THE O'CONNOR MEMOIRS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20303, 10 July 1929, Page 8

THE O'CONNOR MEMOIRS.

(REMINISCENCES OF "T.l\"

{THE CONCLUDING CHAPTER. ILL-FATED PAR NELL FAMILY. / STORY OF MANY TRAGEDIES. (Copy i i;:hl.) i\o. I,A Ml. There i. nno. other figure in this tragedy of Paruell and his wife| which, ill many respects, is tlir most, j >;i t hot ic. Sirs. FarneH's two daughters l>y J*;irurl! married, <iikl loft her; but otic daughter remained with her lr> (lie day of her death—never, indeed, left her side. This was Norah, who v;is tin; daughter of Captain .O'Shea.

No eccentricity on the. part- of her mother, iiono of the. isolations l>v which circumstances surrounded her. ever shook Norah's devotion to her; slie was with lier by day and by night. in sickness and in health. She rigidly adhered to the T'onian Catholic faith to wliii h lier father belonged, and in which sin; had hecn brought up. She was a well known figure at. all the f a t hoi ic churches which were within reach in the various migrations of lier mother, and. even out of the. small allowance she must have had, suhscrilicd to all their charities.

Norah O'Shea was left, practically penniless at the death of her mother. 1 received an appeal to pet her some temporary employment, and she went as a nursery governess for a while to .t French family. But ultimately she resolved to become a piolessional nurse, and she passed lier full examinations at Queen Charlotte's Hospital. She adopted her mother's maiden name of Wood, so as to avoid troublesome que.sliuiis, and she was known at the hospital as Xurse Norah Wood. Characteristically .she worked too liarrl, with the result that she contracted ihat very painful disease called lupus, and of that, she died. She is the lphigeniai of the family tragedy. Parnell's Two Brothers.

Parnell li.nt (wo brothers-, one, John Howard. u< 1 soinc likeness to liis brother, hut it was a likeness that was rather like. ;i caricature. Ho was very amiable, very harmless and rather ;i stupid man. I'oriuriafely, the ('orporation of Dublin, •which was mainly Parnellile, was able to find him a small "job which was connected ■with the- superintendence of the pawn offices of Ireland. John rarnell wrote a couple of books Sibotit his brother, which wcro not of great value; he always spoke of him with Ihe deepest affection, ite had the Parnsll inclination to in for enterprises that promised fortune and left only debt, and poor Parnell, I am afraid, had to make up the losses. One of the projects of John Parnell was to establish a big peach industry in tho State of Georgia, and I Yerncmbcr ono evening in the House of Commons when Parnell took out of a locker a specimen of one ol theso peaches —and a very beautiful specimen it seemed to be. Ifo was chased out of a seat in Parliament—to which he was entitled—by the Parntllite section, v.ho desired to have tho scat occupied by one they thought could give them more effective assistance. John Parnell lived to a considerable ago and then slipped out, of life -with characteristic modesty and in characteristic obscurity. Tho other brother of Parnell I never knew, but I rather thought I saw bun once at a restaurant in Victoria Station. I ■was almost aghast when I saw the man enter, ho bore so striking a resemblance to his great brother. He was evidently a man of very restless temperament, for ho entered arid left the restaurant several times, lie also slipped out of life unnoticed. Remarkable Sisters. Tho most remarkable of tho sisters of Parnell was Fanny, f have already told how she was found dead in her bed. (Anna Parnell was a very different type; she was plain and bony, and her manner and words frozo your blood. She had all the reserve and frigidity of her biother .very much accentuated. In a short con•versation with her I saw that she had a great many of his qualities—obstinacy in opinion, coldness in language—a coldness ■which afterwards proved, as in his case, to bo but tho ico which covered a volcano. With tho imprisonment of her brother and of tho other leaders there came a transformation, for, as tl'io men s Land League had been suppressed by Mr. lrorster,'tho ladies' Land League, as I have said, was formed to take its place. 1 will say no more of the operations of that remarkable body than that it was much more reckless in its practices than the, Tnen'g Land League. Tho dominating, spirit, of course, was Anna Parnell, who i ;wa.s both of iron courago and of absolute recklessness, Among Anna's exploits was that of rushing up to Lord Spencer at the timo cf tho violent coercionist regime—for which that kindly gentleman had to beat tho unwilling responsibility—seizing his horse by tho bridle and denouncing bis policy. One of the first things that Parnell 'did on his release from prison was practically fo extinguish tho ladies' Land League, and with that his sister. Even ho could only restrain her by violent and jrsohifo action. , With tho disappearance of her brother Anna Parnell also erased to havo any political existence. I havo already told how by devious ways some of Parnell's old colleagues managed to come to her assistance, and how * finally she was drowned vvliilo bathing at Ilfrncombe —it might have been accident, but it might have hecn suicide.

Mother's Tragic Fate. "Finally, (lino wan a sister of Parnell who for Tuariy years was a prominent and tome what grotesque fltxurrs in Dublin life. She used to drive through (ho streets in strange, highly coloured garments. Sho ,flfivoted sofne, lime, lo a sort of biography of her brother. Ultimately she went into a workhouse. 1 met a not her sister who made a runaway but very happy marriage with a gentleman in the Navy. Of the other two sisters I know practically nothing; ono was the wife of a solicitor called McDermott, who liven in Dublin: tiie other was married arid lived in Paris. Both, I believe, died at comparatively early ages. AnrJ, finally, there is Iho mother of Parnell. She has figured several times in my narrative. She spent most of her life, after the death of tier husband, in ■the United States, her native country. It was hard to say whether she could bo described as wholly sane. On her side, as 1 havo already told, there was lirrerlilv of some unbalanced mentality. She bad unlimited powers of speech, feverish activity, and was as much a. propagandist in !lio United States as any of Pa rn ell's colleagues. As a rule t>lio spoko for an hour at a, time; 1 never knew at the end of her speech what. she. had said. '1 be mother's death was dramatically appropriate. AK'r long years, and when her son had been dead a long lime, slm returner! to Avondale, the early home and property of her husband. Left, alone one day in one of the moms, and in enfeebled health, she fell info the fire and was somewhat se.veralv burned ■ :,]io died a few davs afterwards.

F;itc of Ancestral' Home. Tri f 110 confused f-Into nf I'nrrieH's forftiiK's after his death (ho ancestral liotno find to lie. told, and il, is now a puhlic intit itulion. Auphnv;il illl o. dilapidatcd shooting lodge lli.it Panicll occupied in (ho shooting season— had (o be. disposed of, arid Mr. John Redmond bcc/urio its owner. . . .

Tho dust-covered and deserted mansion, the half-ruined shooting lodge were more telling tomb:; of the, riso and (lie end of ♦ho fortunes of tho great, Paniell's family than anything in Glasnevin Cemetery, where his remains lie, or that striking stat.uo of him in O'Connell Street, which was rased by tho genius of St. Gauderis.' No fitory of Greek history by a Greek dramatist fells of h. family tragedy moio etriking and Tnoro complete. TrIE END, O