* * * * * * *
E'en while you look the peerless flower is up
Consummate in the birth."—J. S. KNOWLES.
At the news of the arrest a wave of indignation swept through Ireland. In Dublin there were riots. In many places shops were closed and towns and villages went into mourning as if for the death of a king.
Five days later the Land League countered the arrest by issuing the No Rent manifesto.
Parnell was really opposed to it. Dillon openly so, but the majority of the leaders then in Kilmainham Gaol approved of it, and it was signed and published in United Ireland on October 17th. The signature is interesting, it runs thus:—
"Charles S. Parnell, President, Kilmainham Gaol; A. J. Kettle, Honorary Secretary, Kilmainham Gaol; Michael Davitt, Honorary Secretary, Portland Prison; Thomas Brennan, Honorary Secretary, Kilmainham Gaol; Thomas Geston, Head Organizer, Kilmainham Gaol; Patrick Egan, Treasurer, Paris."
Meanwhile arrests and evictions went on all over Ireland, and the Coercion Act was used mercilessly and unscrupulously on behalf of the landlords. The Ladies' Land League and its president, Miss Anna Parnell, became very busy.
* * * * * *
{120}
From the time of Parnell's arrest onward until the birth of his child in the following February I lived a curiously subconscious existence; pursuing the usual routine of my life at home and with my aunt, but feeling that all that was of life in me had gone with my lover to prison, and only came back to me in the letters that were my only mark of time. I had to be careful now; Willie became solicitous for my health, and wished to come to Eltham more frequently than I would allow. He thought February would seal our reconciliation, whereas I knew it would cement the cold hatred I felt towards him, and consummate the love I bore my child's father.
October 14, 1881.
My OWN DEAREST WIFIE,—I have found a means of communicating with you, and of your communicating in return.
Please put your letters into enclosed envelope, first putting them into an inner envelope, on the joining of which you can write your initials with a similar pencil to mine, and they will reach me all right.
I am very comfortable here, and have a beautiful room facing the sun—the best in the prison. There are three or four of the best of the men in adjoining rooms with whom I can associate all day long, so that time does not hang heavy nor do I feel lonely. My only fear is about my darling Queenie. I have been racked with torture all to-day, last night, and yesterday, lest the shock may have hurt you or our child. Oh, darling, write or wire me as soon as you get this that you are well and will try not to be unhappy until you see your husband again. You may wire me here.
I have your beautiful face with me here; it is such a comfort. I kiss it every morning. YOUR KING.
KILMAINHAM,
October 17, 1881.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,—I was very much pleased to receive your two letters, which reached me safely after having {121} been duly perused by the Governor. I am also writing to Captain O'Shea's Paris address to acknowledge his.
The last letter which you directed to Morrison's also reached me.
If you have not done so already, please inquire in London about the messages you were expecting, and about any others that may arrive in future, and let me know in your next whether you have received them.
This prison is not at all damp, although the air on the north side is rather so, but I am on the south side, and am so far exceedingly comfortable and not in the slightest degree dull. We are allowed to play ball, and you will be glad to hear that I won my first game against one of the best and most practised players in the place, although I have not played for twenty years.
I have received the Times, Engineer, Engineering, Mining Journal, Pall Mall Gazette, Universe, from a London office, also the Engineer directed in your handwriting.
Shall be delighted to hear from you as often as you care to write.—Yours always, C. S. P.
When you write again, please let me know how you are. I have been very anxious for news on that point.
October 19, 1881.
MY OWN DARLING QUEENIE,—I have just received your charming little letter of Tuesday, which I have been anxiously expecting for the last week. It has taken an enormous load off my mind. I shall send you a long letter to-morrow or next day, but for the present you had better not come over, as there are five or six other men in rooms adjacent to mine who find out about everybody who visits me. Besides, you would not be permitted to see me except in presence of two warders, and it might only make you more unhappy.
You must not be alarmed about rumours that the Government have evidence that we are involved in a treasonable conspiracy. There is absolutely no foundation whatever for such a statement, and it is only made to defend their own proceedings.
Dearest little Queenie, keep up your spirits. I am very {122} comfortable and very well, and expect to see my darling before the New Year.
Don't put my name in inner envelope in future, as if opened it might implicate others.
October 21, 1881.
MY OWN DARLING WIFIE,—I wrote you a short note this afternoon, which I succeeded in getting off safely. Now after we have been all locked up safely for the night, and when everything is quiet and I am alone, I am going to send my own Queenie some news. But first I must tell you that I sleep exceedingly well, and am allowed to read the newspapers in bed in the morning, and breakfast there also, if I wish.
I want, however, to give you a little history from the commencement of my stay here.
When I heard that the detectives were asking for me a terror—one which has often been present with me in anticipation—fell upon me, for I remembered that my darling had told me that she feared it would kill her; and I kept the men out of my room while I was writing you a few hasty words of comfort and of hope, for I knew the shock would be very terrible to my sweet love.
I feared that I could not post it, but they stopped the cab just before reaching the prison and allowed me to drop the letter into a pillar-box. My only torture during those first few days was the unhappiness of my queen. I wired Mrs. S. to know how you were, but the wire was sent back with a note that it could not be delivered as she had gone to R. Finally your first letter came, and then I knew for the first time that you were safe. You must not mind my being in the infirmary. I am only there because it is more comfortable than being in a cell, and you have longer hours of association, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., instead of being locked up at 6 and obliged to eat by yourself. The infirmary is a collection of rooms, and each has a room to himself—Dillon is in a cell, but he is allowed as a special privilege to come over and associate with us during the daytime. I am obliged to invent little maladies for myself from day to day in order to give Dr. Kenny an excuse for keeping me in the infirmary, but I have never felt better in {123} my life. Have quite forgotten that I am in prison, and should very much miss the rattle of the keys and the slam of the doors. The latest discovery is heart affection.
The only thing I don't like is that the Government insist upon sending a lot of police into the gaol every night, two of whom sleep against my door and two more under my window. Just at present we are all in great disgrace on account of the manifesto, and the poor warders have been most of them dismissed and fresh ones brought in. A very strict watch is kept, and I have been obliged to exert my ingenuity to get letters out to you and to get yours in return. If Wifie is very good and becomes strong and happy again I may let her come over and see me after a time, but for five days more I am not to be allowed to see any visitor, but I will write you again about your coming. They have let us off very easily. I fully expected that we should have been scattered in different gaols through the country as a punishment, but they evidently think no other place safe enough for me. Indeed, this place is not safe, and I can get out whenever I like, but it is probably the best policy to wait to be released. And now good-night, my own dear little Wifie. Promise your husband that you will sleep well and look as beautiful when we meet again as the last time I pressed your sweet lips. YOUR OWN HUSBAND.
October 26, 1881.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,—Many thanks for your kind letter. I am anxiously waiting for another note from you to say that you have quite recovered from the indisposition you speak of.
I was in hopes that time would pass mote slowly in prison than outside, but it seems to pass quite as quickly as anywhere else except those hours at Eltham.—Yours always, C. S. P.
October 28, 1881.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,—Not having heard from you this week, I write this to say that I hope you are better, and that the absence of a letter from you is not to be attributed to any increase in the indisposition of which you spoke in your last. {124}
I am glad to be able to tell you that I am exceedingly well. Health and spirits never better.—Yours very truly, CHAS. S. PARNELL.
November 1, 1881.
MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,—Thanks very much for your letters and telegram.
I was rather indisposed yesterday, but am very much better to-day. I am told that everybody gets a turn after they have been here for three or four weeks, but that they then become all right. I write you this lest you and other friends should be troubled by exaggerated reports in the newspapers.
My esteemed friend Mr. Forster has become very disagreeable lately. He refuses to allow me to see my solicitor except in presence and hearing of two warders, so I have declined to see him at all. He also refuses to allow me to see visitors except in the cage, which I have also declined to do, but probably things may be relaxed again after a time.—Yours very truly, C. S. P.
Parnell had a certain visitor who was permitted to see him in Kilmainham on his "necessary and private" business, though not alone, and this gentleman was able to take his letters out, and bring them to him, unobserved, and after putting them into another outer envelope address them to "Mrs. Carpenter" at an address in London, whence I fetched them. Or sometimes he would send a formal letter to me at Eltham enclosing one addressed to some political or other personage. If Willie were at Eltham I would show him this note asking me to post enclosure on a certain date. The enclosure was, of course, to me—sent thus to keep me from the fatigue of going to town so often. The Governor of Kilmainham for some reason became suspicious of Parnell's visitor, and forbade his interviews except in the close proximity of two warders selected by himself, and Parnell refused to see him at all {125} under these restrictions. He wrote me a friendly letter then, telling me this, and other little news of his prison life, as to an ordinary acquaintance, and addressed it direct to Eltham, sending it to be approved by the Governor and posted in the ordinary way. In this letter, that anyone might have seen, there was a message by a private sign to go to the house in town for a letter within a few days. On doing so, I found my letter as usual, posted by a friendly warder, and contained in it was a recipe for invisible ink, and this ink could only be "developed" by one particular formula, a combination known only to one chemist. We were saved an infinity of trouble and anxiety, as we could now write between the lines of an ordinary or typewritten letter without detection, and it was no longer essential to get a third person to direct the envelopes. In time the Governor again became suspicious, and the friendly warder was dismissed—or Parnell was told so. However, this was only a temporary inconvenience, as Parnell was able in a couple of days to reorganize his communications with me, and this time they were not broken.
November 2, 1881.
I have just succeeded in having my communications, which were cut for a while, restored, and have received your letter of Friday night. In writing me please always acknowledge receipt of my letters by their date. I have quite recovered. My illness did me good, and I have a first-rate appetite.
You must not mind reports about my health. In fact, our "plots" have been completely disarranged by the necessity of writing and wiring my Queenie that there is nothing the matter with me.
I hope to be able to arrange to see you as soon as I hear that W. is firmly fixed.
I look at my beautiful Queen's face every night before I {126} go to bed and long for the time when I may be with you again. Only for that I should be happier here than anywhere else.
November 5, 1881.
MY DARLING WIFIE,—When I received your dear letter to-day I had just time to send you a few hasty lines in acknowledgment; now when everything is quiet and with your own sweet face before me I can give my thoughts up entirely to my Queen, and talk to you almost as well as if you were in my arms. It seems to me a long, long time since our hasty good-bye, although the first three weeks of my present life—which term will have been completed to-morrow morning—has seemed only a moment. I often feel very sad when I think of poor, unhappy Katie waiting for her husband who does not come any longer as he used to come, but who will come again to her and will not again leave her.
I am trying to make arrangements that my own Queenie may come to me this time. I shall ask my ruler here if I may see my cousin, "Mrs. Bligh, who is coming from England to see me," in his office, and with only himself present. After all, darling, the only way in which I could have escaped being here would have been by going to America, and then I could not have seen you at all, and I know I should not have been so happy or so comfortable in America as here, and, besides, I should have been beset by so many dangers there.
I admire supremely my life of ease, laziness, absence of care and responsibility here. My only trouble is about your health and happiness and this has been my only trouble from the first. Queenie, then, will see that she also must try not to be so unhappy, especially as her husband's love is becoming stronger and more intense every hour and every day.
You will be anxious to know what my short illness was about. It was of a very unromantic kind—not the heart, but the stomach. I had not much appetite for some days, and was tempted by a turkey to eat too much, thence very severe indigestion and considerable pain for about an hour. However "our doctor," by means of mustard and chlorodyne, got me all right again, and my appetite is now as good as ever. In fact, I have gotten over very quickly the "mal du prison" {127} which comes on everybody sooner or later more or less severely.
One of the men in this quarter who has been here for nearly nine months, poor fellow, looks after me as if he was my—brother, I was going to say, but I will substitute Mary.[1] He makes me a soda and lemon in the morning, and then gives me my breakfast. At dinner he takes care that I get all the nicest bits and concocts the most perfect black coffee in a "Kaffee Kanne" out of berries, which he roasts and grinds fresh each day. Finally, in the evening, just before we are separated for the night, he brews me a steaming tumbler of hot whisky. He has marked all my clothes for me also, and sees that the washerwoman does not rob me. Don't you begin to feel quite jealous?
I am going to ask Katie to put her proper initials upon the inner envelope of her next letter—-thus, K. P. Your writing on the outside envelope of the one which came to-day will do splendidly.
I do not think there is the least probability of my being moved; this is the strongest place they have, and they are daily trying to increase its strength according to their own notions, which are not very brilliant. My room is very warm and perfectly dry. They wanted me to go to another, which did not face the sun, but I refused, so they did not persist.
With a thousand kisses to my own Wifie, and hoping soon to lay my head in its old place.
Good-night, my darling.
November 7, 1881.
I did not advertise in Standard.
MY DARLING QUEENIE,—Your two letters received, and King is very much troubled about you.
I am very warm—have fire and gas in my room all night if I want it.
Dearest Wifie must try and get back her spirits and good looks for her own husband's sake. C. S. P.
November 12, 1881.
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