"Green leaves a-floating,     Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating,
    Where will all come home?"
                                            —STEVENSON.
 
 
In May, 1886, I took my children to the Queen's Hotel, Eastbourne, for a change, and, after a few days spent in looking for lodgings, I settled them in St. John's Road. Parnell enjoyed the bathing at Eastbourne greatly, and was much distressed that the weakness of my heart prevented my joining him in his swims, and that boating had most disastrous effects on me.
 
He was boyishly determined that I should at any rate join him in some way in his sea "sports," and one warm May evening he insisted that if I went into the sea fully dressed it could not hurt me. I thought it would at any rate be most uncomfortable, but to please him I held tightly to his arm while we waded far out to sea till the waves came to my shoulder and threw me off my feet.
 
He held me tightly, laughing aloud as the ripple of waves and wind caught my hair and loosed it about my shoulders; and, as I grew cold and white, my wonderful lover carried me, with all my weight of soaked clothing, back to the shore, kissing the wet hair that the wind twisted about his face and whispering the love that almost frightened me in its strength. Luckily the dusk of evening had come down upon us, and I was able to get back {239} to the house in my wet things, half-walking and half-carried by Parnell, without unduly shocking Eastbourne's conventions.
 
As I thought I should be able to be away from my aunt, with occasional flying visits to her, for about two months, Parnell had two of our horses brought down to Eastbourne. He had during that time to go to London and Ireland, but it was on the whole a peaceful little interlude in his strenuous political life, and we were very happy. He rode his horse President in the morning, and afterwards I drove him far out into the country around Eastbourne with Dictator in my phaeton.
 
We often drove out to Birling Gap—a favourite haunt of ours—and there we selected a site for the ideal house of our dreams; a place where one could hear nothing but the beating of the surf on the rocks below and the wild call of the sea-birds. He loved that place, where we could be absolutely alone save for the coastguardsman along the cliff, who never intruded his interesting conversation, but who was always ready for a chat when we cared to hear his stories of the sea.
 
It was impossible to drive near the place, so we had to leave Dictator and the phaeton far off on the last bit possible to drive upon. Parnell had an easy method of "hitching" a horse to something, in the firm faith that he would find it there on return a few hours later, and this made me very uneasy where my far from patient Dictator was concerned. Parnell would settle the horse with a feed, in charge of his groom, well sheltered behind a hill, and take a fantastic pleasure in observing the sulky gloom of the young man's face after an hour or so of this isolated meditation.
 
Parnell had a great love of sea-storms, and when there {240} was a gale blowing from the west, and rough weather assured, he loved to get me out to Birling Gap to listen to the roar of the sea and the screaming of the wind as it blew around us, nearly carrying us off our feet. He would tie his coat about me, and hold me firmly against the wind as it tore about us, and while we gazed out at the raging waves he would exclaim: "Isn't this glorious, my Queen? Isn't it alive?"
 
Our coastguardsman friend always seemed somewhat pleased to see us, though undoubtedly he thought us odd in our amusements. I have often thought since that if we had built our house in that isolated loveliness, where the sound of the sea and moan of the wind were incessant, there would have been some truth in what was said afterwards as to our house in Walsingham Terrace, that it was so "terribly dreary."
 
On one occasion we drove to Pevensey, and, passing the station on our return, a crowd from some local train came pouring out. Parnell asked me to pull up to let the crowd go by; but to his consternation this attracted the attention of some young men in the crowd, who at once recognized him, and, waving their hats, cried "Parnell, Parnell!" with that horrible emphasis on the "nell" that is so prevalent. Parnell, lifting his hat, urged me in an agonized tone to drive on, but it was too late. The crowd clustered about us, insisting on shaking hands with him, and throwing covertly interested glances at his companion. They would not let us go on till he had made a little impromptu speech on current affairs, after which we drove off amid cheers.
 
Parnell never swore, and "Goodness gracious!" learned from his nurse in extreme youth, was the strongest expression he ever used, but the dull, quiet anger such a {241} contretemps as this caused him would, I felt, have been relieved could he have acquired the habit of "language." This little incident at Pevensey would lead to newspaper paragraphs, and it was hard we could not have a few days' quiet amusement without having it boomed through the country. However, a brilliant thought struck me. If we were to be bothered by paragraphs let them be our own! So we drew up by the wayside, and concocted a paragraph which told an over-interested world that "Mr. Parnell had been staying at Hastings with his sister, and on visiting Pevensey with her had," etc., etc. This, forwarded to the Press Association, left us in peace at Eastbourne to complete our little holiday.
 
Apropos of Parnell's "Goodness gracious," he was at first quite unconscious of his use of the words, and it was only on Willie's plaintive query as to why he did not d—-n like other men, instead of using "that foolish and vulgar expression," he became aware of it. He then admitted with some amusement that he liked the homely old expression and did not d—-n merely because it never occurred to him to do so.
 
On the cliffs towards Beachy Head is a house that at that time was built but not quite finished. Parnell took me up to see it, and suggested that it might be a charming seaside retreat for us, even though not the ideal we always had in our minds. This house then had a beautiful and wide outlook over the sea, and I liked it so much that he arranged to take it on a three years' agreement directly it was finished. He wanted to have all the walls distempered instead of papered, and we spent many hours over this and the selection of the Minton tiles for the hall. The details of the house interested him greatly, and one day when the men working there had gone to dinner Parnell {242} showed me how to lay the tiles with so much energy that we had finished their work by the time the men returned. He then insisted upon my writing "Heatherbell Cottage" on a tile, which he proceeded to inlay over the front door, earning the comment from the men working there that he seemed to know as much about the "job" as they did.
 
He then turned his attention to making a smooth lawn in our little garden, spending hours pulling a roller up and down, while I sat on the steps writing from his dictation "A Proposed Constitution for the Irish and the English Peoples"—a production that excited the greatest wrath in the minds of some of the Irish Party at a subsequent meeting. I do not think that the English members of Parliament were ever made acquainted with the benefits proposed for their consideration under this "Constitution."
 
This Constitution was more fun than anything else. Parnell undoubtedly put it before certain members of the Irish Party instead of one drafted by his own hand. He told me afterwards that they looked "absolutely ill" when they saw my handwriting, so he would not withdraw it in favour of his own—till later.
 
I was sitting on the doorstep of our new house one day, idly watching Parnell build a bank that was to be turfed over to keep us from prying eyes, when he stopped suddenly and, leaning on his spade, said: "I am a poet! And descended from the poet, Thomas Parnell."
 
"Not a poet," I answered gently, "even though descended from one."
 
"I am a poet myself; give me a pencil and paper." And, throwing himself down beside me, he wrote down the following verse proudly. "It came to me while I was digging," he said as he tossed it over to me, "and it is a {243} real poem, and makes me a real poet. It's as good as any of Tom Parnell's stuff!"
 
I was forced to confess that I agreed with him, as I do now, that it was and is as good as, and better to me than, any of Thomas Parnell's stuff, or "the stuff" of any poet who ever graced the world with song. This is it:—
 
"The grass shall cease to grow,
The river's stream to run,
The stars shall ponder in their course,
No more shall shine the sun;
The moon shall never wane or grow,
The tide shall cease to ebb and flow,
    Ere I shall cease to love you."
                                                            CHAS. PARNELL.
 
 
One evening in 1886, on his return from town, Parnell told me about Mr. O'Brien's Plan of Campaign. He did not approve of it, and said that he did not wish to have anything to do with the working of it, adding: "I shall let O'Brien run it by himself."
 
Parnell was looking and feeling very ill at this time, and when Mr. O'Brien took upon himself to call at my house to see him, entirely uninvited, Parnell was not really well enough to see him. He was suffering from nervous breakdown, chiefly brought on by gastric trouble, which in its turn was produced by overwork and the stra............