Life
1846-1891; b. Avondale, Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow; son of Delia Tudor Stewart,
an American from whom he reputedly acquired his aversion to the English;
ed. partly at Yeovil, Somerset, a girls’ school where he contracted
typhoid; thereafter priv. ed., and Kirk Langley, Derbyshire (expelled),
and Great Ealing School; inherited estate in 1859; moved with family to
Dublin; attended crammer in Chipping Norton; proceeded to Magdalene College,
Cambridge; sent down in 1869; travelled to continent, and visited his
brother John Howard Parnell (1843-1923); then farming in Alabama; IPP
MP Meath, 1875; declared ‘as publicly and as directly’ as he
could that he did not ‘believe, and never shall believe, that any
murder was committed at Manchester’ (in response to Sir Michael Hicks
Beach’s allusion the the ‘Manchester murderers’ [viz, “Manchester
Martyrs” of 1865], June 1876; President Home Rule Confederation,
1877; ‘New Departure’ (so called by John Devoy), 1878; President
of newly-founded Land League, Oct. 1879 (‘Keep a firm grip on your
homesteads’); and visited USA with John Dillon and Tim Healy, Dec.
1879-Feb. 1880; addressed American House of Representatives [Congress];
collected £40,000; elected MP for Cork, 1880, as a result of a Tory scheme
to split the Whig vote, and represented Cork to the end of his career;
elected chairman of the IPP, 1880, advocating the model of ‘Grattan’s
Parliament’; Capt. O’Shea returned for Galway in 1880 election;
commenced affair with Katharine O’Shea (née Woods), in the
course of which the couple had three children; promoted Boycotting policy
against coercion; challenged to duel by Capt. O’Shea, July 1881;
Land Act of 1881; suspended from House of Commons, 1 Aug. 1881; heavily
engaged in Wicklow Arklow harbour schemes, 1881; Gladstone’s Land
Bill introduced, 7 April 1881, second reading 25th April; acquired The
Flag of Ireland from Richard Pigott, and reissued it as United
Ireland under the editorship of William O’Brien; spoke at Cork
demanding full political freedom (‘those who want to preserve the
golden link of the Crown must see to it that it shall be the only link
connecting England and Ireland’); in response to Gladstone’s
denunciation in Leeds of 8 Oct., 1881, Parnell spoke violently against
Gladstone’s Land Act, Wexford, 9 Oct. (‘Ah, If I am arrested
Captain Moonlight will take my place’); arrested under Special Powers;
13 Oct. 1881; agreed to “No Rent Manifesto”, with William O’Brien
and others, 18 Oct.; settled terms in ‘Kilmainham Treaty’ withdrawing
Manifesto, with Gladstone, 1882, negotations being conducted through Justin
McCarthy and later the O’Sheas; released 2 May 1882 [var. 9 April],
and honoured in torchlit march, 5 May; suppressed Ladies Land League;
est. Irish National League to replace Land League, 17 Oct. 1882; Phoenix
Park Murders, 6 May 1882; Parnell’s offer of resignation delivered
to Gladstone by Capt. O’Shea after the those murders, May 1882; Fenian
dynamite campaigns in London, 1883, 1884; speech at Cork Opera House,
21 Jan. 1885 (eve of Gen. Election), ‘We cannot, under the British
constitution, ask for more than the restitution of Grattan’s parliament.
But no man has the right to say to his country, “thus far shalt thou
go and no further”, and we have never attempted to fix the ne
plus ultra to the progress of Ireland’s nationhood, and we never
shall’; sweeping election victory returns 86 seats and gains control
of balance of power at Westminster; Gladstone’s conversion to Home
Rule, 1885; Parnell issues manifesto to Irish in Britain to support liberal
candidates, 21 Nov. 1885; First Home Rule Bill, introduced by Gladstone,
8 April 1886, and narrowly defeated; denounced by Gladstone, speaking
at Cloth Hall banquet, Leeds, 8 Oct., 1881 (‘the resources of civilisation
against its enemies are not yet exhausted’); Parnell starts living
with Katharine O’Shea at Eltham, summer 1886; withheld support from
Plan of Campaign formulated for Land League by John Dillon, William O’Brien,
Tim Harrington and others, and publ. in United Irishman (21 Oct.
1886), offering ‘fair’ rent and using it for Land League support
if refused; Plan of Campaign declared ‘unlawful and criminal conspiracy’
by British Govt., Dec. 1886, and condemned by Pope Leo XIII, 20 April
1888; ‘Parnellism and Crime’ serial chiefly written by Woulfe
Flanagan and featuring forged facsimile letters of Parnell, appeared in
The Times, 1887-88 (7 March-17 April 1887), alleging his
involvement with Land League activism [violence] and in particular with
the Invincible murders at the Phoenix Park; Capt. O’Shea publishes
unflattering portrait of Parnell in The Times (2 Aug. 1888); Parnell
Commission, Oct. 1888-Nov. 1889, leading to exposure of Piggot as a forger
under cross-examination by Charles Russell, the result being delivered
1890; Parnell attends Lyceum theatre at height of Times Commission
crisis; represented by Thomas Sexton at foundation of Tenants’ Defence
Association, 15 Oct. 1889; O’Shea divorce filed Christmas Eve 1889
(though O’Shea himself had conducted 17 known affairs), granted 17
Nov. 1890 [var. 18 Nov. DIH], 1890; details emerge of assumed names, including
‘Mr. Fox’; much engaged with quarries in Arklow, 1891; fnd.
Irish Daily Independent, 1891; Gladstone withdraws Liberal support
from his leadership, Nov. 1891; Michael Davitt calls for his resignation
in Labour World (20 Nov.); re-elected chairman, 25 Nov.; Gladstone
published his position in a letter to John Morley (26 Nov.); Catholic
hierarchy announces meeting for 3 Dec., on 18 Nov.; Parnell publishes
“Manifesto to the Irish People” (29 Nov.), attacking Gladstone, the Liberals
and a section of his own party; Dillon and O’Brien, in America, revoke
their support of Parnell; Catholic hierarchy call on the Irish people to reject Parnell’s
leadership, 3 Dec.; party split in Committee Room 15 of the House (Westminster),
Sat. 6 Dec. 1890, forty-four members walking out behind McCarthy [var.
55 to 33]; Parnell siezed control of United Ireland, then under
the deputy-editorship of Matthew Bodkin (who brought out The ‘Supressed’
United Ireland, and later The Insupressible up to 14 Jan. 1891);
Parnell conducted political tour of Ireland to regain popular support,
attracting Fenian ‘hillside men’ to his side; m. Katharine O’Shea,
25 June, 1891, on which day the Catholic hierarchy issued a condemnation
of his conduct, only Edward O’Dwyer of Limerick withholding his signature;
lost support of Freeman’s Journal; quicklime thrown at his
eyes by hostile crowd in Castlecomer; addressed crowd in pouring rain
at Creggs on Galway-Roscommon border [var. Mayo], and contracted pneumonia,
27 Sept.; returned to Dublin, thence to Brighton, departing by the mail
boat, 30 Sept. (‘I shall be all right. I shall be back next Saturday
week’); d. of pneumonia, near midnight, 6 Oct., Brighton; bur. Glasnevin
Cemetery, 11 Oct., his body having been brought back to Ireland; a star
is supposed to have fallen ‘in broad daylight’ when his coffin
was lowered into the grave (as recalled by W. B. Yeats and Standish O’Grady);
a bronze figure of Parnell by Augustus St Gaudens, as part of the Parnell
Monument, was unveiled in 1921; Avondale was sold to the State by John
Howard Parnell, 1899; an Annual Charles Stewart Parnell Summer School
convenes at Avondale, Co. Wicklow; an early life was written by Harry
O’Brien in 1898. DNB JMC DIB DIH DIL OCEL FDA OCIL.
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Works
Speeches collected as Words of the Dead Chief, being extracts from
the public speeches and other pronouncements of C. S. Parnell ... with
an introduction by Miss Anna Parnell, and a facsimile of portion [sic]
of Mr Parnell’s famous manifesto to the Irish people (Dublin:
Sealy, Bryers & Walker 1892); Michael Hurst and Alan O’Day, eds.,
The Speeches of Charles Stewart Parnell (Hambledon Press 1996),
304pp.
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Criticism
R. Barry O’Brien, The Life of charles Stewart Parnell (1886), 536pp.
P. O’Connor, The Parnell Movement (London: Kegan Paul, Trench 1886).
Katharine O’Shea, Charles Stewart Parnell, His Love-story and Political Life, 2 vols. (1st ed. 1914).
John Howard Parnell, C. S. Parnell, A Memoir (1916); M. M. O’Hara, Chief and Tribune (1919).
St. John Ervine, Parnell (1925).
Henry Harrison, Parnell Vindicated: A Lifting of the Veil (1931).
Joan Haslip, Parnell (London 1936).
Leon Ó Broín, Parnell (Dublin 1937) [in Irish].
F. S. L. Lyons, The Irish Parliamentary Party 1890-1910 (1951).
Conor Cruise O’Brien, Parnell and His Party 1880-1890 (OUP 1957), xii, 373pp.
M. Hurst, Parnell and Irish Nationalism (London: Routledge 1968).
F.S.L. Lyons, The Fall of Parnell 1890-91 (1960); [cf. also Parnell, for Dublin Hist. Assoc. (Dundalk 1963)].
Jules Abels, The Parnell Tragedy (Bodley 1966).
F.S.L. Lyons, Charles Stewart Parnell (Oxford: OUP 1977) [err. 1969].
D. W. Miller, Church, State and Nation in Ireland 1898-1921 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan / Pittsburgh UP 1973).
Roy Foster, Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and His Family (Brighton 1976).
John Kelly, ‘The Fall of Parnell and the Rise of Anglo-Irish Literature, An Investigation’, in Anglo-Irish Studies, Vol II (1976), pp.1-23.
A. O’Day, The English Face of Irish Nationalism, Parnellite Involvement in British Politics 1880-1886 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1977).
Paul Bew, Charles Stewart Parnell (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1980; 1991).
D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1982; rep edn. 1991), Chap. 7: The Making of Parnellism and its Undoing’, pp.192-227.
Michael Steinman, Yeats’s Heroic Figures, Wilde Parnell, Swift, Casement (Dublin: Macmillan 1983).
William Michael Murphy, The Parnell Myth and Irish Politics 1891-1956 (NY: Peter Lang 1986).
Paul Bew, Conflict and Conciliation in Ireland 1890-1910, Parnellites and Radical Agrarians (Oxford 1987).
Mary Rose Callaghan, ’Kitty O’Shea’: The Story of Katharine Parnell (London / San Francisco: Pandora 1989), 187pp.
Margery Brady, The Love Story of Parnell and Katharine O’Shea (Cork: Mercier 1991).
Donal McCartney, ed., Parnell: The Politics of Power (Dublin: Wolfhound [1991]) [sel. papers of 1st Parnell Summer School, incl. Roy Foster, Seamus Deane, and Mary Rose Callaghan [on Katherine O’Shea].
Boyce and Alan Day eds., Parnell in Perspective (London: Routledge 1991) [incl.
Liam Kennedy, ‘The Economic Thought of the Nation’s Lost Leader: Charles Stewart Parnell’, cp.182;
Noel Kissane, Parnell: A Documentary History ([Dublin]: National Library of Ireland 1991), 118pp.
Frank Callanan, The Parnell Split 1890-91 (Cork UP 1992).
Robert Kee, The Laurel and the Ivy: The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism (London: Hamish Hamilton 1993; pb. Penguin 1994), 650pp.; Sean McMahon, Charles Stuart Parnell (Cor: Mercier 2000), 96pp.
W. B. Yeats, ‘Ireland After Parnell’, Autobiographies (1955).
Herbert Howarth, The Irish Writers 1880-1940, Literature Under Parnell’s Star (London 1958).
Herbert Howarth, The Fall of Parnell 1890-91 (London: Routledge 1960).
Frank O’Connor, in The Backward Look (1967).
Malcolm Brown, The Politics of Irish Literature, From Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats (Washington UP 1972).
Ernest Jones, ‘The Island of Ireland: A Psychoanalytical Contribution to Political Psychology’, in Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis (London & Vienna 1922) [alleging that Parnell had a Oedipal complex].
Donal McCartney, ed., Parnell: The Politics of Power (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1991) [incl. essays by McCarthney, Roy Foster, Martin Mansergh, Pauric Travers, Alvin Jackson, Margaret O’Callaghan, Mary Rose Callaghan, Frank Callaghan, and Seamus Deane]; see also Brian Farrell, ed., The Irish Parliamentary Tradition (Gill & Macmillan 1973) [essays incl. F. S. L. Lyons, ‘The Meaning of Independence’].
Dominic Manganiello, Joyce’s Politics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, p.178.)
James Fairhall, James Joyce and The Question of History (CUP 1993), for a succinct account of the Parnell split, ‘Parnell and Irish Politics’, sect. of chp. 4.
Emmet Larkin [The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and the Fall of Parnell 1888-1891 (Chapel Hill: N. Carolina UP 1979)], pp. 132-8.
D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1982; 1991 Edn.), p.332-33.
S. J. Connolly, ‘Culture, Identity and Tradition: Changing Definitions of Irishness’, in Brian Graham, ed., In Search of Ireland: A Cultural Geography of Ireland (Routledge 1997), pp.43-63.
Owen Dudley Edwards, review of Robert Kee, The Laurel and the Ivy, in ‘Summer Books’ [with Fortnight 330] (Summer 1994), pp.3-6.
Anthony Jordan, review of Frank Callanan, The Parnell Split 1890-91 (Cork UP 1992), with foreword Conor by Cruise O’Brien, 320pp., in Books Ireland (March 1993).
Roy Hattersley, reviewing Christy Campbell, Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria (HarperCollins 2002), in Guardian Weekly, 6 June 2002., p.17.) See also Keith Jeffery, review of same, in Times Literary Supplement (14 June 2002).
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Notes
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic
Univ. of America 1904), gives extract from Address to the House of Representatives,
Washington.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2. The the chief works containing significant testimonies on Parnell cited or sampled are by R. Barry O’Brien, T. P. O’Connor, Timothy Healy, Frank Hugh O’Donnell, and William O’Brien; Vol. 2, selects Words of the Dead Chief (1892) [303-12]; ‘To The People of Ireland’, the manifesto of 29 Nov 1890 [312-15]; approx. 45 REFS & REMS; BIOG, 369, & COMM [under the caption Parnellism], 366. FDA3 adds some 35 REFS & REMS. in addition to a bio-biographical section on Parnell, FDA2, 366 has a section on Parnellism with a select general bibliography that includes, CC O’Brien, Parnell and His Party 1880-90 (Oxford 1957). [BIBL as supra.]
James Joyce Library: held in his Trieste library copies of The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell (London & Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson [1910]); R. J. O’Duffy, Historic Graves in Glasnevin Cemetery (Dublin: James Duffy 1915); and Words of the Dead Chief, compiled by Jennie Wyse-Power (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker 1892). (See Richard Ellmann, The Consciousness of James Joyce, Faber, p.122 [Appendix].
Hyland Cat. (No. 214) lists Henry Parnell, On Official Reform (1969 facs. of 1831 3rd ed.); H. Harrison, Parnell Vindicated: A Lifting of the Veil (1931); Alfred Robbins, Parnell, the Last Five Years Told from Within (1926).
Hyland Cat. (No 224) lists Dorothy Eden, Never Call it Loving (London 1966), fictional biography of Kitty O’Shea [Cathach Cat. 12]; The Repeal of the Union Conspiracy, or Mr Parnell, MP and the IRB (1st ed. 1886), 92pp. [Carty 1472]; H. O. Arthur Forster, ‘Guilty or Not Guilty?’, or The Opinions of Eminent Liberal swith Regard to the Parnellite Party [1883], 8pp.
Belfast Linenhall Library holds The Parnell Movement, T. P. O’Connor; F. H. O’Donnell, The Lost Hat, the clergy, the collection, the hidden life [n.d.; also n.d. in BELF].
Arthur Griffith, ‘The era of constitutional politics ended
on the day Parnell died’, and W. B. Yeats, “The Death of Parnell”,
in Autobiographies (1955). NOTE that the paving stones on O’Connell
St. Bridge were supplied to Dublin Corporation against Welsh competition
from Parnell’s quarry in Arklow (see Roy Foster, Paddy and Mr.
Punch, 1993, p.57).
W. B. Yeats: According to Joseph Holloway, Yeats said on 26 April 1905 that he had Charles Stewart Parnell in his mind when he wrote On Baile’s Strand: ‘People who do aught for Ireland [...] ever and always have to fight with the waves in the end.’ (Holloway’s Journal; quoted in Richard Allen Cave, ed., W. B. Yeats: Selected Plays, Penguin Edn. 1997, “Commentaries & Notes” [The Green Helmet], p.300.
Suffering Job: When Parnell said, No man has the right to set a boundary to the march of a nation and to say ne plus ultra, thus far shalt thou go and no further’ - his famous answer to the Fenians delivered in Cork, he was ultimately echoing the Book of Job, ‘Where were you when I stopped I planned the earth? Tell me, if you are wise, do you know who took its dimensions? / ... Were you there as I stopped the waters / as they issued gushing from the womb? / When I wrapped the oceans in clouds / and swaddled the seas in shadows? / and when I closed it with barriers / and set its boudaries, saying, ‘Here shalt thou come but no farther, / here shalt your proud waves break?’
Hesitency: Parnell’s supposed letter to from Kilmainham to Patrick Egan contained the phrase, ‘Let there be an end to this hesitency [sic]. Prompt action is called for […].’ (See Robert Kee, The Laurel and the Ivy, Penguin 1993, p.228; cited in Niamh O’Sullivan, Joyce: The Spiritual Liberator, BA Diss., UUC 2000.)
Katharine O’Shea wrote a 2 vol. Charles Stewart Parnell, his love story and political life (publ. 1914); she was left the equivalent of seven million pounds in today’s money at the death of an aunt in 1889.
Katherine cited her own sister Anna Steele with whom she was locked in a probate quarrel as co-respondent in her return of charges of adultery against her husband, knowing her to have had several affairs.
‘keep a firm grip on your homestead’ and use ‘the strong force of public opinion to deter any unjust men amongst you … from bidding for such farms’; a ‘very much better way - a more Christian and charitable way’ of restraining than murder; placetakers must be shunned ‘as if if her were a leper of old.’ (See D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, London 1982, p.210.)
‘There were portraits of John Dillon and Michael Davitt hanging in the parlour, and the landlady told me Parnell’s likeness had been with them, until the priest had told her he didn’t think well of her hanging it there. There was on the wall, in a frame, a warrant for the arrest of one of her sons signed by, I think, Lord Cowper, in the days of the Land War …’ (Lady Gregory, Visions and Beliefs, 1920. q.p.)
Parnell published a letter in the Freeman’s Journal appealing to the Irish people to have faith in his leadership despite his personal situation; on the following day, Walsh gave an interview with the Central Press Agency in which he said: ‘If the Irish leader would not or could not, give a public assurance that his honour was unsullied, the Party that takes him as a leader can no longer count on the support of the Bishops of Ireland.’ (1 Dec. 1890; Larkin, op. cit., [q.p.]; cited in Niamh O’Sullivan, ‘Joyce: The Spiritual Liberator’, BA Diss., UUC 2000.)
Parnell, on the way to smash up the Freeman’s Journal, stopped the driver of his carriage and pointed silently to the Houses of Parliament on Stephen’s Green which Yeat’s called the noblest edifice in Europe, to extended cheering. [Oral account of Anthony Cronin; “Hearts and Minds”: Princess Grace Irish Library Symposium, 2000.]
F. S. L. Lyons, John Dillon (1968) prints drawing of C. S. Parnell made by J. D. Reigh in 1891, with an MS addition from Parnell himself: ‘That Reigh is the only one who can do justice to my handsome face.’ See also ‘Parnell’ by S. P. Hall, pencil, Nat. Port. Gallery [Anne Crookshank, ed., Irish Portraits Exhibition (Ulster Museum. 1965)]; also an oil portrait by Sydney Prior Hall [signed 1892] in the National Gallery of Ireland, which serves as the cover on F. S. L. Lyons’s life of Parnell; a bronze figure of Parnell by Augustus St Gaudens, on the Parnell Monument, unveiled 1921 [de Breffny, p.215], and made the object of criticism by Arthur Griffith; Sir John Tenniel, cartoon of Parnell as ‘The Irish Frankenstein’, in Punch, 20 May, 1882 [featuring the monster, watched by a croaching Frankenstein].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)