Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLVIII, Issue 45, 15 November 1923, Page 7

Evening Memories

(By William O’Brien.)

CHAPTER XXVlll.—(Continued.) The presence of more than one party to the exquisite messages to Galway had never once suggested itself, and I suffered myself to be shepherded by the genial Doctor to my new duty-visit with no more cheerful anticipation than that of a political chat in .my limping French with some doubtless most indulgent fine lady. I was already beginning to stumble into the discovery, clear enough to me now by the experiences of many a charming’year, that my hostess was one of the most distinguished women in Europe, both for beauty and for intellectual power, when the door opened and her daughter Sophie entered the room. What followed there are no words consecrated enough to describe. For me, the heavens visibly opened, and there descended the Guardian Angel who has ever since enfolded me in the healing shadow of her wings. An angel, .too, of action as well as of wisdom, whose footsteps left a shining track of inspiritment and hope as they went. Human nature would be the better, if it were possible in language that would not be a desecration of the holy places, to tell of the hidden life of one who has made Wordsworth’s lines—- “ Nor hath she ever chanc’d to know That aught were easier than to bless” ring through my life like a never-ending hymn. But only one pen could attempt the task with the necessary delicacy and the necessary reserve, and I fear me, to expect that hers should touch the theme would be to expect a violet to write of her life in her woodland nook, or a Sister of Charity to publish abroad the beauty of her ways. More ' than one holy person has suggested that her intervention in my lonely and hunted life was the reward of a certain tender intercessor on high. It would be presumptuous to accept this as an explanation of how an All-Seeing Power . discuses His unsearchable decrees of good or evil fortune among men. One can only bow a reverent head before the eternal secret. But this remark, at least, I can with knowledge make, that had the fondest prayers that even a mother’s love could utter been heard, she could not well have supplicated for more of human blessedness for her son than the supreme event of my life brought with it. Often enough, especially since my release from public cares, has come the thought that it would be almost a meanness to taste the sweets of health and peace of mind, and an ideal home, as I am doing, were there not forty years of almost unbroken ill-health and feverish labor and evil usages of all sorts behind to redress the balance in God’s great share-dividing account between 'the things that make men rejoice and the things that make them suffer. I can only humbly pray that, for all the children of men, the Cross may be as richly recompensed by the Crown!* * Wilfrid Blunt’s note of my marriage to Sophie Raffalovich by the Archbishop of Cashel, may be of interest to more than ourselves, for it was the last occasion on which the greatest ecclesiastical leader and the greatest lay leader of the Irish racer-with the entire array of Parnell’s marshals and russet captains— out of a possible eighty-four—were destined ever again to meet together in unity. - “June 11th, 1890. To London to attend William O’Brien’s wedding. This was a really wonderful event and has lifted me once more to a higher level. It is all very well to scoff at the age in which we live, but the Catholic Irish are a standing miracle of God’s grace. I should say there has never been—certainly not in the last hundred years a political party so pure in its purposes. Along with them, from Dr. Croke to Dr. Duggan, you have a second army of high ecclesiastics, and no doubtful man among them for honesty and virtue. To-day’s wedding was y the apotheosis of this high-mindedness. v Dr. Croke, in giving the pastoral benediction, said to William O’Brien: ' I have no advice to give you, for you need none.’ The truth is, he has led an absolutely virtuous and unselfish life from boyhood up, allowing himself no pleasure and ' almost no rest. He (O’Brien) alluded to this very simply and pathetically in his speech returning thanks afterwards at the wedding breakfast. It was in his best and most subdued manner and made many a man there shed tears. I saw Dillon weeping fairly and T. P. Gill, and even two

I ‘ POSTCRIPTA. ‘•‘A few days before our wedding, fate made me the central figure in a desperate affray, between police and people in - Tipperary. Before our honeymoon trip was over, I was again on my way to prison. I wonder will ray readers face with equal equanimity the change from the story of blithe comradeship and abounding hope I have been trying to tell to the agony of fratricidal discord that was to follow? In the new wars even victory brought no exhilaration except to meaner minds, and the wounds were no longer to be those of . clean bullets, but of poisoned arrows. Nevertheless, the popular shrinking from the duty of investigating the causes of political dissensions, in place of bewailing them, acts in reality as a principal means of encouraging dissensions, for in repelling sensitive minds it gives a free let to coarser ones, and thus deprives the country o? the remedy of calm and, well-informed public judgment, which in all free communities, must be the ultimate test of right or wrong, of truth or falsity in public affairs. A consultation of surgeons might as well agree to ignore the disease rather than touch upon an unpleasant topic. Ireland is not the only .country, that is from time to time shaken by political dissensions. It is, on the contrary, the only one where public criticism is not held to be of the essence of freedom. What is wanted is not an end of controversy, which will never come in Ireland or anywhere else until there is an end of all things, but more refinement and a broader toleration in its methods. Pray, then, let Us recognise that next to the offence of those who originate dissensions comes that of a public that shirks the duty of placing the responsibility of the evil on the right shoulders with the temperate courage that can form its judgments unobscured by the small party passions of the moment. Let ns see whether, so far as, the time is ripe for a final adjudication, the reasons why the tremendous forces enlisted on behalf of Ireland before the Split of 1890, and again in far vaster measure while the . Home Rule Government 'of 1911-1916 were in power came to so disastrous a defeat, cannot be briefly enumerated without any heat unbecoming a high controversy, .or any severities too hurtful for any living politician of average nerve. To shut our eyes altogether to the causes of the failures of the past twenty years, as the Irish public chose to do until the Insurrection of 1916 broke out, would be to effsure their repetition, and would not be a mark of good nature or of patriotic virtue but of moral debility in a nation. ■ or three battered old Radical M.P.’s had a kind of moisture in their eyes. . . Parnell made an excellent speech,, dignified and graceful, and delivered jn the best Parliamentary manner. It raised my''opinion of him immensely, for hitherto I have rather underrated his intellectual qualities. Dillon’s was less good, rough-hewn and in part awkward, like the speech of one ‘ unaccustomed to public speaking.’ By far the'best, however, was Dr. Oroke’s. This was astonishingly outspoken and full of wit and tenderness. . ... . He paid.compliments to Parnell, who, he said, had made him a Land Leaguer. He spoke of William O’Brien as the best of men and the dearest of his friends. He told the story of his conversation with the Pope in 1882 and professed generally his determination to go on fighting for Ireland, all laws notwithstanding. Parnell’s speech, everyone said, was the best they had ever heard him make, as it showed some heart, which is generally absent from his speeches. -Certainly all he said of O’Brien was graceful . and even affectionate, besides being extremely well delivered. Altogther this wedding festivity has done me good and put me back once more on the higher lines of thought a noble cause inspires. -, . . On. this pleasant note I am glad to close my Irish memories. The crash came not six months later.” —The Land War in, Ireland, pp. 447-8. :, (To be continued.) v ~ TAILORED SUIT FOR £3 15s. ~T For £3 15s you get a. beautifully Tailored Suit-to-measure from Low’s Ltd., 69 Lichfield Street, Christchurch. Material ■ the pick of the Warehouse, style right up to the minute, workmanship of the very highest standard. Why pay eight rguineas elsewhere? Send for free samples and self-measure-ment chart before placing your. order elsewhere. :;4