New Light On Tragic Life of Irish Leader

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 620, 23 March 1929, Page 26

New Light On Tragic Life of Irish Leader

U'im Healy Writes of the * ‘ Uhcrowned K ing ’ ’ l PARNELL'S CAREER Though familiarly known a.s *’»he bronze chieftain.’' Charles Stewart Parnell, on whose life Mr. T. M. Healy, ex-Governor-General of the Irish Free State, throws new light in his book. '‘Letters and Leaders of My Day,” was a sensitive man of rare intuition. We lead of him speaking of October as his black month. In October I he died. In tragedy ended “love s young dream’ for Parnell, and in tragedy too ended the passion of his later years when, as Ireland s “Uncrowned King” he was the idol and hope of his countrymen. When a youth at Cambridge University, Parnell fell madly in love with a young village girl. For the girl the association proved disastrous, and one day her dead body was taken from the river, on the banks of which her love story had begun. The spectre of the hapless victim of his youthful folly haunted, we are told, Parnell’s memory, and was the occasion of “violent nervous attacks.’’ Tragedy of a different sort attended Parnell’s late love story. He w as cited as co-respondent in the famous O'Shea divorce case, and the scandal proved his ruin. The famous political storm which followed, was the prelude to his death. For fifty years Mr. Healy has been associated with Anglo-Irish politics. When little more than a boy he Joined the Home Rule movement, which Parnell. aided by brilliant lieutenants, raised to a position of formidable strength. At the height of his power, Parnell's intrigue with Mrs, O’Shea, wife of Captain O’Shea, an ex-Hus-sav officer, and sister of the late Sir Kvelyn Wood, was revealed in the Divorce Court. The revelation split the Ireland which Parnell had united into two fiercely opposing camps, impeding for years the realisation of Nationalist hopes. When, almost a generation later, the Irish cause assumed a new phase, and Sinn Fein triumphed where Constitutionalism had failed, Mr. Healy. with the goodwill of this country and the gratitude of his own, became the •first governor-general of the new State. A few months ago he resigned, having played a valuable part in the organisation of the young Dominion. Now from his retirement has issued an absorbing history of his crowded years, wherein we read of the ominous entanglement into "which Parnell allowed himself to be betrayed on the threshold of manhood. Parnell, a young Wicklow squire.

was sent to Cambridge to complete his education. Tt was never completed, in the university sense, the youth having been rusticated for a cause that is in dispute. One authority attributes it to a brawl. Parnell’s sister. Emily, Mrs. Dickinson, was not satisfied with this, and years after her brother’s death told a different story. Mr. Healy quotes her version as follows: Parnell had been sent to Cambridge. LOVELY ORCHARD GIRL During his sojourn at the university a very unhappy event occurred. He had reached his 19th year. The first tragedy of his life came—a tragedy in which, alas, another suffered, though released by the hand of death from sharing the lifelong remorse which was his heritage. Boating was as popular then us now on the Cam, and Charles was one of the most enthusiastic oarsmen on the river, spending nearly all his spare time in flannels. One of the best cultivated of sober English homesteads lay a couple of miles down the river, sloping to its bank. It was frequently passed and repassed by the various boat clubs. In the old fruit garden nearest the river might be seen, on several days of the week, a young girl, not more than 16, of remarkable loveliness, engaged, basket in hand, in picking fruit. Charles bad no sooner seen her than he re-

solved to make her acquaintance. Daisy, on her part, though apparently more intent on the plum and pear trees than ever, was for the first time blissfully aware that the dark-haired young gentleman with the inscrutable eyes, whom she had often noticed on the river, preferred gazing at her to practising his stroke. Her knowledge of the world was very small. She had no mother. Little wonder, then, that it was with something of the wonder and the thriil of a first emotion that she received the unspoken homage of a handsome youth, whom she knew to be a member of the neighbouring university, and far above her station in life. An acquaintance was quickly made by means of a fortunate (sic) accident to Charles’s oar, and the borrowing of some cord, and he arranged to meet Daisy on future evenings, charging her to strict secrecy in fear of his college authorities. The young girl willingly promised. The acquaintance ripened into a deep and trusting affection on the girl’s part, and an equally strong, though less pure and unselfish, passion on the boy’s part. He knew it was impossible to marry Daisy, lovely and innocent though she was as he was under age and a ward of Chancery . . . “HIS LITTLE WIFE” One morning, on coming along the river bank, near the place where Daisy and he had first met, he caught, the sound of many frightened voices. On turning a bend in the path he suddenly came on a group which haunted him for years after. A small crowd of villagers was gathered round a figure that had just been dragged from the river, now swollen with heavy rain. A woman held the head that was covered with dark masses of gol-

den hair, arid the slender, dripping form was that of a young girl. Pushing aside the crowd with a gasp of horror, Charles recognised the body of “his little wife,” as he had called Daisy. She was quite dead, and, as one of the bystanders said, must have been in the water for many hours. It. was a sad ending to a bright, young life, and if ever a man (for lie ceased to be a boy from that hour) understood the meaning of remorse, of the “worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched,” it was Charles as he gazed at the lifeless form that had contained so pure and loving a soul. His wild looks and frenzied exclamations as lie knelt beside the body excited the curiosity of the bystanders. None of them knew him as an acquaintance of Daisy’s, so loyally had she kept her promise, and they had never been seen together in the village. An inquest was held, at which he was present as a witness. While shielding the girl’s name from slander, lie admitted having a great admiration and friendship for her, and the shock which her death gave him. The usual verdict of “Suicide while temporarily insane” was pronounced. She was buried in

the village. For Charles a lifej long punishment began. Various versions of his acquaintance j with the dead girl had come to the I knowledge of the heads of his college, and Charles’s name was formally rei moved from the books of his univerI sity. He reaped the consequences of his youthful folly and selfishness, and 1 was the frequent victim of violent nervous attacks. In these would appear before him, in the dead of the night* standing at the foot of his bed, the dripping, white-clad form, with locks like a cataract of golden rain, which lie had seen that morning on the river bank. The cause of these attacks, and of liis frequent fits of nervous depression, was unknown to any of his family until several years after, when an accident revealed them. The turning point in Mr. Healy’s career, in Parnell’s, in Ireland’s modern history, came at the Galway election of ISS6. It was intense political drama. The general public knew nothing of the squalid secret which underlay the bitter turmoil of the Galway stage. But now that the whole despicable story is laid bare, its hero, we learn, i was a "humpbacked figure,” who cared nothing for heroics, a plain, even commonplace little man, uncouth of form

and of speech, who, with head and heart in his cause, was indomitable. This man was “Joe” Biggar, of Ulster breed, and, like Parnell, bred up a Protestant, though later he embraced Catholicism. Joe had the Ulsterman’s obstinacy and courage, his rugged speech, his* invincible faith in himself. To understand the significance of the Galway election, it is necessary to remember that Parnell was in love with Captain O’Shea’s wife. This lady lias herself described the Irish leader, writing to her, five years before the Galway election, in December, 1881, from Kilmainham Gaol: My darling Queenie, —You frighten me dreadfully when you tell me that I am “surely killing” you and our child . . . Rather than my beautiful wife should run any risk, T will resign my seat, leave politics, and go away somewhere with my own Queenie as soon as she wishes. This was a love-letter, in which Parnell offered —as lovers will—to make sacrifices, which they, doubtless, never expect to be exacted. At any rate, Mrs. O’Shea apparently did not ask Charles to give up politics, and so, in due course, the lover of “darling Queenie” arrives at the General Election of 1886. Parnell is more

powerful than ever, and to all appearance his party is solidly united. But appearances, in politics as elsewhere, are deceptive. There were rifts within the lute, rifts of a seriousness that the masses of the Irish people never suspected. Yet the signs and tokens of the storm to come were

plain enough for even the simplest to read. The story of Galway election, as told by Mr. Healy, began. and proceeded in a fashion that might delight the Abbey Theatre, Indeed any theatre, for it was all high comedy, with tragedy hovering in the wings. T. P. O'Connor had been returned for Liverpool and Galway, and. electing to sit for Liverpool, a candidate had to be found for the latter constituency. Parnell had one ready in his waistcoat pocket, so to speak.—‘‘Darling Queenie’s” lawful husband. This very convenient arrangement for the "Bronze” chieftain was a thunderbolt for the little circle who knew how the land lay. Toward dawn one winter's morning, Mountjoy Square, Dublin, echoed and re-echoed to knocking at the door of Mr. Healy's house. Down I went "Tim” himself to open it, clad 1 only in his nightshirt. On the doorstep stood T. P. O’Connor and Joe Biggar. They had just read in an early edition of the "Freeman.” O’Shea’s address to Galway. Battle was joined. Biggar and Mr. Healy set off for Galway, and then began a fight, the unequal character of which 'it is difficult to realise. Healy was a young man of genius, with loval friends to support him, but with his way to make in the world: Biggar was | a man of independent means with grit ! enough for a legion, and the soul of integrity, but utterly without the gifts that make a popular appeal. Against these two stood Parnell with the whole Irish race—ignorant of "Darling Queenie” —behind him. The Galway campaign bewildered I the people who knew nothing of the | inner springs. To the outer w r orld it

I looked like the usual Irish faction fight. In no other country in the I world, perhaps, could such a collision have occurred without the ugly truth being revealed in all its nakedness. Some suspicion did arise, and O’Shea is described as going down on his knees and protesting to tlie Bishop of Galway that there was no truth in any allegation which connected his wife’s name with Parnell’s. Immense pressure was put upon Healy and Biggar to withdraw their opposition, and eventually Parnell himself entered the arena. The final scene makes a perfect climax. At a crowded meeting O’Shea’s opponent was withdrawn, and the assembly greeted the triumph of Parnell, who had hastened from Loudon for the occasion, with unanimity, "save for one great soul. A humpbacked figure strode to the front of the platform.” It was Biggar. His speech was brief, but to the point. All he had to say was, "If the rival candidate goes to the poll, I’ll support him.” The thrill of these words from the humpbacked man with a nation against him lives in Mr. Healy’s comment: “I have heard ten thousand

speeches, but this was the staunchest to which I ever listened.” A few years later the shame of Galway was revealed in the Divorce Court, and the party to which Mr. Healy belonged was broken to smithereens. In the midst of a terrific fight to regain his supremacy, Parnell was laid low by illness, and in a few days was no more. The old unity was never restored, and it remained for the new men and new methods of Sinn Fein to realise the ambitions of the "Bronze” Chieftain.