Enigma

by Paul Bew

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

  7. Tony Claydon, ‘The Political Thought of Charles Stewart Parnell’ in Boyce and O’Day (eds), Parnell in Perspective, p. 151.

  8. For an interesting response see Pauric Travers, ‘Parnell and the Ulster Question’ in Donal McCartney (ed.), Parnell: The Politics of Power (Dublin, 1991), pp 57–71.

  9. Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, ‘Political History’ in Laurence M. Geary and Margaret Kelleher (eds), Nineteeth-Century Ireland: A Guide to Recent Research (Dublin, 2005), p. 17.

  10. Russell Rees, Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: The Development of Unionism and Nationalism (Newtownards, 2010), p. 172.

  11. Margaret O’Callaghan, ‘Parnellism and Crime: Constructing a Conservative Strategy of Containment, 1879–91’ in McCartney (ed.), Parnell: The Politics of Power, pp 102–24.

  12. Spectator, 15 Feb. 1890.

  13. James Loughlin, Gladstone, Home Rule and the Ulster Question, 1882–1893 (Dublin, 1986).

  Foreword

  1. Mrs Russell Barrington, The Life of Walter Bagehot (London, 1914), pp 427–9.

  2. T. Wemyss Reid, Politicians of Today: A Series of Personal Sketches (London, 1879), p. 263.

  3. J. R. Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, between 1878 and 1893 (Oxford, 2003), p. 399; see also H. C. G. Matthew (ed.), The Gladstone Diaries, introduction to vols x and xi (Oxford, 1990), p. cxix.

  4. Vincent (ed.), Derby Diaries, p. 405.

  5. Evening Standard, 4 Nov. 1886.

  6. Irish Times, 18 Dec. 1909.

  7. W. O’Brien, Parnell of Real Life, p. 209.

  8. Daniel Mulhall’s article ‘Parallel Parnell’ in History Ireland, xviii, no. 3 (May–June 2010) is a striking example. It has provoked a response from Patrick Maume which appears as the appendix to the present work.

  Chapter 1: ‘The Accident of Birth’

  1. Owen Roe, ‘Thomas Parnell’ (Hours with Irish Poets, No. X), The Nation, 4 Nov. 1876.

  2. Freeman’s Journal, 18 Mar. 1885.

  3. The journalist Michael MacDonagh recorded that Parnell discussed his grandfather’s writings when MacDonagh interviewed him at Avondale in 1891 (‘With Parnell at Avondale’, Irish Daily Independent, 11 Oct. 1941).

  4. Matthew (ed.), Gladstone Diaries, xii (Oxford, 1994), p. 150.

  5. Occasional Notes, The Nation, 22 May 1897.

  6. Robert Portsmouth, John Wilson Croker: Irish Ideas and the Invention of Modern Conservatism (Dublin, 2010), pp 30–32.

  7. The Analectic Magazine: Comprising Original Reviews and Biography, 2nd series, vol. ii (July 1820), p. 52.

  8. Tablet, 3 Jan. 1846, p. 7. I owe this reference to Patrick Maume and his research on Frederick Lucas and the Tablet.

  9. The Nation, 4 Dec. 1880.

  10. T. P. O’Connor, Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian (2 vols, London, 1929), i, 100.

  11. Richard Rush, Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London (2nd ed., Philadelphia, 1833), pp 26–7. For further confirmation of this picture of Admiral Stewart see Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), pp 395–6.

  12. Carla King and W. J. McCormack (eds), John Devoy: Michael Davitt: From the Gaelic American (Dublin, 2008), p. 97.

  13. Thomas MacKnight, Ulster As It Is (2 vols, London, 1896), i, 377–9.

  14. Weekly Examiner and Ulster Observer, 25 May 1878.

  15. Truth, 15 Oct. 1891.

  16. [Mrs Stuart Menzies], Memories Discreet and Indiscreet, by a Woman of No Importance (London, 1917), p. 275.

  17. J. H. Parnell, Charles Stewart Parnell: A Memoir (London, 1916), p. 90.

  18. Stephen Ball (ed.), Dublin Castle and the First Home Rule Crisis: The Political Journal of Sir George Fottrell, 1884–87 (Cambridge, 2008), pp 95–6.

  19. Henry to Daunt, 11 Jan. 1880 (NLI, Daunt Papers, MS 11446).

  20. A. J. Kettle, The Material for Victory, ed. L. J. Kettle (Dublin, 1958), p. 34.

  21. [Menzies], Memories Discreet and Indiscreet, p. 273.

  22. Spectator, 2 Oct. 1886.

  23. Joseph Valente, The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880–1922 (Urbana, Chicago & Springfield, 2011), ch. 1.

  24. The Nation, 8 Nov. 1877.

  25. [Menzies], Memories Discreet and Indiscreet, p. 275; Elisabeth Kehoe, Fortune’s Daughters (London, 2004), p. xxi.

  26. J. H. Parnell, Parnell: A Memoir, p. 90.

  27. P. J. P. Tynan, The Irish National Invincibles and their Times (London, 1894), p. 18.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Warder and Weekly Mail, 21 Mar. 1874. I owe this reference to Dr Patrick Maume.

  30. Irish Times, 13 Mar. 1874.

  31. Andrew Dunlop, Fifty Years of Irish Journalism (Dublin, 1911), p. 27.

  32. Aurelia S. Annat, ‘Gender and Self: Katharine Tynan and the Construction of Political Identities, 1890–1930’ in Fintan Lane (ed.), Politics, Society and the Middle Class in Ireland (Basingstoke, 2010), p. 202. Another example of Parnell reimagined as secret monarch is Alice Milligan’s 1890 novel A Royal Democrat, whose hero is an heir to the British throne who develops Irish nationalist sympathies and (after he is believed dead in a shipwreck) leads the nationalist movement, suffers imprisonment, and finally persuades his cousin ‘Queen Alexandrina’ [Victoria’s baptismal name] to concede Home Rule. Although ostensibly set some decades into the twentieth century, the hero is clearly a Parnell avatar and the political situation is modelled on that of the late 1880s.

  33. The Nation, 23 Aug. 1879.

  34. Katharine O’Shea, Charles Stewart Parnell (2 vols, London, 1914), ii, 50.

  35. See discussion of his autumn 1877 trip to Liverpool which appears below (p. 36).

  36. W. O’Brien, Parnell of Real Life, p. 41.

  37. Healy, Letters and Leaders, i, 153.

  38. W. O’Brien, Parnell of Real Life, p. 40.

  39. [Menzies], Memories Discreet and Indiscreet, p. 274.

  40. O’Shea, Parnell, ii, 46.

  41. Ibid., p. 249.

  42. T. P. O’Connor, The Parnell Movement (London, 1887), p. 150.

  43. Westminster Examiner, 26 Dec. 1908. This anecdote is not in the Irish Times version.

  44. Truth, 15 Oct. 1891.

  45. J. V. Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography (London, 1903), p. 241.

  46. Ibid., pp 237–48.

  47. The Independent, lxxii (1912), p. 1326.

  48. W. O’Brien, Parnell of Real Life, p. 185; the review is Times Literary Supplement, 2 July 1925, p. 441.

  49. T. P. O’Connor, Charles Stewart Parnell: A Memory (London, 1891), p. 22.

  50. Sir Alfred Robbins, Parnell: The Last Five Years (London, 1926), p. 18.

  51. D. W. R. Bahlman (ed.), The Diary of Sir Edward Walter Hamilton, 1885–1906 (Hull, 1993), p. 363.

  52. O’Connor, Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, p. 100.

  53. William O’Brien, Recollections (London, 1905), p. 202.

  54. Harold Spender, ‘John Redmond: An Impression’, Contemporary Review, cxiii (Apr. 1918), pp 375–6.

  55. Healy, Letters and Leaders, ii, 401.

  56. The Nation, 4 Dec. 1850. See also Tony Claydon, ‘The Political Thought of Charles Stewart Parnell’ in D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds), Parnell in Perspective (London, 1991), p. 154.

  57. Freeman’s Journal, 8 Oct. 1891.

  58. T. H. Escott, Platform, Press, Politics and Play (Bristol, 1895), p. 371.

  59. R. F. Foster, Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and his Family (Hassocks, 1976), p. 29.

  60. Michael MacDonagh (see p. 218 n. 3 above) quoted in Patrick Maume (ed.), William McComb: The Repealer Repulsed (Dublin, 2003), p. 292 n. 57.

  61. Analectic Magazine, 2nd series, ii (July 1820), p. 52.

  62. Freeman’s Journal, 25 Sept. 1877; D. G. Boyce, ‘Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell: The History of Politics and the Politics of History’ in Terence Dooley (ed.), Ireland’s P
olemical Past: Views of Irish History in Honour of R. V. Comerford (Dublin, 2010), p. 129.

  63. The Nation, 31 Jan. 1885.

  64. For the broader picture see L. P. Curtis, ‘Incumbered Wealth: Landlord Indebtedness in Post-Famine Ireland’, American Historical Review, lxxxv, no. 2 (1980), pp 332–67.

  65. The Nation, 8 Nov. 1879.

  66. H. Villiers Stuart, Prices of Farm Products in Ireland from Year to Year for Thirty-Six Years (Dublin & London, 1886), p. 9: ‘The effect of American importations upon the cattle trade has been greatly overrated, and is not nearly so important a factor in determining prices as farmers imagine.’

  67. O’Connor, Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, i, 99.

  68. The Nation, 4 Dec. 1880.

  69. John O’Connor Power, The Anglo-Irish Quarrel: A Plea for Peace (London, 1886), p. 18.

  70. Contemporary Review, xlix, no. 1 (Jan. 1886), p. 22.

  Chapter 2: ‘On the Verge of Treason-Felony’

  1. Stephen Gwynn, Dublin: Old and New (Dublin, 1940), p. 35.

  2. Roscommon Herald, 30 Apr. 1887.

  3. James Tormey Clare, Priest and Patriot: A Short Sketch of the Life of Michael Tormey, cc (Trafford, 2004), p. 42.

  4. Meath Herald, 24 Apr. 1875.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Kilkenny Moderator, 7 Apr. 1875.

  7. Irishman, 24 Apr. 1875.

  8. Drogheda Argus, 17 Apr. 1875.

  9. William McCullagh Torrens, Twenty Years in Parliament (London, 1893), p. 246.

  10. Hansard 3, ccxxiii, 1643–5 (22 Apr. 1875) (Peace Preservation (Ireland) Bill).

  11. Tynan, Irish National Invincibles, p. 57.

  12. Hansard 3, ccxxv, 1201–2 (8 July 1875).

  13. Irishman, 20 Nov. 1875.

  14. The Nation, 16 Oct. 1875.

  15. Irishman, 8 Jan. 1876.

  16. Ibid., 15 Jan. 1876.

  17. J. P. McAllister, Irish Votes on Irish Questions, being the Divisions in the House of Commons on Irish Subjects, 1874 and 1875 (Dublin, 1876), p. 93.

  18. R. Barry O’Brien, The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, 1846–1891 (2 vols, London 1898), i, 85.

  19. Ibid., p. 102.

  20. Hansard 3, ccxxxiv, 176–7 (1 May 1877) (motion for a select committee).

  21. Ibid., col. 178.

  22. Glasgow Herald, 29 May 1877.

  23. Irishman, 21 June 1877.

  24. F. H. O’Donnell, A History of the Irish Parliamentary Party (2 vols, London, 1910), i, 208–9.

  25. J. H. Parnell, Parnell, pp 52–3.

  26. O’Donnell, Irish Parliamentary Party, i, 209.

  27. The Nation, 8 Nov. 1879.

  28. Ibid., 30 June 1877.

  29. Spectator, 26 June 1880.

  30. Donal McCracken, ‘Parnell and the South African Connection’ in McCartney (ed.), Parnell: The Politics of Power, p. 126.

  31. [Menzies], Memoirs Discreet and Indiscreet, p. 275.

  32. O’Donnell, Irish Parliamentary Party, i, 214.

  33. Tynan, Irish National Invincibles, p. 64.

  34. O’Donnell, Irish Parliamentary Party, p. 214.

  35. The Nation, 8 Sept. 1877.

  36. J. R. Vincent (ed.), A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, between September 1869 and March 1878 (London, 1994), p. 389.

  37. Quoted in The Nation, 8 Sept. 1877.

  38. T. D. Sullivan, Green Leaves: A Volume of Irish Verses (Dublin, 1875), tune, ‘The Priest in his Boots’. Hartington was the Liberal leader, Hardy a Conservative minister. The ballad also circulated in broadsheet form: see http://digital.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/15837, accessed 11 Mar. 2011.

  39. The Nation, 8 Sept. 1877.

  40. Tuam Herald, 17 Oct. 1891.

  41. Freeman’s Journal, 21 Sept. 1877.

  42. ‘A Glance at Parnell’, Tuam Herald, 7 Mar. 1891.

  43. O’Connor, Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, i, 34.

  44. Kettle, Material for Victory, p. 35.

  45. Irishman, 25 Aug. 1877.

  46. J. Kilmartin, ‘The Political Situation’, Tuam News, 2 Jan. 1891.

  47. Limerick Reporter, 2 30 Jan., 5 June, 23 July, 21 Aug. 1877. It may be relevant that Butt was MP for Limerick.

  48. Connaught Telegraph, 15 Dec. 1877.

  49. Weekly Freeman, 25 Apr. 1891.

  50. William O’Brien and Desmond Ryan (eds), Devoy’s Post-Bag, 1871–1928 (2 vols, Dublin, 1948–53), i, 267–8.

  51. Pauline Colombier-Lakeman, ‘Ireland and the Empire: The Ambivalence of Irish Constitutional Nationalism’, Radical History Review, no. 104 (spring 2009: special issue entitled The Irish Question), p. 73 n. 32.

  52. O’Connor, Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, i, 8.

  53. Richard Pigott, Recollections of an Irish National Journalist (Dublin, 1883), p. 359.

  54. Saunders’ Irish Daily News, 20 Jan. 1879.

  55. Fortnightly Review, li (Jan.–June 1892), p. 115.

  56. ‘The Irish New Departure’, New York Herald, 27 Oct. 1878.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Michael Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (London & New York, 1904), p. 113.

  59. Tuam News, 2 Jan. 1891.

  60. The Nation, 9 Nov. 1878.

  61. Open letter from Butt to A. J. Kettle, Irish Times, 24 May 1875.

  62. Quoted in Paul Bew, Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 (Dublin, 1978), p. 52.

  63. E.g. Warder and Weekly Mail, 1, 15 Jan. 1876.

  64. Both contributions to the debate appear in The Nation, 9 Feb. 1878.

  65. The Special Commission Act, 1888. Reprint of the Shorthand Notes of the Speeches, Proceedings and Evidence taken before the Commissioners (12 vols, London, 1890), v, 174.

  66. These words appear in Devoy’s open letter ‘The Proposed New Departure’, 11 Dec. 1878 (Spec. Comm. Proc., v, 182; Freeman’s Journal, 4 Jan. 1879).

  67. Ibid.

  68. A. P. W. Malcomson, Virtues of a Wicked Earl: The Life and Legend of William Sydney Clements, 3rd Earl of Leitrim, 1806–78 (Dublin, 2008); Patrick Maume, A Glimpse of the Wicked Earl, http://puesoccurrences.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/a-glimpse-of-the-wicked-earl/

  69. Londonderry Standard, 3 Apr. 1878.

  70. The Nation, 23 Nov. 1878.

  71. Hansard 3, ccxxxiv, 178 (1 May 1877).

  72. The Nation, 23 Nov. 1878.

  73. Ibid.

  74. Carla King and W. J. McCormack (eds), John Devoy: Michael Davitt (Dublin, 2008), pp 129–30. (This is a reprint in book form of articles which Devoy published in his paper, the Gaelic American, after Davitt’s death in 1906.)

  75. Ibid., p. 120.

  76. Ibid., p. 130.

  77. Ibid., p. 131.

  78. Ibid., p. 132.

  79. The Nation, 9 Feb. 1878.

  80. Kettle, Material for Victory, p. 34.

  81. F. S. L. Lyons, ‘The Land War’, Irish Times, 12 May 1979.

  82. P. H. Bagenal, The Irish Agitator in Parliament and on the Platform (Dublin, 1880), pp 19–21.

  83. Irish Times, 6 Feb. 1879.

  84. Ibid.

  85. J. L. Garvin, The Life of Joseph Chamberlain (2 vols, London, 1932–3), i, 274.

  86. ‘The Truth about Ireland’, Quarterly Review, cli, 30 (Jan. 1881), p. 265.

  Chapter 3: ‘A Spontaneous Uprising’: The Land League

  1. Butt to Cairnes, 14 Nov. 1872 (NLI, Cairnes papers, MS 8944).

  2. Freeman’s Journal, 1 Dec. 1879.

  3. Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, p. 64.

  4. Connaught Telegraph, 20, 27 Jan. 1877.

  5. F. S. L. Lyons, Charles Stewart Parnell (London, 1977), pp 83–4.

  6. Connaught Telegraph, 14 June 1879.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, p. 161.

  9. Donald Jordan, Land and Popular Politics in Ireland: County Mayo from the Plantation to the Land War (Cambridge, 1994), pp 224, 268.

  10. Jenny Wyse Power (ed.), Words of the Dead Chief (Dublin, 2009), p. 31.
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br />   11. The Nation, 4 Oct. 1879.

  12. Paul Bew, ‘“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), pp 136–51.

  13. Wyse Power (ed.), Words of the Dead Chief, p. 29.

  14. The Nation, 2 Oct. 1880.

  15. Ibid., 18 Oct. 1879.

  16. Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, p. 172.

  17. Quoted in The Work of the Irish Leagues: The Speech of the Right Hon. Sir Henry James QC MP, replying in the Parnell Commission Inquiry (London, [1890]), pp 128–9.

  18. D. B. King, The Irish Question (New York, 1882), p. 116.

  19. The Nation, 2 Oct. 1880.

  20. Patrick Maume, Rebel on the Run: T. J. Quinn and the IRB /Land League Diaspora in America, Working Paper in Irish Studies 00-1 (Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 2000), p. 2.

  21. See Report of the Special Commission, 1888, Appx iv, pp 127–31, [c5891] HC 1890, xxvii.

  22. Tynan, Irish National Invincibles, p. 94.

  23. The Nation, 6 Dec. 1879.

  24. Freeman’s Journal, 20 Apr. 1890.

  25. Quoted in Bew, Land and the National Question, p. 78.

  26. The balance of evidence suggests Parnell did use these disputed words. See Lyons, Parnell, pp 111–12.

  27. Donal McCartney, ‘Parnell and the American Connection’, in Donal McCartney and Pauric Travers (eds), The Ivy Leaf: The Parnells Remembered (Dublin, 2006), pp 38–55.

  28. Spectator, 3 Apr. 1880.

  29. W. L. Feingold, ‘Irish Boards of Poor Law Guardians: A Revolution in Local Government’ (PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1974), p. 132.

  30. Myles Dungan, The Captain and the King: William O’Shea, Parnell and Late Victorian Ireland (Dublin, 2009), p. 50.

  31. ‘Mr Parnell’s Connection with Cork’, Cork Daily Herald, 6 Oct. 1891.

  32. Donald Jordan, ‘John O’Connor Power, Charles Stewart Parnell and the Centralisation of Popular Politics in Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, xxv, no. 97 (May 1986), pp 46–66.

  33. Roscommon Herald, 17 Jan. 1891.

  34. Freeman’s Journal, 30 Apr. 1880.

  35. C. S. Parnell, ‘The Irish Land Question’, North American Review, cxxx, no. 1 (Apr. 1880).