury Parliament, 1886–1892 (London, 1892), p. 334.

  42. Connaught Telegraph, 24 Feb. 1891.

  43. Ibid., 12 Sept. 1891. (‘Foxeen’ refers to the alias ‘Mr Fox’ that Parnell was alleged to have adopted to conceal his cohabitation with Mrs O’Shea from the Captain.)

  44. Ibid.

  45. Irish Times, 28 Sept. 1891.

  46. O’Shea, Parnell, ii, 275.

  47. Belfast Telegraph, 11 Aug. 2010.

  48. Augustus Moore, ‘Parnell and George Henry Moore’, Tuam Herald, 17 Oct. 1891.

  49. Standish James O’Grady, ‘Charles Stewart Parnell’, Kilkenny Moderator, 1 Feb. 1899.

  50. Roscommon Herald, 10 Oct. 1891.

  Chapter 8: Conclusion

  1. Elizabeth Lecky, Lecky: A Memoir (London, 1903), p. 157.

  2. J. A. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and English Past (Cambridge, 1981), p. 262.

  3. William J. Fitzpatrick, The Life of the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, OP (2 vols, London, 1885), ii, 77.

  4. The Nation, 16 Oct. 1880.

  5. Eugenio Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism (Cambridge, 2008), p. 251.

  6. Irishman, 11 June 1876. I owe this reference to Dr Patrick Maume.

  7. Spec. Comm. Proc., v, 158.

  8. J. G. Swift McNeill, What I Have Seen and Heard (Boston, 1925), p. 73.

  9. Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, p. 6.

  10. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, The Land War in Ireland (London, 1912), p. 13 (diary entry for 1 Jan. 1886).

  11. Such inconsistency did not surprise the Ulster aristocrat Lord George Hamilton, who recalled Froude’s private advocacy of racial extermination of Zulus in 1879 being replaced within a few months with a public support for a policy of perfect fairness and justice: see Lord George Hamilton, Parliamentary Reminiscences and Reflections, 1868–1885 (London, 1916), p. 156.

  12. John Morley, Miscellanies (London, 1908), p. 308. For the origin of this argument see John Morley, ‘Irish Revolution and English Liberalism’, Nineteenth Century, xii (Nov. 1882), pp 646–7. This was heavily influenced by Sir George Fottrell, the Land League’s lawyer and Parnell’s solicitor: see Stephen Ball (ed.), Dublin Castle and the First Home Rule Crisis: The Political Journal of Sir George Fottrell, 1884–1887 (Cambr
idge, 2008), p. 140.

  13. O’Shea, Parnell, ii, 269.

  14. Irish Times, 20 Dec. 1889.

  15. Westmeath Examiner, 14 Oct. 1893.

  16. Irish Times, 18 Dec. 1909.

  17. Patrick Maume (ed.), James Mullin: The Story of a Toiler’s Life (Dublin, 2000), p.189.

  18. [Mrs Stuart Menzies], Further Indiscretions by a Woman of No Importance (London, 1918), p. 196.

  19. John Burke, Athlone in the Victorian Era (Athlone, 2007), p. 186.

  20. Sullivan, Old Ireland, p. 47.

  21. Freeman’s Journal, 20 Aug. 1883.

  22. Augustus Moore, ‘Parnell and George Henry Moore’, Tuam Herald, 17 Oct. 1891.

  23. Truth, 15 Oct. 1891.

  24. ‘Mr Parnell and the Land Purchase Bill’, Spectator, 18 Apr. 1890.

  25. Irish World, 1 June 1881.

  26. W. Hart Westcombe, The Irish Question: A Monograph in the Form of a Letter to the Prime Minister (London, 1886), p. 58.

  27. Callanan, Parnell Split, p. 303.

  28. W. O’Connor Morris, Ireland 1798–1898 (London, 1898), p. vii.

  29. Francis Hackett, Ireland: A Study in Nationalism (New York, 1918), p. 330.

  30. M. G. Moore, An Irish Gentleman: George Henry Moore (London, 1900), p. 884.

  31. Irish Times, 8 Oct. 1891.

  32. Spectator, 15 Feb. 1890.

  33. F. E. Hamer (ed.), The Personal Papers of Lord Rendel (London, 1931), p. 7 (note dated 2 Mar. 1889).

  34. Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 (London, 2003), p. 42.

  35. Bahlman (ed.), Diary of Sir E. W. Hamilton, 1885–1906, p. 206 (11 Feb. 1890).

  36. Rev. Malcolm McColl, Reasons for Home Rule (London, 1886), p. 23.

  37. Michael Tierney, ‘A Prophet of Mystic Nationalism—AE’, Studies, xxvi, pt 4 (1973), p.573.

  38. Irish Times, 30 Dec. 1940.

  39. Kettle, Material for Victory, p. 63.

  40. Standish James O’Grady, Kilkenny Moderator, 26 Oct. 1891.

  41. Roscommon Messenger, 25 July 1891.

  42. Frank Callanan, ‘Charles Stewart Parnell’, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge, 2009).

  43. Eugene Hynes, Knock: The Virgin’s Apparition in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Cork, 2008), pp 225–6.

  44. Wyse Power (ed.), Words of the Dead Chief, p. 24.

  45. O’Brien and Ryan (eds), Devoy’s Post-Bag, ii, 142–3.

  46. The Nation, 14 Mar. 1885.

  47. Ibid., 14 Nov. 1885.

  48. Connaught Telegraph, 5 Mar. 1879.

  49. Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, p. 478.

  50. ‘Ulster and Home Rule’ in Home Rule: A Reprint from ‘The Times’ (2 vols, London, 1886), ii, 327.

  51. Conor Cruise O’Brien, Parnell and his Party, 1880–1890 (Oxford, 1957), p. 157.

  52. C. C. O’Brien, Review of R. F. Foster, Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and his Family, and F. S. L. Lyons, Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish Historical Studies, xx, no. 80 (Sept. 1977), p. 518.

  53. Lyons, Parnell, p. 623.

  54. P.N.S. Mansergh, The Prelude to Partition: Concepts and Aims in Ireland and India (Cambridge, 1978), pp 13–14.

  55. Northern Whig, 23 May 1891; see also pp 182–4 above.

  56. Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (New York, 1972), p. 82.

  57. Spectator, 25 Mar. 1882.

  58. This is the burden of the excellent collection of official documents recorded in Stephen Ball (ed.), Dublin Castle and the First Home Rule Crisis: The Political Journal of Sir George Fottrell, 1884–1887 (Cambridge, 2008), pp 199–318.

  59. John Adye Curran, Reminiscences (London, 1915), p. 144.

  60. Irish Times, 18 Dec. 1882.

  61. Spectator, 4 Sept. 1886.

  62. Ibid., 3 May 1883.

  63. Irish Times, 18 Dec. 1882.

  64. R. B. O’Brien, Parnell, i, 303–4.

  65. This point is well made in Lawrence Marley, Michael Davitt: Freelance Radical and Frondeur (Dublin, 2007), p. 85.

  66. Freeman’s Journal, 11 Oct. 1898.

  67. Matthew (ed.), Gladstone Diaries, xii, 366.

  68. Frank Callanan (ed.), Parnell: A Memoir, by Edward Byrne (Dublin, 1991), p. 6.

  69. For this matter see Jasper Tully, ‘How Parnell was Entangled with Mrs O’Shea’, Roscommon Herald, 6 Jan. 1880.

  Appendix: A Counterfactual Chief? If Parnell had lived till 1918

  1. Stephen Gwynn, Avondale: A Life (2 vols, London, 1923).

  2. R. Barry O’Brien (ed.), Selected Speeches of the Rt Hon. Sir Charles Parnell (London, 1910).

  3. J. L Garvin, The People’s Hero: Joseph Chamberlain and the Old Age Pension (London, 1909).

  4. Michael Davitt, Ireland and the Struggle for Democracy (London, 1905).

  5. J. E. Redmond, The Empire of Law and Morality: Burke on America and Parnell on South Africa (Irish Press Agency, Dublin, 1902).

  6. T. M. Healy, Tales of Bar and Bench (London, 1926).

  7. Frank Hugh O’Donnell, The Heroes of Tyrconnell and the Spider of Rathdrum (Britons Publishing Agency, London, 1911).

  8. Frederick Ryan, Of Hierarchs and Hypocrites (Irial Press, Dublin, 1905).

  9. Rev. David Humphreys, The People’s Truest Friend: The Life of the Most Rev. Thomas Nulty, Bishop of Meath, with a Discourse on Masonic Conspiracy by Rev. Denis Fahey DD (Dublin, 1925).

  10. Dubhglas de h-Íde, Mo Turas go Bheistminster (Baile Átha Cliath, 1910).

  11. Arthur Griffith, Butt’s Policy (Dublin, 1911).

  12. First published in W. B.Yeats, King Spider’s Castle and other poems (London, 1926).

  13. Irish Unionist Alliance, The Road to Ruin (Dublin, 1907); T. M. Kettle, A Stepping Stone to Freedom (Irish Press Agency, Dublin, 1907).

  14. R. Barry O’Brien, College Green and the Irish People (London, 1911).

  15. William O’Brien, Ireland Betrayed, and How I Fought to Save Her (London, 1910); idem, Ireland in the Tarantula’s Cocoon (London, 1912); Laurence Ginnell, My Prison Writings, 1915–1919 (Dublin, 1920).

  16. Arthur Griffith, Whiggery and Corruption from Daniel O’Connell to the Present Day (Dublin, 1912); Pádraic Pearse, ‘Cuchulainn Breaks the Web’ in Poems, 1906–1926 (Dublin, 1927).

  17. J. J. Clancy, Patriotism and Labour Hand in Hand (Irish Press Agency, Dublin, 1913); W. F. Dennehy, Betrayed into Socialism (Irish Catholic Ltd, Dublin, 1913); Francis Sheehy Skeffington, The New Feudalism in Ireland (London, 1913).

  18. Lionel Curtis, Viscount Milner and Albert Earl Grey, Canada and Ireland: Imperial Parallels (Round Table, London, 1912).

  19. John Devoy, Personal Memories of the Dynamite Campaign (New York, 1914); Arthur Griffith (ed.), Some Forgotten Speeches by an Irish Patriot Who Is Dead (Dublin, 1914); T. H. Sloan, The Jesuits’ Web: A History of the Parnell Conspiracy (Imperial Protestant Federation, London, 1914).

  20. T. M. Kettle and G. K. Chesterton, Prussianism versus Patriotism (London, 1916); J. E. Redmond, The Apogee of Statesmanship: A Speech Delivered at Wexford, March 1916 (Irish Press Agency, Dublin, 1916).

  21. E. D. Morel, Freedom and Militarism Far and Near (London, 1919); Alice Milligan, The Present Eclipse and the Distant Dawn (privately published, Dublin, 1917).

  22. See James Connolly, Flies in the Imperialist Parlour: Letters from Kilmainham (Glasgow, 1919).

  23. See Edward de Valera, The Bankruptcy of Free Trade: The Statistical Case for Protecting Irish Manufacture (Dublin, 1926).

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bagenal, P. H., The Irish Agitator in Parliament and on the Platform (Dublin, 1880)

  Bahlman, D. W. R. (ed.), Diary of Sir E. W. Hamilton, 1880–5 (2 vols, Oxford, 1992)

  ——— (ed.), Diary of Sir E. W. Hamilton, 1885–1906 (Hull, 1993)

  Ball, Stephen (ed.), Dublin Castle and the First Home Rule Crisis: The Political Journal of Sir George Fottrell, 1884–1887 (Cambridge, 2008)

  Barrington, M. S. Russell, The Life of Walter Bagehot (London, 1914)

  Bew, Paul, Land and the Nat
ional Question in Ireland, 1858–82 (Dublin, 1978)

  ——— Conflict and Conciliation in Ireland: Parnellites and Radical Agrarians, 1890–1910 (Oxford, 1987)

  ——— ‘“A Vision to the Dispossessed”? Popular Piety and Revolutionary Politics in the Irish Land War, 1879–82’ in Judith Devlin and Ronan Fanning (eds), Religion and Rebellion (Dublin, 1996)

  ——— Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1789–2006 (Oxford, 2007)

  ——— ‘Britishness and the Irish Question’ in Matthew D’Ancona (ed.), Being British (Edinburgh & London, 2009)

  ——— and Maume, Patrick, ‘Michael Davitt and the Personality of the Irish Agrarian Revolution’ in Fintan Lane and Andrew Newby (eds), Michael Davitt: New Perspectives (Dublin, 2009)

  Biagini Eugenio, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge, 2008)

  Blake, J. A., ‘C. S. Parnell’, The Nation, 6 June 1885

  Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, The Land War in Ireland (London, 1912)

  Boyce, D. G., ‘Isaac Butt and Charles Stuart Parnell: The History of Politics and the Politics of History’ in Terence Dooley (ed.), Ireland’s Polemical Past: Views of Irish History in Honour of R. V. Comerford (Dublin, 2010)

  ——— and O’Day, Alan (eds), Parnell in Perspective (London, 1991)

  ——— (eds), Gladstone and Ireland: Politics, Religion and Nationality in the Victorian Age (London, 2010)

  Bryce, J. V., Studies in Contemporary Biography (London, 1903)

  Burke, John, Athlone in the Victorian Era (Athlone, 2007)

  Burrow, J. A., A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge, 1981)

  Butler, Sir William, The Light of the West (Dublin & Waterford, 1909)

  Callanan, Frank, The Parnell Split, 1890–1891 (Cork, 1992)

  ——— Tim Healy (Cork, 1996)

  ——— (ed.), ‘Charles Stewart Parnell’ in Dictionary of Irish Biography (9 vols, Cambridge, 2009)

  ——— (ed.), Parnell: A Memoir, by Edward Byrne (Dublin, 1991)

  Campbell, Christy, Fenian Fire (London, 2003)

  Campbell, Fergus, The Irish Establishment, 1879–1914 (Oxford, 2009)

  Clare, James Tormey, Priest and Patriot: A Short Sketch of the Life of Michael Tormey cc (Trafford, 2004)

  Cole, J. A., Prince of Spies: Henri Le Caron (London, 1984)