London Days Part 20

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CHAPTER XVI

PARNELL

The man most talked of in '88-'90 was not Mr. Gladstone but Mr.

Parnell. The Parnell Commission "had shaken the earth", as an Irish writer said in a moment of unusual restraint. And during its long-drawn life, as during the events which immediately had preceded it, "the uncrowned king of Ireland" was the foremost topic of conversation and of newspaper attention. From the ordeal of the Commission he emerged with triumph, a triumph which in its turn caused some planetary commotion, only to be met with the divorce suit of Captain O'Shea, and the subsequent storms, and snarls, and hopeless desertions of Committee Room Fifteen. Thence to heartbreak and death was but a short and rapid decline.

I knew Parnell but slightly; no one knew him well. Lord Salisbury did not know him at all, had never taken the trouble to cross the lobbies between the Houses of Lords and Commons and look at him or listen to him. "I have never seen him," said Mr. Gladstone's rival. And it was common report that the men who knew Parnell least of all, and least of all about him, were his own {241} followers. Even that is possible, if it seems unlikely. One of his most conspicuous followers, who wrote conspicuously and talked about him and about Home Rule, I knew very well, and for years I wondered if he really knew as little as he said he did about his chief's ways and work and wisdom. He made a great mystery of them, as many of the Irish members did, or pretended to do.

They told you that he kept them at arm's length, scarcely nodded to them, or, if he nodded, did so in a manner that was cold and distant beyond belief. They were the dust beneath his feet. But they told you that they did not resent this treatment; it showed the superiority of the man.

Whether they resented it or not, you may form your own opinion by what they did to him when they got the chance. But before the squalls and gales arose in Committee Room Fifteen, he had held them together; they were a disciplined body. No man before his day had been able to hold them together, to discipline them, to force his will upon them. No other parliamentary leader of the Irish before him produced results.

But he produced them. His followers feared him, and they feared him because he was so unlike themselves, so un-Irish. His "mystery" lay in his immense capacity for holding his tongue; in his aloofness; in his concentration. He knew how to get from the rest of the United Kingdom, from the English and Scotch and so on, what he wanted; as a rule, his followers did not. He knew how to play the political game in the British way, with additions of his own; his {242} followers did not.

They had not the patience; they may have had other qualities more captivating than his, but they had not the patience or the art of command.

There was a time when I doubted that he was really so elusive as political persons said. And if he were so, why? It could not be for the mere pleasure of eluding, or deluding people. There would be very little pleasure in that. Well, one day my doubt was dispelled.

Parnell had made an appointment to see me at the House of Commons. It was not for the purposes of a newspaper interview, for he would not have given himself the trouble on that account. It was not for any purpose or interest of my own. I had conveyed to him a proposal from an American editor. It was a proposal which Parnell had not only not declined, but which he was considering with some favour. I was to meet him again and discuss it further. The time and place were of his choosing. I was punctually there, only to be met with the message: "Mr. Parnell is not in the House."

That may have been technically true, as Mrs. A. may be technically "not at home" to Mrs. B. But he was somewhere on the premises, because I saw him enter them. There were good reasons for a.s.suming that the appointment had not slipped his mind, or his memoranda. And so I thought that the person who told me Parnell was not in the House might have invented the reply he gave. He knew of the appointment, and, though he did not know its purpose, knew that Parnell had wished to {243} see me; why, then, should he give a reply which might put his Chief in the wrong. But then, why had not Parnell sent word or left word, making another appointment? He would scarcely have declined the proposal from America without the courtesy of another meeting. Indeed, he had promised that.

"Very well," I said, "I will wait."

But the agreeable gentleman could not a.s.sure me that Mr. Parnell would be at the House that day.

"Has he been here?"

"I believe so."

It was too early to go away. Question time was not over. I decided to wait. Mr. Parnell's representative withdrew. After a while I thought there had been a mistake somewhere. Then I remembered that the emissary "could not a.s.sure" me, etc. I thought this odd, in the circ.u.mstances, and concluded not to wait any longer. The affair was Parnell's, not mine. But if he had decided to decline the proposal concerning which he had invited me to call upon him, it was not particularly civil of him to take this offhand way of doing so. I left the House and went toward the Westminster Bridge station of the Underground Railway, just opposite the Clock Tower of St. Stephen's.

Turning the corner by the gates of Palace Yard, I saw Parnell, ahead of me, cross the street and enter the railway station. He took an eastbound train. I was just in time to catch the same train but not to catch him.

He alighted at the next station, Charing Cross. So did I, intent on overtaking him. But there was {244} a blocking crowd at the exit stairs where tickets were collected, and he was away first. Up Villiers Street I followed him to the top at the Strand, where he turned into the South Eastern Railway station. This was interesting.

Why had n't he, I wondered, taken the outside stairs that led from Villiers Street into the station?

"Possibly he has caught sight of me," I thought. "Is he trying to elude me? Let's see."

He entered the South Eastern station at the left-hand door. He left it presently by the door on the other side of the cab yard and crossed the Strand to the telegraph office, which at that time was exactly opposite the cab entrance to the railway. I withdrew into the tobacconist's pavilion at the gate and there awaited Parnell's exit from the telegraph office. But he didn't recross the Strand to the station. A hansom was pa.s.sing the telegraph office door. Parnell ran out, hailed the cab, entered it, and drove eastward along the Strand. I took another cab and kept his in sight. His cab was held up by a block a little to the west of Wellington Street, where a long stream of traffic was crossing to Waterloo Bridge. Parnell left his cab in the crush and disappeared in the pack of humans and vehicles. I left my cab, walked back a short distance along the south side of the Strand, and there turned down by the Savoy Theatre, lingering a little, and then down the steps to the Embankment, keeping inside the gardens. My guess was right. Parnell pa.s.sed within a few feet of me. He was walking westward. I walked inside the gardens, {245} he outside and well in advance. He reached the Underground station again, pa.s.sed through it to Villiers Street, walked up Villiers Street to the wooden stairs of the South Eastern, while I remained at the entrance of the Underground.

Then I took a cab to my Club in Piccadilly.

If Parnell thought that he had the best of the chase, that he had given me "the slip", he had another opinion, probably, when, as he was about to enter a suburban train, he was approached by a courteous young man who introduced himself as my a.s.sistant and said how fortunate it was meeting like this, because it gave him the opportunity to ask if Mr.

Parnell would send me the reply which he had promised for that day, as I wished to cable it to New York.

"Parnell did n't turn a hair," said my a.s.sistant, when he reported to me at the Club a few minutes later. "If he were surprised, he did n't show it. But he narrowed his eyes and said, in a frigid way that brought down the temperature of that cold station, 'I will write.' And then the train started."

"And he with it?" I asked.

"No. It left both of us on the platform. I bade him good afternoon and came here. I suppose he took the next train."

I made no comment, but calling for a cable form, wrote on it this message for New York:

"Parnell declines."

"But he has n't declined," my a.s.sistant exclaimed.

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"No, but he will. You can keep that cable message in your pocket until he does."

The reason I had not followed Parnell into the South Eastern station was that in the train from Westminster to Charing Cross I had told my a.s.sistant what to do, and where I thought Parnell was going.

For Parnell's reply I did n't care one way or another. But I thought that I was even with him for his evasion of me at the House, of his treatment of an appointment which he had made, and of a courteous proposal. My method of letting him know, without having said so, that I was not entirely ignorant of his reasons was, in the circ.u.mstances, quite legitimate. He could not and did not take open exception to it.

And for nearly thirty years I never mentioned it. I do so now simply to ill.u.s.trate what I mean by his elusiveness. It may interest the few who remember some of his traits. It is quite erroneous to suppose, as many souls not altogether simple seem to do, that a journalist always tells all that he knows.

But I might throw in here this remark: In all that promenade and hide and seek in London streets, n.o.body seemed to recognise Parnell, n.o.body turned to look at him. He was merely a pa.s.serby like another. Crowds stare, they do not observe. They see only what is pointed out to them, what they expect to see,--and not always that.

Two or three days later, in reply to a telegram of inquiry, Parnell declined the proposal from America. My a.s.sistant sent both the inquiry and my cable. Concerning the latter, he asked me:

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"What made you certain in advance?"

"A rule known to astute politicians--2 and 2 make 4. It is not altered by Home Rule, or other matters."

I have often observed, with forty years of opportunity for doing so, that few persons know so little of conditions in Ireland, of Irish conditions in Parliament, of the "Irish movement", whatever that may be at any given time, as the Americans, and particularly the Irish in America. I have had my share of rebuke for mentioning this. An ill.u.s.tration will serve.

During the summer of 1890 I had a few weeks in the United States. One evening in Boston I happened to meet, as I was pa.s.sing his office, a man whom I knew well, Jeffrey Roche, Editor of _The Pilot_, an Irish paper and the princ.i.p.al organ of Roman Catholicism in New England.

Roche had been the a.s.sistant, and later became the successor, to the late John Boyle O'Reilly, and like him was a delightful and lovable fellow and the writer of charming verse. He hated England, of course, and as I did not, we had many tilts, in print and out of it, but we were always good friends.

"Hullo, Jeffrey," said I.

"Hullo, my enemy," said he, laughing as we shook hands.

"Why 'enemy'?" I asked. "Has poor old Ireland another grievance?"

"You wronged Parnell!"

"Sit down and tell me about it," said I.

And we went to dine at the nearest restaurant where the dear fellow explained that an article of {248} mine, sent from London and published in the _Boston Herald_ during the previous February, had "scandalised all Irishmen" and "imperilled the chances of Home Rule."

"Dear, dear," said I, "that's a lot for one man to do! How did it happen?"

"Your article said that an action for divorce had been entered by a Captain O'Shea who named Parnell as corespondent."

"Well, what of it? Everybody knows it."