OBITUARY

Otago Witness, Issue 3033, 1 May 1912, Page 26

OBITUARY

MR JUSTIN M'CARTHY. LONDON, April 26.

Mr Justin McCarthy, the eminent historian, novelist, journalist, and ex-chair-man of the Irish parliamentary party, is dead; aged 81 years. Mr Justin iVl'UarUiy was born near Cork on November 22 1850, the year after Catholic emanci;>ation uad become a legal reality. When lie had barely reached his I7th year, lie became the mainstay of the family, though a salary of ill a week as a reporter on tne Cork Examiner could hardly nave done much to palliate the domestic distresses of the family. He was well grounded in Latin and Greek, had added French, German, and Italian to his store by home study, and mastered shorthand in tlie early months of his reporter’s career.

-the Irish famine, then at its height, furnished young M‘Carthy with the opportunity lor a precocious exercise of his talents in descriptive writing in the Cork Examiner, and gave him h.s first insight into the Irish problem, which was to occupy so much of his maturer years. As a special correspondent lie travelled in the stricken districts. and often saw the hinged ooffin do its double and treble duty in filling nameless graves. Ho must have heard the bells of Cork ringing a joyous peal when an American frigate put into the harbour with food supplies sent over sea from Irishmen who had made their homes away from Ireland. Justin M‘Carth v attended the Clonmel State trial to chronicle the death sentences passed on Smith O’Brien and Thomas Francis Heagher. In 1860 London opened its arms to him, and he accepted the offer of a position as reporter on a now London daily, the Morning Star. Mr M'Carthy’s knowledge of modern languages secured his advancement to the position of foreign editor, and he made his first journey abroad to describe as special correspondent the coronation ceremonies at Konigeborg of King William of Prussia, and at Komgsberg met Bismarck and Meyerbeer. When the editorship of the Star foil vacant through death, Mr McCarthy stepped into the place, and found time to write his first published novel, “ Paul Massey." It was a work of which he was not proud, end when his literary position was assured he withdrew it from circulation, and did all he could to dissociate his name from it. He had set his heart on a visit to the United Mates, q.nd .he left the Morning Star. Mr M'Carthy stayed two years in the States, with a brief visit paid to London in 1870. He became attached to the Now York Independent, wrote leading articles tor the Tribune under Horace

Greeley, and accepted *a commission from Harper and Brothers for a hundred short stories to appear in “ Harper’s Monthly ” a commission which ho “ worked off” dur- | mg his travels up and down the country, i During his brief visit to England he bej came associated with the Daily Hews as a | leader writer, and when ho -went west again ho included Canada in his travels. | Irish politics, indeed, had a great deal to do with his decision to return home. I The Home Kitle movemenit had begun ' under Isaac Butt, and M'Carthy wished to ; have some share in it. -So ho re-entered j English journalism as a political writer, and sat in the Gallery ol the House of Commons to write his leaders for the Daily ■ News until Longford County, in 1879, elected him its member, and he left the Gallery and took to the floor of the House. The next 20 years of his life were pretty evenly divided between jxrlitics and literature. He had just begun his ” History of Our Own Times” when ho was elected for Longford, and the publishers who had projected the history became alarmed lest his association with Irish politics should prejudice the commercial chances of the enterprise So they offered him compensation to release them from an agreement into which Meesrs Qiiatto and Windus wore only too plea.sed to enter, and he went steadily on with his history, which became an immediate popular success, was translated 1 into several Continental languages, and ran through almost as many editions in America as in Great Britain. He held a unique position as an Irish Nationalist in the general esteem of the British public. -For 10 or 15 years he had been a favourite novelist in tho middleclass homes of England, and to tho genera! ostracism of the Irish ivarty ho was an exception. He was included among the 65 Irish members of Parliament who were vindicated by tho Parnell Commission, but the original and collective charge fell lightly upon him, and everybody had laughed! at tho idea of Justin M'Carthy being an instigator of murder and political crime. ! Mr M'Carthy then became the medium in the delicate task of interpreting the attitude of official and organised Liberalism, as represented by Mr Gladstone, to organised Nationalism, concentrated in tho person of Mr Parnell. At first. Mr M'Carthy sympathised with the Parncllite claim that the Irish Nationalist party must call its leadership its own exclusive concern. But Parnell’s determination, despite the protest of hij colleagues, to issue that manifesto in which he called upon the Irish people “ not to throw him to the English i wolves,” finally decided Mr M'Carthy's action. He headed tho revolt of the anti-Parncllitcs during those stormy sittings in Committee Room 15. j At last the time came when Parnell, in ! the heat of his passion, snatched a resolution from his hand, and the two friends confronted each other during painful moments whilst the partisans filled the room with their shouts Mr M'Carthy then quietly and gravely said, in a few dignified words, that it was useless to prolong ; a discussion which must be barren or everyi thing but ill-temper, indignity, and roI crimination, and ho called upon all who j agreed with him to follow him from the { room. Forty-three colleagues went with j him and Mr Parnell's faithful 22 in silence 1 watched them go. Their going meant the i break-up of that splendid instrument, tho | Irish Nationalist party under Mr Parnell. After the election of 1892, the Parnellites had shrunk to a faction and a fraction, and nine moody irreconcilable men sat apart from the Irish pa.rty, now led by Mr M'Carthy, and 72 strong. Early in 1896 Mr M'Carthy resigned the leadership of the Irish party, and at the general election of 1900 ho retired from Parliament. His career of personal well-being and placid prosperity was marred, or in- ; Corrupted, by two misfortunes; first, that 0 { a nervous breakdown and a partial failure [ of eyesight, and next that of a heavy pecu-

niary loss, through a tangle of legal technicalities by which he was held responsible, as a member of the Executive Committee, for a large share of the financial failure of an Irish Industries Exhibition held 1 in London. In 1897 he betook himself bo West-giate-on-Sea. A partial restoration to health enabled him to continue his literary work by dictation, and in his retirement he wrote several historical and reminiscent works. The fifth volume of his “ History of Our Own Times,” bringing the book down to the Diamond Jubilee, had been published just, before his breakdown, but at Westgate-on-Soa he wrote the lives of Robert Peel, of Pope Leo XIII, and of Gladstone; a book on “ Modern England,” “ The History of the Reign of Queen Anne,” and throe other volumes of memoirs. He was singularly happy in his friendships, which mad'e him the intimate of most of the eminent figures in English political, social, literary and artistic life since mid-Victorian times