Monaghan Election (1883)

Chapter XIV*

Monaghan Election *(1883)

A week after my release from prison in June, 1883, a vacancy occurred in the representation of Monaghan because of the appointment to the office of Clerk of the Crown of Mr. Givan, its Liberal M.P. He was a solicitor, and to get the post, assured Mr. Gladstone that his seat was safe for the Government. I was at Roche’s Hotel, Glergariff, Co. Cork, resting after my imprisonment, when I received a telegram from Parnell asking me to stand for Monaghan. A convention of Nationalists assembled at Castleblaney to confirm this invitation.

Before resigning my seat for Wexford I stipulated that Parnell should help me in the contest, as I was new to the North. He consented, and on arrival in Monaghan I found our stronghold lay in the barony of Farney, where the despoiled clansmen of the MacMahons still smarted under the lordship of strangers. Parnell promised to speak there the next Sunday, and a big crowd gathered to hear him. Yet he neither appeared nor sent an apology. Sexton, however, in a heart-thrilling speech, satisfied the meeting. No orator could excel Sexton at a pinch, but till he had spoken I felt miserable at Parnell’s breach of faith.

Afterwards we drove back to Monaghan town, where our solicitor, the late J. F. Small, of Newry (newly M.P. for Wexford}, had been left in charge of the electoral arrangements. When we got to the hotel Small presented us with a telegram, saying, “Read that.” We assumed it was an apology from Parnell, but it proved to be a message to him, not from him. It ran:

“The Captain is away. Please come. Don’t fail.- Kate.”

I thundered at Small as to why be dared open it? His confusion was profound, and he whined that he thought it related to the contest. I ordered him to put the message back in its envelope, but he said he had torn up the envelope.

Dumbfounded at this, we could give him no advice. He besought us to tell him what to do, as every causer of blunders seeks counsel when it is impossible to repair them. We knew the mischief could not be cured, and had no advice to offer.

Years later, I discovered that he preserved the telegram. Worse still, he handed it to Philip Callan, M.P., to whom Parnell was opposed. The Chief must have heard of this, for at the Dissolution in November, 1885, he removed Small from Co. Wexford, and gave the seat to John Redmond, whose constituency in New Ross had been abolished by the Redistribution Act.

Small was allowed to stand for South Down, but his expenses were not paid. At the next Dissolution, July, 1886, Small was displaced altogether, and no seat was found for him, though I protested against this, unaware of his having handed Mrs. O’Shea’s telegram to Callan.

Before the Monaghan contest ended, Parnell arrived and threw himself whole-heartedly into it. His speeches were electrical. On the day before the poll we reached Castleblaney. It was a “fair” day at the end of June, and very hot. The hotel was crowded, but the landlord gave Parnell and myself the best rooms, 12 and 13. “Twelve” was small, so I had Parnell’s luggage put into thirteen. When he came upstairs and saw the number he banged at my door, crying, bag in hand, “Look at that! What a number to give me!”

I laughed and said, “We can exchange, but you’ll have the worse room.” He burst out, “If you occupy ‘thirteen’ you’ll lose the election.” The room was better than twelve, and I told him so, but he maintained that the Tory hotelkeeper had allotted it to him purposely. He was not to be pacified, and without arguing any further I installed him in No. 12, and nested myself in 13.

While making the exchange, he repeated fiercely, “Healy, you’ll lose the election!” Though this prophecy proved incorrect, I own that minor triumphs of his superstition soon manifested themselves.

I tried to open the window of 13 before going out, but on undoing the bolt the sash fell on my hand. Stung with the pain, I shouted for help and tried to raise it, but could not. Parnell rushed in to release me. “Number 13!” he growled. “Why do you keep it?”

Then he scurried off, telling me to get out, as if it were haunted. I refused.

At lunch we asked for soda-water. The waiters were busy, and I opened a bottle myself. My lamed hand proved awkward, and the cork flew out with a bang and struck me in the eye. “Number 13!” cried Parnell. “I tell you, Healy, you’ll lose the election.”

“Nonsense!” I laughed.

When I won next day, Parnell was overjoyed. The victory against the Liberals, who persecuted and reviled him, gave him profound consolation. We toured the county that evening, and from our brake he shouted to every group at a cross-roads, “Healy! Healy! Healy!” For me to part with such a leader seven years later was a cruel wrench. Without “side” or snobbery, Parnell was a grand seigneur.

The following week I was reintroduced to the House of Commons by him and John Barry, being the first Catholic returned for Monaghan since the Plantation 300 years before. Never did I see a man so happy as Parnell.

He then agreed that the vacancy created by my resignation for Wexford should be filled by William Redmond, who was in Australia with his brother, but he stipulated that I should go to the borough and back him. I did so, and a hot contest ensued with the O’Conor Don. It was the last time a Liberal fought a seat in the South against a Nationalist - save Captain O’Shea’s irruption on Galway in 1886. O’Conor Don was defeated, and this, with the Monaghan victory, marked the end of Liberalism in Ireland.

Four months after I resigned my seat for Wexford its generous folk presented me with an address of thanks for my three years’ service, and a cheque for over £300.

On returning to Dublin after the contest I found that my family had gone to the seaside. The windows of my house were shuttered and my latchkey let me into a darkened hall. To my surprise, a knock came at once to the door. I opened it, and found a stern-faced woman outside. “I want to speak to you,” she said. “who are you, ma’am? ” I asked. “The mother of Joe Brady,” she replied.

I as little expected the Witch of Endor. Her son was the youth hanged the previous Whit-Monday for the Phoenix Park murders. “What do you want? ” I inquired. She pushed her way into the hall, crying, “Hear me, and I’ll tell you.” Sensing tragedy, I said, “Come in.” All was dark, and she sat down in my shuttered study. I had had no time to let in the light before she knocked.

The hangman,” she began, “took the ivory cross from my son’s neck which lady Frederick Cavendish sent him. I want it back.” I told her I had no power to recover it, but to inquire of the Governor of Kilmainham Jail - where the execution had taken place. “Well,” she snapped, “it’s unfair that the only thing given to my dead boy is kept from me.” She then produced a prayer-book of her son, with writings on the fly-leaf. I examined it, and found this script: Joseph Brady, condemned to death by the perjured traitor, Carey.” Underneath in a different hand (evidently Carey’s) was, “James Carey was no traitor. He gave evidence only when he had been betrayed himself. He saved the lives of innocent men, and one woman.”

While I read this, Mrs. Brady fastened her eyes on me. I handed her back the prayer-book as she crooned, “Joe was the twenty-first of my sons. He was a good boy. He used to sing in the choir at Church Street. He was the best son a mother ever reared. When the police came for the last time to take him to the Castle before Curran, we had got accustomed to it. He always came back laughing at them. Then they took him from me for ever. Had I known it was the last time, I’d have said, ‘Joe, sell your life.’ He could have beaten them, he was that strong.”

I knew she referred to secret inquiries under the Crimes Act conducted by the police-magistrate, J. A. Curran (afterwards County Court Judge), who questioned everyone suspected of complicity in the Park murders. Brady had been several times cross-examined by him, so I asked why he had not gone away during these proceedings. “Ah,” she wailed, “Joe was waiting till Tim Kelly was ‘out of his time’ to the coachmaker on Redmond’s Hill ” (meaning till Kelly had finished his apprenticeship). “They were great friends, and Joe would not go without Kelly. I have not shed a tear since he was hanged struggling against the English, but I would like to get the cross he got as a keepsake from Lady Cavendish.”

I again repeated that I was unable to help her, and sorrowfully she went away. Then I opened the shutters, glad to let in the daylight. I never heard (otherwise) that Lord Frederick’s late widow carried forgiveness to the length of sending a cross to the condemned man. Forty-five years later an English officer told me that the Governor of Kilmainham, on the night before Brady’s execution, asked him to visit the cell of the condemned man with him. Brady, he said, was a handsome fellow and stood proudly silent.

In the session of 1883 T. P. O’Connor got the Labourers Bill through the House of Commons. Knowing little of its details, T.P. lobbied and buttonholed every landlord opposed to it, and cajoled them to assent. King-Harman, their leader, yielded, thinking the Bill would be smothered in the Lords. T.P. handled the situation better than anyone else could. The measure had been fashioned upon an Act of Disraeli’s to promote working-men’s dwellings in Britain. Thanks to T.P.’s steering it got through the Commons. The House of Lords, however, was a stiff obstacle. There the Irish peers were hostile, as the Bill made a charge on the poor rates, of which they then paid half, and they feared an indefinite increase.

To appease them, I suggested that, lest unforeseen burden should be imposed, a limit to the levy for labourers’ cottages of a shilling in the pound (on the valuation) might he made. I knew that once the principle of providing labourers’ cottages was accepted this limitation would disappear, as it quickly did. So the Lords passed the Bill. I credit to T.P.’s genial blarney its becoming law.

The prostration of unsanitary dens and hovels soon came about. Yet T.P. never won praise for what led to the transformation of the Irish landscape. The Irish Privy Council (composed of judges and landlords), to whom the final administration of the measure had to be committed, often mauled the housing schemes proposed by the local authorities. Ultimately the Government, thanks to the Balfours, did away with appeals to that hostile tribunal.

On the 12th December, 1883, the presentation to Parnell of the amount collected towards his testimonial took place at a dinner in the Rotunda, Dublin. Every leading Nationalist in Ireland, man or woman, attended. Yet no effort to regulate the throng arriving was made by the police. A block of cabs and cars was provoked, so that ladies in thin shoes and frail garments on a winter’s night had to fight their way to the doors through a dense crowd. They and their menfolk were “pivot” people, and this treatment by the authorities they never forgave. The Press protested, and officialism issued the excuse that the police had not been” invited to help to prevent a jam.

That jam, in my opinion, was the end of Castle rule for moderate Nationalists, for they knew that confusion was connived at.

When Parnell rose to speak, the audience strained to await his acknowledgement of the testimonial. His speech, however, made no allusion to it, nor did he let fall a phrase of thanks.

Sexton, sitting beside me, whispered, “A labourer would acknowledge the loan of a penknife more gratefully.” All hearers were stricken with amazement, and dispersed in that mood.

Still, Parnell’s reserve may have been the grander attitude if it implied that he could not find words to thank the bishops, priests and people who had stood by him as a Protestant when assailed. In O’Connell’s day, the Liberator’s attacks on Cardinal Quarantotti were ill-textured, coming from a Catholic. Parnell remained mute where religious authority was in question.

When the audience left the Rotunda the police were again inert - crushing was rampant, and cabs for ladies could not be found.

Parnell’s mortgage was never paid off, and after his death his estate was sold for less than the charges on it. He was not a spendthrift, being close ratter than lavish. He indulged in no expensive amusements. He saw no society. He did not bet or gamble. Shooting grouse on his Wicklow hills did not cost much. He spent a little boring for minerals on his property, but this was his only fad.

No vast sums can thus have been thrown away. In 1889 he received £5,000 damages from *The Times. *£10,000 was sent him by Cecil Rhodes. Yet the silver casket containing the Freedom of Edinburgh with which he was presented was found in a pawn-office at Brighton after his death. Then both Mrs. O’Shea and Captain O’Shea were declared bankrupt.

In 1884 scandals in official circles provoked sensations. Important persons were accused by *United Ireland *of offences which cannot be specified. Cornwall, Secretary to the Post Office, brought a libel action against the editor, William O’Brien. The trial excited feeling higher than anything since the “Yelverton” marriage case in the ‘sixties. *

United Ireland *accused him, with James E. French and other instruments of Lord Spencer’s regime, of malpractices, and a long trial ended in a triumph for O’Brien. Several officials were dismissed or convicted, and Ireland subscribed £20,000 to defray O’Brien’s costs. He was member for Mallow, and gave its poor the large moneys unspent after the case ended.

Biggar, one night, as we were going home from the House of Commons, queried, “Have you noticed that all those blackguards were musical?” To be “musical” was almost a capital offence with Joe. I answered with the quotation that those “who have no music in their souls are fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils,” but Biggar did not agree with Shakespeare.

The belief that vice prevailed amongst officials added to the discredit of the Liberal administration. The foundation of the Hell Fire. Club” on the Dublin mountains in the eighteenth century by a Dutch artist led to the toast of the then Patriot Party under Swift and Molyneux, “Prosperity to Ireland, and may the political Ganymedes who infest our country be banished from its shores.”

Joe Cowen, M.P. for Newcastle-on-Tyne, told me that the verdict for O’Brien shook the Cabinet more than any previous event. Corry Connellan, who was Cornwall’s predecessor, fell in like case. Connellan had first been Private Secretary to the Viceroy, Lord Carlisle, and then was made Inspector to the Prisons Board. A warrant issued for his arrest was never executed, and he received a pension.

Competitive examinations happily did away with nominations by Members of Parliament for postal appointments. Formerly, the Dublin G.P.O. was a nest of nincompoops. Lord Dunkellin, M.P. for Galway (who became Marquis of Clanricarde), when making nominations, mixed up two names - one a Catholic who could barely read, the other an educated Protestant. The latter became a postman, and the other an incompetent clerk in the G.P.O.

The year 1883 was marked by dynamite explosions in London. One shook the crypt of the House of Commons on a Saturday when the public were admitted. It injured Constable Cole, who behaved stoically. A detective from Scotland Yard soon after called to see the Librarian of the House, Mr. Harvey, to get leave to inspect the roof. Harvey had recently comes to us from service in the British Museum. He was a very handsome man, with auburn hair brushed off this fine forehead. He was blessed with courteous manners, and spoke with an Oxford accent. The detective, having examined the roof, declared magisterially to Harvey: “I would allow no Irishman up there on any account.” “No,” said Harvey, who are accompanied him aloft, “but I’m an Irishman myself.” “Oh, well,” quoth the sleuth, “so am I!”

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