REMINISCENCES OF MR T. P. O’CONNOR, M.P.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20701, 26 April 1929, Page 3

REMINISCENCES OF MR T. P. O’CONNOR, M.P.

MEMORIES OF “ THE FATHER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.”

Eights of Publication Secured by the Otago Daily Times. VOLUME I. Chapter V (continued). Two of Parnell’s sisters were Nationalists and of rather a violent type. The first of these was Fanny. I never saw her, hut I have been told that she was a beautiful girl, and she certainly had a brilliant and an ardent mind. One of her poems "Post Mortem,” written shortly before her own death and beginning " Shall mine eyes behold Thy glory, O my country? ” takes its place in the anthologies of Irish patriotic poetry, and probably is immortal. Her tragic fate was to be found dead one morning—whether by accident or illness or self-destruction, nobody was ever able to tell.

The other sister, Anna Parnell, I did not know very well. She was not in the least pretty, either in face or figure, though she bore a somewhat startling resemblance to her illustrious brother; she had groat angularity of figure. Her manner and voice were even colder than his, though behind the frigidity of the language there was an intense and passionate feeling and opinion. She was far more extreme both in thought and in method than her brother. When he and his colleagues later on were removed from all control of the Land League by their imprisonment in Kilmainham Gaol, she was partially responsible for the creation of the Ladies’ Land League, and as such she was perhaps the most violent of the women zealots who controlled that somewhat revolutionary organisation. One of her exploits was to approach Lord Spencer, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and carrying on a fierce war with the Land League, and, holding the bridle of his horse, address to him language of reproach and remonstrance. It should be added that one of the very first things Parnell did after his release from prison was to put an end to Impolitic,! 1 activities.

1 may as well close her story bv saying that, after the death of her brother and the breakdown for the time being of the organisation of the movement which he had created, she disappeared, and the leaders of our party were infoimed that she was in something like a penniless condition. She was mainly concerned at the moment in obtaining the publication of a book of poems. We got the poems published, and sent her a, sum which was supposed to be the profits—entirely imaginary—on the sale of the book. Then one dav we heard that, going out for a bathe"on a somewhat ugly morning at Ilfracombe, she had been caught by the waves and drowned.

In the family history of Parnell there wits nioie tlia.ii one case of madness and of suicide. His brilliant grand-uncle Henry hanged himself in his dressin" loom in Cadogan, place, Chelsea. It was one of the abiding terrors of those quite close to Parnell in hours of crisis that ns brain might also give way and his end might be like that of some of his ancestors. The truth is that Ireland vas led—and consummately led—by a madman of genius, not an uncommon phenomenon m the history of other leaders and other countries. At the moment of Parnell’s' career which I have now reached he was at his best, both personally and politically. His hours of work were extremely Ion", and one must include his constant attendance at the all-night sitting, which be had already inaugurated in the House of Commons He was just as feverish and as enthusiastically active outside as inside the House. Similarly, after Ins American campaign for money and support, those who were with him—including Mr T. M. Healy, who played so important a part in his life lat ondescribed to me the extraordinary exertions which Parnell took without heaitatum and without complaint. I know «■ in! s Ct,, : e ™ lss |® ns m America are, I ll ' terrifically lengthy journeys, the big meetings, and all the rest. Miss.ons of that kind have killed various men—they almost killed Bradlaugh, they : J O f Max 0 Hell, they killed lan Muca.en, and they shortened Mark Twain's fortitude™ thr ° USh them ' vith

As this is the first time I have brought of p ' ar ?- ell and Mr Sother, I may indicate here the nature of then early relations. Mr Healy had gone out to make his living as a clerk at an early age. Beginning in Ireland he had gone to Newcastle to one of the clencal departments of the railway. His pei feet knowledge of shorthand, his enoigy and indefatigable industry, had He was* 11 " a T 6 welcome secretary. He was connected by marriage and by Ivhf ft ? Elendsl » , P "’ith Mr John Barry^ considcrililn T many years one of the r lal) Insl > Population that works bv Sim!’ f hange of occupation yMr Barrj, which made him the chief commercial traveller for a very S perous Kirkcaldy firm of linoleum manuacturers, had taken Mr Healv’s rdathc o London Apart from the ties of 7 e l a - JftfJ ‘ Jmfl reaUSed tlle brought him tn T th, l youn " ma ». and Unic 4 A to L0,,110n as the confidential secretary to his firm. Mr Healy J, as fr Colmected with the family of beL S wh T chief icis weie Mi Alexander M. Sullivan ■, ballads. This family 1 ° f * )o ' m,ar j-i ° lamny connection was one of the reasons why Mr Healv’s sysK ‘oi rh £ wn ; s a b orn journalist; he ,l„ n , ta Ti lnly thon . nu extraordinarily bulliant pen, especially, a s a not verv t m rary to IK ° f ““S ° f f f . own - Parnell, when he started his career in the later ’seventies was largely prejudiced by the absence of all support among the popular journals af / lea , nd - Thc Freeman’s Journal, under the control of Mr Edmund Dwyer Gray, who was essentially a Constitutionalist and a devoted adherent of Isaac Butt, not only did not support Parnell’s new policy of obstruction, but actually opposed it—and, still more, opposed Parnell. There was a very ugly controversy between Parnell and Dwyer Gray in these early stages, in which Gray accused Parnell, when the Irish Party refused to follow h!s lead, of calling them Papist rata.” It was only, therefore, in the columns written by Mr Healy that any defence was to be found of Parnell’s policy.

Pmiiell was always the most slatternly of men. It used to l)o said that when he was called from his belated ami fererish attempts to prepare a speech hi the library of the House of Commons, ho lost half his papers in the. short distance between the library am] his place in the House.

The reception he got in America was wildly enthusiastic and unanimous beyond all his hopes. He lay helpless and overwhelmed under the vast mass of correspondence and of subscriptions and of demands for meetings that came from all parts of America. He thought of Mr Healy, and sent him a cablegram to London asking him to come to America. It was characteristic of the Hoaly of that period that he was on his way to the boat at Queenstown on the afternoon of the day he received this cable. He immediately created order out of clings, organised Parnell's meetings, sent out the sum-

mouses for a great Nationalist convention in America—which was virtually the beginning of the Parnell Movement—and slaved and wrote with equal facility in hotels and in railway cars. Never did a man have such an assistant.

I am anticipating a little when I say that this comradeship so fruitful to Parnell, for a reason I never could discover, instead of tying these men together in the bonds of affection and alliance, separated them somehow or other. A first indication of this—as it turned out - to be—disastrous break between two such men was given to me after Mr Healy had entered the House of Commons. Meeting him one afternoon in the tea room, I found him with his eyes ablaze. With that power of Vivid presentation which was one of his gifts, he described to me what correspondence meant to a public man, giving ns it did vivid pictures of individuals and localities, and of the temper and conditions generally of the whole country. All this vivid and quite accurate description of the part which the letter-bag plays in the life of an alert politician was coupled with the statement that, on going to the post office, in the lobby of the House of Commons, he found there 300 letters for Parnell, still unopened. I made the obvious retort that it was surely Air Healy’s duty, as Parnell's secretary, to open the letters for him. “ You must wait to be axed,” was the astonishing reply of Healy; and then I discovered for the first time that Healy had ceased to be Parnell’s collahornteur.

Parnell at this time had a splendid nerve that nothing could shake. One other tiling I should say about Parnell of this period. He was extremely modest in bearing, in speech, and, above all, in his own estimate of himself. As I went home with him one night to the Westminster Palace Hotel, where we were both living at the time, 1 tried to impress him with his immense possibilities. I did not succeed. “ I think I have got as far as I will ever go,” he said as he opened the door of the hotel. Not lopg from that period I was to associate with a very different Parnell.