Enigma

by Paul Bew

  There was no alternative focus of popular sentiment. Michael Davitt’s desertion of peasant proprietorship for the apparently faddish objective of land nationalisation substantially reduced his popularity both in Ireland and Irish America. The result was to give Parnell the mantle of supreme realist whose leadership was the sine qua non of nationalist victory.

  Parnell’s acceptance of the cheque was rather ungracious. Such open rudeness, or more accurately gracelessness, is untypical of Parnell’s behaviour. It is likely that he felt his relatively straitened circumstances keenly and that his sensitivity on this point expressed itself in a rather abrupt public attitude: perhaps, however, in typical Anglo-Irish style, he did not take money, especially other people’s money, seriously. The Quaker Nationalist MP, Alfred Webb, otherwise a loyal Parnellite, complained of Parnell’s ‘autocratic management’ of funds, a style which provoked his resignation from the post of treasurer of the National League.55 Parnell is to be found speculating some years later on the possibility of another such testimonial.

  Why did Parnell need the money, and what did he do with it? T. P. O’Connor rightly describes Parnell as ‘a slattern with money’. This does not mean that he was greedy or self-indulgent, but it does indicate that he was disorganised and incompetent. It was a family trait. He gave some of the money to his mother, who promptly lost it on the Stock Exchange. Meanwhile he continued to allow bills and interest to mount up—for example, to hotels in the Wicklow area—which became in the end claims against his estate after his death.

  The struggle around the ‘Parnell tribute’ had confirmed that the guiding concept of the INL was the prosecution of national ends, not exclusively agrarian ones. However, part of the reason for its success was the fact that the Irish leaders did not forget the land question as is sometimes implied. The candidature of Timothy Healy in the Monaghan by-election in June 1883 was explicitly intended in Parnell’s words ‘to reopen the land question again’. The idea was to exploit Healy’s personal association with the cause of land reform. A clause in the 1881 Land Act had been popularly named after him. The clause which, in Healy’s words, ought to have put ‘millions in the pockets of the tenants’ was stymied by a later ruling of the Court of Appeal. With Parnell’s vigorous backing, Healy won a fine victory in the election. Incidentally, Parnell’s zest for electoral politics seems to have been considerable at this point. It was he who discovered that Healy’s poll had been miscounted by 100 votes.56

  The Parnellite ‘invasion’ of Ulster provoked some comment in London. The level of sectarian tension deeply alarmed Dublin Castle, even leading the Chief Secretary, G. O. Trevelyan, to fear the outbreak of civil war—or, at any rate, to fear it in the absence of strong state forces.57 Already it was clear to London observers that the ‘Ulster problem’ had an economic as well as a sectarian dimension. The stronghold of Irish Protestantism naturally did not want to be at the mercy of an Ultramontane Catholicism. But it was also noted that the north-east corner of Ireland would hardly allow its manufacturing base to be taxed in support of the ‘fantasy’ of the introduction of industries to the rest of Ireland; still less would it accept the protectionism of an independent Ireland.

  What inducement, it was asked, could be offered to Protestant Ulster to surrender the place she had for centuries held as the British outpost in Ireland and voluntarily subject herself to neighbours whose interests and sympathies were so widely different from her own? Why should she abandon the right to a direct voice in the affairs of the whole of the United Kingdom in exchange for a place as a despised minority in an obscure provincial ‘diet’?58 The very sentiment which lent so much of its emotional strength to Irish nationalism—the desire for a separate and conspicuous place in the world—created in Ulster a passionate adherence to the maintenance of the Union.

  In other ways too the land question still played an important role in Parnell’s activities. In July 1883 Mrs O’Shea, who was now acting as a regular intermediary, passed on to Gladstone Parnell’s views on a land-reclamation scheme.59 Almost six years earlier Parnell had grasped the importance of this issue in the west of Ireland. He now requested substantial financial assistance from the Board of Works and the Land Commission with the aim of bringing about large-scale reclamation of land in the region. Mrs O’Shea also passed on the page proofs of a pamphlet, Notes on the Congested Districts of the County Mayo and on the Lands in the Same County Suitable for Migration, urging a migration within Connacht. According to this document, there were 163,000 acres of reclaimable land in Co. Mayo alone. The excess population was placed at 13,000 persons. Here surely was suitable ground for land reform. It was widely assumed that Parnell only allowed the government’s land bill to pass without a division because the government had made some financial concessions on the migration issue.60

  A land company controlled by Parnell and Professor Baldwin, with Valentine Dillon as the solicitor, purchased J. J. Bodkin’s Kilclooney estate in Galway. Davitt immediately criticised the deal, arguing that Parnell had paid too much.61 It was, however, an extensive estate, including large grazing farms but also holdings so small they could only be maintained by the additional wages earned by seasonal migratory labour in England. Parnell, flanked by Captain O’Shea and Colonel Nolan, the local MPs, proudly declared: ‘We have now a plan for the migration of tenant farmers from congested districts to lands which are vacant.’ He added: ‘If we succeed in this . . . vast areas of cultivatable land which are now left without anything save bullocks and sheep shall once more afford to some a sustenance.’62

  There was great popular interest in the west in Parnell’s ideas for satiating local land hunger.63 In May 1885 it was announced by Parnell that he had given instructions to divide the grasslands of his estate among as many tenants as possible.64 By the end of the decade these schemes appear to have come to little—though it was hardly Parnell’s fault that the landlords always raised their prices for him65—but in the mid-1880s Parnell’s apparent concern was of the utmost value in the west. Davitt was the author of the famous phrase: ‘Why should the rich pastures for which Ireland is famous supply cattle only and not men?’ The Spectator offered a laconic reply: ‘The real answer is obvious enough—Because Nebuchadnezzar has left no imitators. When Irishmen can eat grass like the ox, the great grazing farms may be broken up into small holdings.’66

  Western smallholders had not achieved their dream of a massive land redistribution arising out of the Land League. For that matter, neither had the agricultural labourers. It was the already substantial farmer who made the most gains in the land war. Parnell’s gesture towards the small men was therefore of some political importance: it helped to keep the nationalist coalition united behind his leadership.

  Meanwhile Parnell’s ties with Mrs O’Shea had strengthened. He was now an affectionate father, and for the time being he seemed to have the lady’s husband under control.67 T. P. O’Connor records a story told by J. M. Tuohy of the London office of the Freeman: ‘Parnell took a piece of paper out of his pocket and showing it to O’Shea, asked him whether he should also supply this information. . . . O’Shea nodded an assent. It was an announcement in due and rather curt form of the birth of a daughter to Mrs O’Shea.’68 This must have been either Clare or Katie, born in 1883 and 1884 respectively. But in spite of the Captain’s apparent acceptance of the situation, the O’Shea relationship was always just beneath the surface of politics. Before long it was to erupt dangerously.

  Chapter 5

  ‘HE KNEW WHAT HE WANTED’: HOME RULE IN 1886

  Of constructive faculty Parnell never showed a trace. . . . But he knew what he wanted.

  JOHN MORLEY (1905) ON PARNELL AT THE TIME OF THE HOME RULE DEBATE

  Is it unnatural that this should occur to him (Mr Parnell)? ‘I have now got to make my choice whether I should, in the coming parliament, deal with a strong party or with a weak one. Here are the Liberals, who avow that they want to be a party strong enough to be independent of my support (cheers)
—and we do avow it (renewed cheers), and we hope it, and we expect it, and we believe it is essential for the public welfare that the party which may have to deal with Parnell, or to check and virtually govern the dealings with Mr Parnell, should be a party not dependent on his suffrages.’

  W. E. GLADSTONE, THE TIMES, 25 NOVEMBER I885

  1

  In the years 1883–5 a subtle shift occurred in Irish political debate. Whereas everyone had talked of the land question in the early 1880s, by the middle of the decade the emphasis had switched to the national question. This is not to say the land question disappeared—far from it—but it did become subordinate to the greater issue of Irish self-government. Labouchere recorded a revealing exchange with Parnell on precisely this topic:

  I once suggested to him that if the land question was settled, the Irish might possibly fall off in their efforts to attain Home Rule. ‘There is no fear of that now,’ he said. ‘At first they cared more for it than Home Rule, but now they have grasped the idea of Home Rule, and the settlement of the rent question will not shake them in their allegiance to it.’1

  As a consequence, Parnell’s dominance was due in large part to objective circumstances rather than any particular personal quality. The fact was that the epoch 1883–5 in Irish history was influenced by the knowledge of the forthcoming general election. The moment when the Home Rule League had so dismayed Patrick Egan by calling on Irish people to inform on the Phoenix Park murderers had passed unambiguously by the summer of 1883. It was noted by English commentators that anyone who had actually followed the advice to inform received not the slightest sympathy or support from the Irish Party.2 Ireland was not becoming any more malleable from a conventional London point of view—but, on the other hand, mainstream Liberalism increasingly felt that the choice lay between Home Rule and repression, and that repression was simply not acceptable policy. By the end of 1883 Parnell had a growing—also accurate—sense that he was going to wield the balance of power after the next election. ‘This is a great fact and a great power. If we cannot rule ourselves, we can at least cause them to be ruled as we wish.’3 For the first time it was realistically on the political agenda to expect that the nationalist Irish—so long as they remained united—might return sufficient MPs to hold the balance of power at Westminster and thus win legislative autonomy. This prospect was further enhanced by the widening of the franchise carried out in 1884. In 1884 also a watertight pledge for Parnellite parliamentary candidates was introduced. Unlike earlier variants, the new pledge committed MPs to vote with the Irish Party and allowed them no conscientious reservations of any kind. Party discipline was thus assured; and it may be seen that the political circumstances of the day favoured not only the retention of the existing leader but also his glorification.

  In April 1884 Parnell was presented with the freedom of Drogheda. He offered a confident and optimistic speech. Every sentence exuded a sense that Irish nationalism was working with the grain of history. The Land Act of 1881 was now declared to be entirely consonant with the principles upon which the Land League had been founded. It defended the rights of the tenant whilst opening the way for a peasant proprietorship. Since then British policy had moved in the direction of peasant proprietorship and also support for an internal migration within Ireland from the more congested regions of the country to areas where there was more cultivable land. All these developments allowed Parnell to intensify his fire on Michael Davitt and his left-wing theory of land nationalisation. Parnell reminded his audience that even in America in 1879 he had said that the Irish must either fight for the land or pay for it. The clear implication now was that common sense dictated they should pay for it, especially as the Parnellite agitation had depressed the likely price. Despite his general optimism about the progress of nationalism, Parnell did sound a note of caution: ‘The Irish land question must be settled before the national question.’ The landlord system would have to end ‘before we can hope to unite north and south, Catholic and Protestant’. Parnell concluded: ‘I believe that if the land question were definitely settled upon a certain sure foundation . . . it is very far from being so . . . there would be no class in Ireland of sufficient strength capable of offering an obstacle to the triumphant march of the people towards national self government.’4

  The reaction to this speech is of considerable interest. Nationalists, of course, were delighted and Parnell’s left wing became even weaker as press reports suggested that the demoralised Michael Davitt was preparing to emigrate to Australia. More surprisingly perhaps, the Dublin Castle elite was also delighted. Increasingly that elite inclined towards Home Rule as long as they could be convinced of Parnell’s social moderation; this applied to intelligence and security-minded officials like Edward Jenkinson as much as it did to mainstream mandarins like Sir Robert Hamilton. Jenkinson told the Lord Lieutenant, Earl Spencer, that the Drogheda speech confirmed his personal support for Home Rule.5 On the other hand, the reaction in Belfast to the Drogheda speech was very hostile. The Liberal Northern Whig pointed out that Parnell was, in effect, threatening the mill-owners of the north with his talk of his colonial legislature on the Australian model with a right to pursue policies of economic protectionism. The Northern Whig insisted that the industrial prosperity of the north was dependent on free trade.

  Parnell’s position as ‘the Chief’ was now assured. Although this did not imply an absolute political ascendancy over his party, he now exercised a personal authority which was so complete that it enabled him to dispense with most of the conventions which normally constrain political leaders in their dealings with their followers. William O’Brien was to deny that Parnell exercised a dictatorship, but even he, in the first issue of the Cork Free Press in 1910, spoke at least once of Parnell’s ‘autocracy, irresponsibility and more or less despotic leadership’. He added: ‘In many hearts the old Roman spirit stirred; and many brave men growled beneath their teeth even then.’6 It was not that Parnell himself was particularly interested in the exercise of patronage in Irish society—but it was precisely this lack of interest (and the fact that he could politically afford it) which was most irritating to his colleagues.

  As a result of Parnell’s charismatic dominance over his party, his personal traits and idiosyncrasies became more noticeable: the legendary frigidity of demeanour, the impenetrable reserve, the lofty detachment, the strange sphinx-like silences, the inexplicable absences, the hint of steel—all these being to some extent offset by an engaging charm enlivened with occasional flashes of warmth and even whimsy, and his behaviour as a whole being marked by a general air of eccentricity. His attitude towards the rank-and-file Irish MPs was comparable to that of a feudal magnate towards his band of retainers: a curious blend of hauteur, autocracy, condescension, urbanity and benignity. Sir Henry Lucy observed:

  He kept his colleagues at arm’s length with uncompromising roughness not excelled by the Czar of Russia or the Emperor of Germany in dealing with their subordinates. At one stage, he is represented as saying to his Queenie, ‘I can never keep my rabble together if I were not above the human weakness of apology. Never explain. Never apologise.’ Personal recollection of a striking incident bears out this revelation of character. One night in the early 80s, an important debate on Irish affairs raised by the Parnellites occupied the sitting. Their leader was conspicuously absent. Chancing to be in the lobby about 11 o’clock, I saw Parnell enter by the Members’ staircase opening from Palace Yard. He stopped to converse with me for some five minutes and then passed on, not into the house but towards the library. Immediately he went out of sight, Dick Power, the popular Irish Whip, asked if I could tell whether Parnell intended to take part in the debate. It struck me remarkable that the whip of the party, charged with direction of its affairs, should not only not have been made aware in advance of the leader’s intention in respect of the debate but that he should refrain from the natural course of going up and asking him what he intended to do.7

  In Dublin Parnell seemed at
times to be more interested in Grouse, the beautiful red setter given to him by W. J. Corbet, the Wicklow MP, than the news from his colleagues. At a National League meeting he fed the dog scraps of biscuits while Timothy Harrington was speaking.8 Later that night, at a dinner given by Dr Joe Kenny MP, Parnell—late as usual—spent time throwing scraps to Grouse. (Parnell’s affection for the dog was real enough. Grouse always slept in his room, and, in his last illness, when the doctors wished to have Grouse removed, Parnell would not allow it.)9 And while he was certainly capable of treating his colleagues in an extremely cavalier fashion, they for their part seemed largely content to regard him with awe and respect and something approaching fear. A typical encounter between Parnell and a group of party members was recorded by M. J. F. McCarthy, a perceptive young journalist on the staff of the Freeman group of newspapers:

  I happened to be in the smoke-room of the House of Commons one night in company with a group of Irish members [who] . . . were talking as they sat around the well-known stove. . . . Mr Parnell suddenly came in, pale, erect, self-centred; and those who were in the vicinity of the stove arose instantly to their feet. He did not address any of his colleagues, or appear to recognise them; but he took the chair which was vacated for him in front of the stove and sat down. . . . He then put his hand into the tail-pocket of the morning-coat which he happened to be wearing, and pulled forth a bundle of letters. . . . An awestruck silence supervened among the members of his own party. . . . If they ventured to make a remark, it was in a whisper. . . . Mr Parnell placed the letters on his lap and went through them one by one, examining the writing. . . . He selected two or three letters from the bundle. . . . He opened them and read the selected letters and then burned them. He then took the bundle of unopened letters from the top of the stove and placed them very carefully in the centre of the fire. . . . It occurred to me at the time that some of these letters might have covered remittances by cheque; but the members dared not make any comment. Having done so much, Mr Parnell . . . condescended to look around and scrutinise his neighbours. Having apparently recognised them for the first time as members of his own party, he addressed one of them . . . and said, ‘Good evening, McDonald.’