"O gentle wind that bloweth south
To where my love re-paireth,
Convey a kiss to his dear mouth
And tell me how he fareth."
—OLD BALLAD.
"He that well and rightly considereth his own works will find little cause to judge hardly of another."—THOMAS à KEMPIS.
On June 24th, 1891, Mr. Parnell drove over to Steyning to see that all the arrangements for our marriage at the registrar's office there on the next day were complete. Mr. Edward Cripps, the registrar, had everything in order, and it was arranged that we should come very early so as to baffle the newspaper correspondents, who had already been worrying Mr. Cripps, and who hung about our house at Brighton with an inconvenient pertinacity. We had given Mr. Parnell's servant elaborate orders to await us, with Dictator in the phaeton, at a short distance from the house about eleven o'clock on the 25th, and told him he would be required as a witness at our wedding. This little ruse gave us the early morning of the 25th clear, as the newspaper men soon had these instructions out of the discomfited young man, who had been told not to talk to reporters.
On June 25th I was awakened at daybreak by my lover's tapping at my door and calling to me: "Get up, get up, it is time to be married!" Then a humming and excitement began through the house as the maids flew {313} about to get us and breakfast ready "in time," before two of them, Phyllis Bryson, my very dear personal maid—who had put off her own marriage for many years in order to remain with me—and my children's old nurse, drove off to catch the early train to Steyning, where they were to be witnesses of our marriage. Phyllis was so determined to put the finishing touches to me herself that she was at last hustled off by Parnell, who was in a nervous fear that everyone would be late but the newspaper men. Phyllis was fastening a posy at my breast when Parnell gently but firmly took it from her and replaced it with white roses he had got for me the day before. Seeing her look of disappointment he said, "She must wear mine to-day, Phyllis, but she shall carry yours, and you shall keep them in remembrance; now you must go!"
He drove the maids down the stairs and into the waiting cab, going himself to the stables some way from the house, and returning in an amazingly short time with Dictator in the phaeton and with a ruffled-looking groom who appeared to have been sleeping in his livery—it was so badly put on. Parnell ordered him in to have a cup of tea and something to eat while he held the horse, nervously calling to me at my window to be quick and come down. Then, giving the groom an enormous "buttonhole," with fierce orders not to dare to put it on till we were well on our way, Parnell escorted me out of the house, and settled me in the phaeton with elaborate care.
As a rule Parnell never noticed what I wore. Clothes were always "things" to him. "Your things become you always" was the utmost compliment for a new gown I could ever extract from him; but that morning, as he climbed in beside me and I took the reins, he said, {314} "Queenie, you look lovely in that lace stuff and the beautiful hat with the roses! I am so proud of you!"
And I was proud of my King, of my wonderful lover, as we drove through that glorious June morning, past the fields of growing corn, by the hedges heavy with wild roses and "traveller's joy," round the bend of the river at Lancing, past the ruined tower where we had so often watched the kestrels hover, over the bridge and up the street of pretty, old-world Bramber into Steyning, and on to the consummation of our happiness.
Parnell hardly spoke at all during this drive. Only, soon after the start at six o'clock, he said, "Listen," and, smiling, "They are after us; let Dictator go!" as we heard the clattering of horses far behind. I let Dictator go, and he—the fastest (driving) horse I have ever seen—skimmed over the nine miles in so gallant a mood that it seemed to us but a few minutes' journey.
Mr. Cripps was in attendance, and Mrs. Cripps had very charmingly decorated the little room with flowers, so there was none of the dreariness usual with a registry marriage. As we waited for our witnesses to arrive—we had beaten the train!—my King looked at us both in the small mirror on the wall of the little room, and, adjusting his white rose in his frock-coat, said joyously, "It isn't every woman who makes so good a marriage as you are making, Queenie, is it? and to such a handsome fellow, too!" blowing kisses to me in the glass. Then the two maids arrived, and the little ceremony that was to legalize our union of many years was quickly over.
On the return drive my husband pulled up the hood of the phaeton, and, to my questioning look—for it was a hot morning—he answered solemnly, "It's the right thing to do." As we drove off, bowing and laughing {315} our thanks to Mr. Cripps and the others for their kind and enthusiastic felicitations, he said, "How could I kiss you good wishes for our married life unless we were hooded up like this!"
Just as we drove out of Steyning we passed the newspaper men arriving at a gallop, and we peered out doubtfully at them, fearing they would turn and come back after us. But I let Dictator have his head, and, though they pulled up, they knew that pursuit was hopeless. My husband looked back round the hood of the phaeton, and the groom called out delightedly, "They've give up, and gone on to Mr. Cripps, sir."
On our return to Walsingham Terrace we had to run the gauntlet between waiting Pressmen up the steps to the house, but at my husband's imperious "Stand back; let Mrs. Parnell pass! Presently, presently; I'll see you presently!" they fell back, and we hid ourselves in the house and sat down to our dainty little wedding breakfast. Parnell would not allow me to have a wedding cake, because he said he would not be able to bear seeing me eat our wedding cake without him, and, as I knew, the very sight of a rich cake made him ill.
Meanwhile the reporters had taken a firm stand at the front door, and were worrying the servants to exasperation. One, a lady reporter for an American newspaper, being more enterprising than the rest, got into the house adjoining ours, which I also rented at that time, and came through the door of communication on the balcony into my bedroom. Here she was found by Phyllis, and as my furious little maid was too small to turn the American lady out, she slipped out of the door and locked it, to prevent further intrusion.
Then she came down to us in the dining-room, found {316} on the way that the cook had basely given in to bribery, having "Just let one of the poor gentlemen stand in the hall," and gave up the battle in despair—saying, "Will Mrs. O'Shea see him, Mr. —— wants to know?"
"Phyllis!" exclaimed my husband in a horrified voice, "what do you mean? Who is Mrs. O'Shea?"
Poor Phyllis gave one gasp at me and fled in confusion.
Then my King saw some of the newspaper people, and eased their minds of their duty to their respective papers. The lady from America he utterly refused to see, as she had forced herself into my room, but, undaunted, she left vowing that she would cable a better "interview" than any of them to her paper. They were kind enough to send it to me in due course, and I must admit that even if not exactly accurate, it was distinctly "bright." It was an illustrated "interview," and Parnell and I appeared seated together on a stout little sofa, he clad in a fur coat, and I in a dangerously décolleté garment, diaphanous in the extreme, and apparently attached to me by large diamonds. My sedate Phyllis had become a stage "grisette" of most frivolous demeanour, and my poor bedroom—in fact, the most solid and ugly emanation of Early Victorian virtue I have ever had bequeathed to me—appeared to an interested American State as the "very utmost" in fluffy viciousness that could be evolved in the united capitals of the demi-mondaine.
I showed this "interview" to my husband, though rather doubtful if he would be amused by it; but he only said, staring sadly at it, "I don't think that American lady can be a very nice person."
After he had sent the reporters off my King settled into his old coat again, and subsided into his easy chair, smoking and quietly watching me. I told him he must {317} give up that close scrutiny of me, and that I did not stare at him till he grew shy.
"Why not?" he said. "A cat may look at a king, and surely a man may look at his wife!"
But I refused to stay indoors talking nonsense on so lovely a day, and we wandered out together along the fields to Aldrington. Along there is a place where they make bricks. We stood to watch the men at work, and Parnell talked to them till they went off to dinner. Parnell watched them away till they were out of sight, and then said, "Come on, Queenie, we'll make some bricks, too. I've learnt all about it in watching them!" So we very carefully made two bricks between us, and put them with the others in the kiln to burn. I suggested marking our two bricks, so that we might know them when we returned, but when we looked in the kiln some hours later they all appeared alike.
Then we got down to the sea and sat down to watch it and rest. Far beyond the basin at Aldrington, near the mouth of Shoreham Harbour, we had the shore to ourselves and talked of the future, when Ireland had settled down, and my King—king, indeed, in forcing reason upon that unreasonable land and wresting the justice of Home Rule from England—could abdicate; when we could go to find a better climate, so that his health might become all I wished. We talked of the summer visits we would make to Avondale, and of the glorious days when he need never go away from me. Of the time when his hobbies could be pursued to the end, instead of broken off for political work. And we talked of Ireland, for Parnell loved her, and what he loved I would not hate or thrust out from his thoughts, even on this day that God had made.
Yet, as we sat together, silent now, even though we {318} spoke together still with the happiness that has no words, a storm came over the sea. It had been very hot all day and a thunderstorm was inevitable; but, as we sheltered under the breakwater, I wished that this one day might have been without a storm.
Reading my thoughts, he said: "The storms and thunderings will never hurt us now, Queenie, my wife, for there is nothing in the wide world that can be greater than our love; there is nothing in all the world but you and I." And I was comforted because I did not remember death.
The news of our marriage was in all the evening papers, and already that night began the bombardment of telegrams and letters of congratulation and otherwise! The first telegram was to me, "Mrs. Parnell," and we opened it together with much interest and read its kind message from "Six Irish Girls" with great pleasure. The others, the number of which ran into many hundreds, varied from the heartiest congratulation to the foulest abuse, and were equally of no moment to my husband, as he made no attempt to open anything in the ever-growing heap of correspondence that, for weeks I kept on a large tray in my sitting-room, and which, by making a determined effort daily, I kept within bounds.
"Why do you have to open them all?" he asked me, looking at the heap with the indolent disgust that always characterized him at the sight of many letters.
"Well, I like reading the nice ones, and I can't tell which they are till they're opened," I explained. "Now here is one that looks the very epitome of all that is good and land outside-thick, good paper, beautiful handwriting—and yet the inside is unprintable!"
Parnell held out his hand for it, but I would not give {319} anything so dirty into his hand, and tore it across for the wastepaper basket, giving him instead a dear little letter from a peasant woman in Ireland, who invoked more blessings upon our heads than Heaven could well spare us.
Little more than three months afterwards the telegrams and letters again poured into the house. This time they were messages of condolence, and otherwise. And again their message fell upon unheeding ears, for the still, cold form lying in the proud tranquillity of death had taken with him all my sorrow and my joy; and as in that perfect happiness I had known no bitterness, for he was there, now again these words of venom, speaking gladness because he was dead, held no sting for me, for he was gone, and with him took my heart.
The very many letters of true sympathy which reached me after my husband's death were put away in boxes, and kept for me till I was well enough for my daughter to read them to me. Among these were many from clergymen of all denominations and of all ranks in the great army of God. As I lay with closed eyes listening to the message of these hearts I did not know I seemed to be back in the little church at Cressing, and to hear my father's voice through the mists of remembrance, saying: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is Charity." ...
Among our many wedding presents was a charming little alabaster clock from my husband's sister, Emily Dickinson. It was a ship's "wheel," and we were very gay over its coming, disputing as to which of us should henceforth be the "man at the wheel." Parnell's mother also was very sweet and kind to me, sending me several much prized letters. Other members of my husband's family also wrote very kindly to me, and I can still see {320} his tender smile at me as he saw my appreciation of his family's attitude.
The presents we liked best, after Mrs. Dickinson's clock, were the little humble offerings of little value and much love sent by working men and women, by our servants, and by others of far countries and near. Parcels arrived from the four quarters of the globe, and many were beyond recognition on arrival, but the fragments were grateful to me as bearing a message of true homage to my King.
Of other feeling there was little among these wedding gifts, though one evening my eldest daughter who was with me, remarked casually to me that she had confiscated a newly arrived "registered" parcel addressed to me. "Oh, but you must not," I exclaimed, "I want them all!" But she answered gloomily that this parcel had contained a mouse, and "not at all the kind of mouse that anyone could have wanted for days past." So I subsided without further interrogation.
Once when Parnell and I were staying at Bournemouth we became very fond of some old engravings hanging in our hotel sitting-room, illustrating "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow," and now, through these fighting months in Ireland, we used this old ballad as a medium for private telegrams, as we could not be sure they would not fall into other hands. The idea took root when he first left me to attend what I feared would be a hostile meeting in Ireland. He had wired the political result to me, but had not said how he was feeling. I telegraphed to him: "O gentle wind that bloweth south," and promptly came the reply to me: "He fareth well."
All through these fighting months in Ireland he telegraphed to me always in the morning and also in the {321} evening of every day he was away from me, and whenever he could snatch a moment he wrote to me. He was in no way unhappy in this last fight, and had only the insidious "tiredness" that grew upon him with such deadly foreshadowing of the end we would not see given him a little respite, he could, he said, have enjoyed the stress and storm of battle. To bend these rebels in Ireland to his will became but a secondary driving force to that of gaining for Ireland the self-government to which he had pledged himself for her, and I think it gave that zest and joy in hardness to the battle that all the great fighters of the world seem to have experienced.
I am not giving all his letters of this time; just a few of the little messages of my husband's love in these last days I must keep for my own heart to live upon; but the two or three that I give are sufficient to show the high, quiet spirit of the man who was said to be "at bay." Letters, I think, rather of a king, serene in his belief in the ultimate sanity of his people and of the justice of his cause.
BALLINA,
March 24, 1891.
The reception here yesterday was magnificent, and the whole country for twenty-five miles from here to the town of Sligo is solid for us, and will vote 90 out of 100 for us, the priests being in our favour with one exception, and the seceders being unable to hold a meeting anywhere. I am to keep in this friendly district, and to hold meetings there, and shall not go outside of it.
The town of Sligo, and the district from there to Cliffony, is hostile, the priests being against us, and I shall not go into it, but we have a good friendly minority even in this district, whom our agents will canvass privately. You will see the situation on the map.
Wire me to Ballina, every day, which will be my headquarters; also write particulars if any news.
{322}
BIG ROCK QUARRIES, ARKLOW, Co. WICKLOW,
August 15, 1891.
MY OWN WIFIE,—Your telegram only received this evening, in consequence of my being at the mine.
I think you might fix the end of the year as the time you and I would guarantee the payment of the costs.[1] If Wontner accepts this or any modification of it which would give me, say, three months to pay, telegraph Pym as follows: "No." If he declines to accept, or you cannot come to any definite arrangement with Wontner by Tuesday at midday, telegraph Pym "Yes." I have written Pym advising him accordingly about the appeal, and sending the lodgment money, but it would be better if possible that you should telegraph Pym on Monday afternoon. I trust to be able to cross on Tuesday morning or evening at latest. It is very fine here, but I have had no shooting, and do not expect any, as I have to be in Dublin all day Monday arranging about new paper.—-With best love, YOUR OWN HUSBAND.
You should ask Wontner to telegraph you definitely as early as possible on Monday.
MORRISON'S HOTEL, DUBLIN,
September 1, 1891.
MY OWN WIFIE,—I have received Magurri's letter safely, and hope to be able to leave here on Wednesday (to-morrow) evening, sleeping at Holyhead, and visiting the place in Wales[2] next morning on my way back to London.
MacDermott says he does not think I can get the loan from Hibernian Bank concluded within a fortnight, but will hasten matters as much as possible. The bank and their solicitors approve the security and proposal generally, but it will take a little time to make the searches and go through other formalities which lawyers always insist upon in such cases.
By to-morrow I expect to have done as much as I possibly can for the present in the matter of the new paper. It has been a very troublesome business, as a dispute has arisen between different sections of my own friends as to who shall {323} have the largest share in the management of the new organ. This dispute somewhat impedes progress and increases the difficulties. However, the matter is not so pressing, as the Freeman question is again postponed for another fortnight. I expect to make a satisfactory arrangement about my Freeman shares, under which I shall lose nothing by them. Kerr is making progress in getting up a small company to buy a steamer, and I think he may succeed.
I have been very much bored, as I am obliged to remain in the hotel all day every day, waiting to see people who may call about the different undertakings. I wonder whether you have been driving at all, and how the eyes are, and how you have been doing. You have not written to tell me.—With much love,
MY OWN LITTLE WIFIE'S HUSBAND.
MORRISON'S HOTEL, DUBLIN,
Monday, September 7, 1801
MY OWN WIFIE,—I have told Kerr that he cannot have any of the first thousand, so he is going to manage without it for the present, so you may reckon on that amount
The bank was to have given me that sum to-day, but a hitch occurred on Saturday which I removed to-day, and the board will meet to-morrow and ratify the advance.
YOUR OWN HUSBAND.
In great haste.
The trouble about the jealousies of would-be directors on the new board still continues, and have postponed selection till next week—crossing to-morrow night.
On my husband's return home from Ireland in September, after having established the Irish Daily Independent, he was looking so worn out and ill that I was thoroughly alarmed about his health. He was very cheerful and happy while he was at home, and............