THE PARNELL FAMILY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1793, 3 April 1886, Page 25

THE PARNELL FAMILY.

Uncles and Aunts of the Irish Leader,

The Anglo-Irish family of Parnell had given birth to a good many remarkable men and women before the present Dictator of Ireland Baw the light. Originally settled at Congleton, in Cheshire, whence the title held by the head of the house was derived, they passed over to Ireland and bought lands there in the reign of Charles 1 1. The eldest son of the first emigrant was the once famous poet, Thomas Parnell, Archdeacon of Clogher. It would appear that thiß (officially) venerable ecclesiastic followed conscientiously his own advice to his hero :

Turn, gentle hermit of the dale !

since, having been an ardent Whig when Whiggery was in the ascendant, he cast in his lot at a later period with the Tories, when Toryism appeared to be the more promising road to promotion. In the latter part of his career he became intimate with Pope, who eventually edited his poems, and with Swift, who obtaiue i for him the rich living of Finglas in County Dublin. John Farnell, the younger brother of the poet, succeeded to the family estase, aud became the patriarch of all succeeding Pcirnells — whose name, by the way, is never pronounced in Ireland, as is usual in England, PsxvneU, with the accent on the last syllable. It is there called Parnell, like "enamel," "darnel," "sln-ap-nell," &c. ; and the most distinguished bearer of the patronymic, being of somewhat penurious habits, bore, in that land of witty sobriquets, the nickname of " Sir Henry Parenail " accordingly. John Parnell died a Judge of the Queen's Bench, and to him succeeded his son, another John, created a baronet in 1766; and he again was followed by his son, the second baronet of the name, who was Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer. With this last gentleman the oddities of the family seem to have commenced. There were five sons and a daughter born to him and his wife, who belonged to the eminently respectable, well-ordered house of Brooke of Colebrooke. Their eldest son, Sir Augustus, was a poor dumb cripple, and by an act of Parliament the estates passed in his lifetime to the brother Sir Henry. This last made up for his brother's defects by talking incessantly in public and running up and down perpetually between London and Dublin, being the principal originator of the great high road from Shrewsbury to Holyhead, which opaned up Wales for the first time to ordinary travellers. The Menai bridge, which constituted the crowning glory of the achievement, was looked upon in its day as one of the wonders of the world. In recognition of this and other public services, Sir Henry F.irnell was created Baron Congleton in 1841. The third brother, after Sir Augustus and Sir Henry, was William Hayes Parnell, who acquired the estate of Avondale, County Wicklow. The handsome " demesne," in Irish phrase, is situated, as may be gathered from its name, on the Irish Avon — (Avon or Afon means river in all Celtic tongues)— the stream which Moore celebrated : not in this wide world a valley so sweet. T^bhe vale in whoie bosom the bright waters meet.

There are certainly a good many lovelier Valleys up and down the world, but all the Irish geese evolve into swans, and Wicklow is undoubtedly a pretty country. If peaceful scenery only produced j>eaceful minds in its inhabitants, the heir of Avondale should have been as mild as his great granduncle's hermit himself. O. S. Parnell's mother was an American lady, Miss Delia Stewart, daughter of Commodore Charles Stewart, of the United States Navy. It has been commonly said (truly or falsely we have no means of knowing) that Mrs Farnell was perfectly rabid in her hatred of England, and that she taught her young son, like another Hannibal, to vow enmity to the modern Rome even in his petticoats. To return to the sons of Sir John Parnell, second baronet. Besides Sir Augustus Jtho fool and Sir Henry the clever and William of Avondale, there were two sons, Thomas" and Arthur, and one daughter, Sophia. Thomas Parnell, •' Old Tom Parnell," as all Dublin knew him for 40 years, had a huge, ungainly figure like Dr Johnson's, and one of the sweetest, softest faces •ver worn by mortal man. He had at some remote and long-forgotten period been seized with a fervent and self-denying religious enthusiasm of the ultra-Protestant type, and this

had somehow given birth to a scheme for arranging the texts of the Bible in v mysterious order, which, when completed, should have afforded infallible answers to every question of the human mind. To construct the interminable tables required for this wonderful plan, poor Tom Parnell devoted his life and fortune. F- or years, winch muat have amounted to many decade-., he laboured at tiie work in a bare, gloomy, dusty room in a Protestant office in Sackville street. Money went to clerk.-; ami printers ; and no doubt the good man, who lived himself as he used to say laughingly, on "a second-hand bone," gave money also freely in alms. One way or another, Mr Parnell grew poorer and more poor, his coat looked shabbier, and his beautiful long while hair more obviously in need of a barber. Once or twice every summer he was prevailed on by his sister to tear himself from his work and pay inn- a few days' visit in the country, ton rnilr , off, mv\ to her and all her visitors he preached incessantly his monotonous appeal : " Rupenb, and cease to eat good dinners, and devote yourselves to compiling texts!" When his sister — who had treated him as a mother would treat a silly boy — died, nhe left him a small annuity, to b3 paid to him in driblets, by trustees, le'.b he should spend io at once and starve if he received it half-yearly. After this epoch he worked on with fewer interruptions than ever at his dreary text-books in that empty, grimy office. Summer's sun aud winter's snow were alike to the lonely old man. He ploughed on at his hopeless task, There was no probability that he should live to fill up the interminable columns, and no apparent re ison to suppose that an}' human being would use the books if he ever did so and if they were printcl. But still he laboured on. Old friends who had known him in their childhood looked in now and then to shake hands with him, and noticing how pale and worn and aged he seemed, tried to induce him to come to their homes. But he only exhorted them as usual to repent and give tip good dinners and help him with his texts, and denounced wildly all the rich people who lived in handsome parks, with mud villages at their gales — as he said, ' Like a velvet dress with a draggled skirt." Then, when his visitor had departed, Mr Paruell returned patiently to his interminable texts. At last one day, late in the autumn twilight, the man whose duty it was to shut up the office entered the room, and fo md the old man sitting quietly in the chair where he had laboured so long — fallen into the last long sleep.

This Thomas Parnell was Chirlcs Stewart Parnell's great-uncle, his grandfather's brother. His sister (of whom we have already spoken}, Charles Stewart Parnell's great aunt, was a more remarkable person than Tom Parnell, in quite an opposite way. Sophia Parnell (sister also of the first Lord Congleton) was a womau of great ability and learning — a maitresse femme, with a strong and resolute character and a i'aco singularly like that of a lioness. She was a dent of the old school, anil her great delight in o'<l age was in reading her magnificent editions of Hume, Gibbon and Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. Before her marriage she lived alone in her house in London on her fortune of £600 a year, which in those happy times sufficed to euable the possessor to keep a good establishment and carriage. She went to France also, and became very intimate with Condorcet and his family, for whom she had groat admiration ; and likewise knew Madama de Stael, Arthur Young, and most of the notabilities of his time, Rather late in life she married her countryman, George H impcbn Evans, the owner of Porlrane, a beautifully situated estate on the li-Wh Coast, about ten miles from Dublin. There her energy and ability soon worked wonders. She induced and aided her husband to contest and win the representation of the county from the Tories, and for many years Mr Evans sat in Parliament, ali'ording on all occasions loyal help to the Whig.-!, and now aud then a modified support to O'Counell. Mrs Evans was a Madame Roland to her husband in all his political work. When he dii d the children and sorrowful widow cast abouo for means to perpetuate his memory, and hil. upon the singular idea of building a now Irish Hound Tower precisely like the old. The edifice has now been standing for forty years on the summit of a hill in her deer park, a useful landmark to sailors along the dangeruus cost. Lei't w ith a large sum of money (£90,000 it was reported), besides her good estate of Fortran© and her house in Eaton square, Mrs Evans devoted herself to the improvement of her property and neighbourhood. She built two handsome schools and gave this children who attended them each a little garden. She. planted extensively, made tine walks and built great greenhouses. One of her pursuits was conchology. She succeeded in makiug a unique collection of Irish slit lis, in specimens of which her be.uitiful shorr was singula*ly rich. On tins shore under the lofty black dill's, are several imposing caves. In the largest, which is lighted from above by a shaft, through which smugglers formerly drew up their booty, Mrs Evans on one occasion gave a great luncheon party. The company were all in high spirits and thoroughly enjoying the pigeo.i pies and champagne, when someone observed that the tide might soon bo rising. Mrs Evans replied that it was all right, there was plenty of time and the festival proceeded for another half hour when somebody rose aud strolled to the mouth of the cavern and soon uttered a cry of alarm. The tide had ri<cu and, was already beating at a formidable depth against both sides of the rocks which shut in the cave. Consternation, of course, reigned among the party. A night spent in the farther recesses of that damp hole, even supposing that the tide did not reach the end (which was very doubtful), afforded anything but a cheerful prospect. Could anybody get up through the shatt to the upper cliff? Certainly ; if they had a long ladder. But there were no ladders lying about the cave ; and finally everybody stood mournfully watching the rising waters at the mouth of their prison. Mrs Evans all this time appeared singularly calm, and administered a little encouragement to some of the almost fainting ladies. When the panic was at its climax Mrs Evans' own large boat was seen quietly rounding the projecting rocks, and was soon comfortably pushed up to the feet of the imprisoned party, who had nothing to do but to embark in two or three detachments and be safely landed in the bay outside, beyond the reach of the sea. The whole little incident had, it is to bo feared, been prearranged by the hostess to infuse a little wholesome excitement among her country guests. Naturally Mrs Evans, holding the opinions we have described (though keeping them much to herself), was not a regular attendant at the village church. Carriage loads of her guests, however, were frequently set down at the gates on Sunday, and sometimes she accompanied them herself to her largo, old-fashioned pew. One day a big dog, belonging to one of her friends, followed his owner into the church and lay extended on the wooden floor of the pew, which at intervals the beast proceeded to thump sonorously with his tail, 'after the manner of big dogs in durance. This disturbance was too much for the poor parson, who did not love Mrs Evans. As he proceeded with the service and the rappings were repeated again and again his

patience gave way, and he read out this extraordinary lesson to hi,-, astonished congregation : '• The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. Turn out that dog, if you please! It's extremely wrong to bring a clog into church.'' During tho winter Mrs Evans was wont to live much alone in her country house, surrounded only by her old servant.-.. When at last in old age she found herself attacked by mortal disease she went to Paris to profit by the skill of some French physician in whom she had confidence, and there, with unshaken courage and calmness and in full hope of a better_ life, she passed away. Her remains, enclosed in a leaden coffin, were brought back to Portrane, and her poor do" 1 , who adored her, somehow recognised the dreadful chest and exhibited a frenzy of grief, leaping upon it and tearing at the pall with piteous cries. Next morning the poor brute was in such a state as to bo supposed to be rabid, and it was thought necessary to shoot him. Mrs Evans was buried beside her beloved husband in the little roofless and ruined church of Purtrane, close by the shore. On another grave in the same church, belonging to the same family, a clog had some years previously died of grief.— jifanchestcr (htardian.