CAPTAIN O'SHEA. (M.A.P.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2675, 21 June 1905, Page 78

CAPTAIN O'SHEA. (M.A.P.)

— A First Meeting. —

I have often told of the day when I saw Captain O'Sh&a for the first time. It was at the meeting in the City Hall In Dublin when Parnell was elected for the first time leader of the Irish party. The representatives of Ireland who had gathered on that occasion were most of them men who had lived mainly in Ireland, and few of them were drawn from the wealthy classes. This man, with his elaborate clothes and his general air of a Londoner who had lived, stood out in relief from them all. He had a surprise in store for those who looked curiously at him. Nobody expected Parnell to be elected at this meeting ; even he himself did not expect it, and certainly had made no preparation to bring it about. The

'' general supposition was that Mr Shaw, the old leader, would be allowed to retain his place, while Parnell would occupy the position of the irresponsible guerilla subaltern, whom the"titular 'chief could either avow or disclaim, as his reckless enterprise succeeded or failed. But the night before the public meeting in the City Hall a small group of men, of whom Mr Healy was one. had a meeting almost by accident m a Dublin hotel: they resolved to put forward Parnell and to carry him if they could ; and it was this little gathering which thus, unexpectedly and almost accidentally, shaped all the future of Ireland. When the division came the result was still uncertain. To the surprise of nearly i everybody, Captain O'Shea was one of | those who voted for Parnell. It is one of the ironies of history that two men who were afterwards Parnell's most power1 ful enemies should have had an important share in procuring his election to the g:ddy height of Irish leadership. —The Man.— It was not long before the Irish party began to recognise — though the reason was hidden for a considerable period — that Captain O'Shea was an important factor in the life of Parnell. It was a discovery which they made with some misgiving — indeed, there was perhaps no man in the Irish representation for whom they had so instinctive a dislike and distrust — I should say political rather than personal. For, whatever his faults, Captain O'Shea was always personally a very agreeable man — indeed, in the centre of the cyclone which he caused, his own interesting personality has too often been entirely ignored. As a matter of fact, he was a man of very considerable abilities. He was very witty ; the wit was cynical, it is true, but it did not lose its flavour for that reason. It was the shrewd wit ot a man of the world with a certain inborn tendency to mockery. Often a saying of his summed up a situation in its" essentials very well. I don't i know any man who could convei'se more | agreeably or entertainingly, or who was more winning arid refined in manner and bearing. Whatever lay down in the depths of his strange and darkened soul, the exterior was worthy of a French aristocrat who lived before the French Revolution. I have always thought that when he was in^^his maturity Captain O'Shea was a haiiSsiDme man. His features were well chiselled;.- aristocratic, even distinguished-. He- was not tall, but he was. gracefully built ; and, in fact, he might ~ well have passed for the man who was the cause and not the victim of feminine tragedies. — "Nominal" Home Rulers. — But instinctively he was distrusted and disliked by his fellow Irishmen, becau.se he represented politically the things they thought most dangerous to the Irish cause. They had to make war on the Irish representatives who sought anything from British Ministers ; it would have been the death of the independence and strength of their movement if they admitted any i compromise on that point. Now, Captain ' O'Shea was usually regarded as one of the Irishmen who were compelled by instinct, and perhaps by broken fortunes, to seek an office of profit from the Ministers. He belonged to what were called the "nominal" Home Rulers — that is to say, the men who were so lukewarm and insincere in the cause of Home Rule that no Minister need fear them as serious opponents. To understand how profoundly such a man would be distrusted one has to remember that it was a period when Ireland was passing through the throes of a civil war, and when the slavery of the land system was being violently broken up after three centuries of omnipotence. The feeling of the Parnellite t' the "nominal" Home Ruler was about the same as that of the men of the Mountain to the Royalists and the Girondists when the question was still being fought out in the French Convention whether France was to relapse into feudalism or emerge into modern democracy. The hatred of the two sections was aggravated by the fact that the Government of the day were sending Ixishmen to gaol by the hundred, including several members of Parliament, and that the "nominal" Home Rulers, in spite of this, continued to support the Ministry guilty, from the Parnellite point of view, of these outrages on Irish liberty. — Choosing a Seat. — A member's views in the House of Commons are indicated by the seat he occupies. This question in the choice of a seat sometimes rises to great, importance. It did in the beginning of the Parliament of '80. Those Irish members who were resolved to make war on all Ministries and to have no compromise and to seek no office thought that this attitude should be indicated by their taking up their seats on the Opposition side of the House, while the "nominal"' Home Rulers, with Mr Shaw at their head, signified their general adhesion to the Gladstone Liberal Ministry by taking seats on the Liberal side of the House. Captain O'Shea, in spite of his vote for Parnell, was one of those who sat on the Ministerial side of the House ; and thus in the most open and unmistakeable way he separated himself from the young party around Parnell who were the leaders of the Irish Revolution, and soon were to be the one party left on the Nationalist side in Irish politics. —The Visit to Eltham.— But the fact, nevertheless, remained that although Captain O'Shea ranged himself among the most dangerous and hated enemies of the party of Parnell, Captain O'Shea still remained apparently the bosom friend of Parnell himself. He was constantly Avith Parnell ; they were seen travelling together ; they were known to meet regularly during week-ends ; and this knowledge of their intimacy came from Captain O'Shea, and not from Parnell. That silent, stern, reserved man never told anybody anything of his private movements : almost to the last clay of his life his address was unknown to a single member of his party. But Captain O"!Shea, on the other hand, would constantly say that he would discuss such and

such a thing with Parnell, for he was to meet him on Sunday. And he would even sometimes mention the place where he was to meet him— it was at Eltham — that is to say, at the house in the London suburb where Captain O'Shea was known to live. — The Kilmainham Treaty. — When the so-called Kilmainham treaty between Parnpll and Gladstone was published this intimacy between the two men became even more feared. The Kilmainham treaty, I may interpolate, for the benefit of a generation that has grown up since then, was supposed to be an arrangement between the Irish leader and the British Prime Minister that Parnell should be released from Kilmainham Prison, where he then was, and that, on the other ■and, Parnell was to give his good office to the Premier to restore order in Ireland ; and there was even a clause which, suggested a parliamentary alliance between the forces commanded by each leader. This compact, whether truly understood or not, became all at once one of the fiercest topics of party passion and party warfare, and that at a time when, as I have said, there was something like civil war in Ireland. In the midst of one of the most ferocious debates Captain O'Shea's intimacy with Parnell and power over him were brought out with a dramatic intensity that seems more like the invention of a melodramatist than a page from real life. Mr Forster, dismissed through the Kilmainham treaty from office as Chief Secretary, and burning with fierce revenge as well as with worthier feelings, made a tremendous attack on Parnell. In the midst of the attack allusion was made to a letter of Parnell's of which Captain O'Shea. had been the bearer from the inside of Kilmainham Prison. In reading this letter, as he was obliged to do in the stress of debate, Captain O'Shea omitted, either by accident or design, the clause which suggested the parliamentary alliance between the Gladstonians and the Parnellites. Mr Forster, in a quiet tone of voice, got up immediately after Captain O'Shea had sat down. He made his next deadly move with well-concealed passion, but with a mighty effort. He asked Captain O'Shea if he had not omitted a sentence from the letter. Captain O'Shea had to stand up again and acknowledge that he had made this omission, and then under this pressure he read out the sentence about, a Gladstone-3?arnell alliance. There was an explosion of horror, wonder, almost stupefaction. It was hard to say who were most shocked of all the different sections of the House — the .Liberals, the Tories, or the Parnellites — for reasons into which -I need not enter now. I have always believed that Parnell did the right thing in making the Kilmainham treaty — so far as my knowledge of that obscure transaction goes, — but it was a terribly risky experiment, and, at all events, at the moment when it was revealed, it was one of the most melodramatic revelations of modern parliamentary life. —Parnell— The Leader.— Here, then, was the strange position in which the followers of Parnell found themselves : the- man who was the most pronounced enemy of the Parnellite policy and a member of the political section which Parnellites had to destroy before they could really form the dominant party in Irish politics was the private and the most trusted confidant of Parnell himself. And just at this epoch the uneasiness of the Parnellites was increased by the curious and dreadful change which came over Parnell himself. When he was elected chief of his party in 1880 he was a handsome, brisk, inexhaustible, ardent, young man. There was no labour too great for him. He would stop up all night whenever there was a chance of baiting a Minister, and then would catch the first train the following morning, if need be, and travel right through to a oig open-air meeting; in - remote village in Ireland. He went through toils th:>t would kill most men in travelling through America, and addressing meetings night after night. And in the midst of that campaign he rushed back to Ireland : and during the general election was übiquitous and omni]Dotent, so much so that, if thei'e only had been time, he might have been elected for every Nationalist seat in Ireland ; as it was, he was elected for three. And all these immense fatigues he went through with perfect equanimity, never showing cither exhaustion, or irritability, or exultation ; immovable, impassive, "like a man of bronze," as I heard Mr Healy say at the time. And he looked, in spite of the deadly pallor of the face, a man of giant physique, incapable of feeling fatigue or apathy, or even ailments. — A Changed Man. — Parnell has been described in some chronicles as a dressy man in his early manhood. He never was a dressy man — at least, never in the years I knew him, which were many; but, then, lie was never ill-dressed either in those early days. But immediately after the revelation of the Kilmainham treaty tins alert, inexhaustible, ardent, young man, who seemed like Mine keen Toledo blade encased in a scabbard of bright and impenetrable metal, became all at once an elderly man, languid in walk, and self -absorbed in manner ; a prey, apparently, to some disease of body or mind that was slowly eating into his vitals. His clothes intimated the change in the man ; a hea\y woollen waistcoat covered die enlarging waist ; gradually he came to get shabbier and shabbier, md he even ne2,le<"ted to take care of his hair — it used to fall down almost to his shoulders; his beard became long and straggling — I will not say that he looked the less impressive for that. I once pointed him out to an American lady who was visiting the House, and she said she preferred him so, with his long, uncut hair and his straggling bcavd and careless dress. It gave him, in her ey^s, a curiously mystical and apostolic 100k — as though he were one of the saintly men who in the fasts and solitude and remoteness of the desert worked and prayed for the redemption of sinful man.

But Parnell had unmistakably aged all of a sudden, and soon this change in his appearance was followed by a corresponding" change- in .his habits, both political and personal. • He gave up going to meetings in Ireland ; he was often absent for .days, even weeks, from the House: and he ceased to associate with any of his colleagues outside the House of Commons. In time whispers began to be heard of the secret association, which is no longer a secret for anyone in the world ; and this, it is scarcely necessary to say, only added to the hatred and distrust which were felt for Captain O'Shea. He was regarded as the man wi.o would ultimately ruin the Irish leader, and in that way also ruin the mighty movement which was associated with. Parnell's overpowering name and, personality. J — The Liverpool Failure. — But the election of 1885 was coming on ; and there was the hope tha.t Captain O'Shea would be driven out of the House of Commons. It was known that his old constituency of County Clare would no longer 1 ' elect him. There were few mem- . bers of Pamell's party who suspected thafc.j Parnell would be mad enough to propose Captain O'Shea for any Irish) seat. One of his enemies in the party, bearing that . Tafnell -jnight put Captain O'Shea for- I ward for an Ulster constituency, took J steps to prevent such an event. Suddenly ' one" fine day at Liverpool I was surprised ' to find Parnell there ; the general election m Ireland -was in progress ; and Ireland undoubtedly was the pbee for Parnell, not England. The explanation for his , presence vras even more surprising : it ' was to get Captain O'She^a returned for one of the divisions of Liverpool. And | Parnell worked fcr this result with an 1 energy that was demoniac. Hs addressed | meetings everywhere — five or six a day ; ' he was, indeed, as one possessed. If he, heard of anybody he could influence he rushed to try and influence him. But it was all in vain. When tha poll was over Captain O'Shea was beaten ; by only a few votes, it is true, something like 28 or 30; these 28 to -30 votes decided for a while the fate of Ireland, and decided for ever the fate of Parnell. — Captain O'Shea for Galway. — Eor he was resolved to get Captain O'Shea 'back into Parliament, and Ihus it was 'that he toak the fatal step which ,was the beginning of his downfall. I still, remember with poignant freshness ihe night when Earnell told me tliat ho in- ' tended .to put Captain o'Sliea- forward lor -the seat in Galway, which -I had to vacate i .because .of my being ekctcd for Liverpool j at the same time. I- could point out the very -spot where this fateful communication was made to me, tbe awful consequences of which I saw with that strange" second sight that comes to us sometimes in moments of great crises. The spot was _-just where one enters the big gates to Palace Yard* I will nofr retell here the well-known story of the famous Galway election. Suffice it to say that I comniu- j nicated at once with my colleagues in Dublin the terrible news. At iheir request Mr Biggar and 1 went over to Dub- ' lin to consult -them. Then Biggar resolved to fight the battle out with Parnell : and I, in agreement with nearly every other member of the party, thought the only policy for Ireland was to choose the lesser of two evils, and to throw away one parliamentary seat rather than sacrifice the all-essential leadership of Parnell. I still recollect with 'the same poignancy with which such tremendous events fill one's memory the agonising nights when we sat up in Dublin, distracted, broken-hearted, strained at last to such an -excitement that when for -Says we did not hear from Parnell we jumped to the conclusion that ] he ha-d committed suicide as an escape from" the dread imp % asse to which his life j had come. And th'en, just as we were possessed by these awful presentiments," Parnell broke the long silence ; he had got an address from us which promised him our -support in Galway, and at once he was accessible ; and wit hip a few hoiu\s he was on his way from London to Galway, and to risk everything on the single cast of , the die. For Ghrhvay was to be the end of him and his movement, or a new proof of his omnipotence. It is the power to risk everything in this way that distinguishes tho great man of iron will from the ordinary man, and makes him their ! master and them his slaves. ! I was one of those who accompanied Pa-rnell on that fateful journey to Galway. Whatever he felt, he -was outwardly as composed as usual. And yet there was a soene awaiting him there which might have appalled a man of even iron nerve. There was an excited crowd that seemed literally thirsting for blood ; all the passions that make a revolution and -raise a guillotine were in that surging mass of humanity. They might well be forgiven for their desperation when they thought that their town was to be abandoned to an enemy of that cause which most of them held dearer and higher than • life. And from out the mass of surging, raging, shouting humanity I still see the face bi Captain O'Shea emerging, with its deadly pallor, making even the stand-up and spotless collar look almost yellow, and making for the arm of Parnell as his buckler and protection against that crowd that would willingly have slain him there and then. — A Dramatic Scene. — Captain O'Shea, as everybody knows, was returned ; but his seat in Parliament was worthless to him. Whispers of the terrible scandal that afterwards became •known to all the world had got into the newsipapers, and Captain O'Shea was avoided. He wandered like an unquiet spirit about the House of Commons, seemed uncertain where he should sit ; was like a haunted and abashed ghost. In six months' time the House of Commons, to which he had been elected with such tragic strain on Parnell and Ireland, had ceased to exist, and the poor honour was no longer 'his. And then he disappeared from public life, and was not heard of again until the famous Parnell Commission, which was established to try the

Pigott forgery. Captain O'Shea was one of the witnesses for The Times, and his cross-examination by Sir Ghailcs Russell supplied the most dramatic and gLasily scenes in that trial of so many melodramatic episodes. By the side of Sir L'hurles Russell sat Parnell", and the hushed court coulsl hear the hoarse and almost raucous whispers of Parnell as he suggested question after question to his counsel. Anybody who had even a suspicion of the deadly cause of hatred between th/oe two won had an opportunity of witnessing — amid the self-restraint and in all the ironbound rales of a law court — one of those deadly duels to the death whcie two men fight ior the love of the same woman. It . was a scene that almost froze one's blood. Between the two men there was the contrast which made the duel the more dramatic. ParnelPs composure for the moment had vanished ; he was simply the wild man thirsting for revenge, witTl hatred nude and revealed ; and while the burning passions of his soul were echoed in the hoarse voice, Captain O'Shea, on the other hand, stood in the box, calm, smiling, debonair, perfect master, apparently, of himself. Those wJio thought Captain O'Shea was an enemy to be despised would have been undeceived on that day ond by that scene ; his rapier play was precise, calm, deadly. —The End.— Of the divorce case I can say nothing from personal knowledge : I wos in America when it was tried. Nor do 1 know anything of Captain O'Shea's later life. I used now aiid then to see him in the streets : once I saw him waiting outside the office of a solicitor, who, by a curious coincidence, was my solicitor too. The last time I saw him was late in the evening outside Victoria, station. He seemed to m>e to be very broken, for he walked with, a- slovr, tired step ; he who used to Lave all the briskness and smart- i ness of a young officer of caralry. But I heard something of him from a friend ol j mine with whom he had had a long con- i versation. He always maintained that he had been a doeply-wronged man, and that he had been pursued throughout his life by persistent ill-luck, misunderstanding, and betrayal. I cannot pronounce any verdict upon the story ; if I could, I would hesitate to do so. But doubtless he "had his own tale to tell, and, anyhow, the ■obscurity, the loneliness, the sadness ot his 'last' days were in their way as tragic as Pacnell's sudden taking off. It was a eomeidimoe which made this tragedy in real life complete to the very end that Captain O'Shea died in the same seaside town where died some 15 years before the man whom he had helped to destroy. — T. P.