The Country of Our Dreams. Mary O'Connell
its view of the causes of Irish poverty and agrarian disturbances.
The trial had even included a rousing reading of Fanny Parnell’s Hold the Harvest. Her poem had been read out as supposedly damning evidence of the League’s incitement to violence, and delivered so dramatically by the Crown prosecutor that the last verse “But God is on the peasant’s side/ The God that loves the poor” had been greeted with thunderous applause, and some sobbing tears, from the crowded courtroom.
It had all ended in cheering crowds at Holyhead pier bombarding Parnell with handkerchiefs, kisses and flowers, as their leader returned to his work at Westminster.
But Parnell had had another of his premonitions. ‘We have pushed this movement as far as it can constitutionally go!’ he spoke quietly to Tim Healey at his side, as more bouquets of roses were thrust upon him.
Parnell had stalked the British Parliament for years – the Irish David against the English Goliath. His slingshots were tactics of parliamentary delay and procedural blockade. Patiently, calmly, reasonably - aided and abetted by incredible, some said supernatural powers of physical stamina, and his growing cohort of Irish Parliamentary Party colleagues, Parnell obstructed the Westminster processes for as long as he could, exploiting every loophole, every procedural point, serenely exasperating, infuriating, and sleep depriving the House of Commons.
For all this, Charles Stewart Parnell, MP for Cork City, and President of the Irish Land League, was hated by the British press and people, and worshipped by the Irish at home and abroad. None of it appeared to bother him. He remained above them all, a hunting and shooting lord.
English in accent, Protestant in religion, Cambridge educated, unemotional in speech, frugal in hospitality, woefully ignorant of Irish poetry and song, Parnell had yet won the confidence, Davitt said, of the most loquacious, generous and impulsive of races. He was now at the helm of a global extra- parliamentary organization of half a million members. The League had branches in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And the numbers were rising. No wonder Gladstone was running scared.
Davitt did not share Parnell’s gentlemanly horror at the British abandonment of the rules of the game. Trial without jury? Imprisonment without charges? What rules had the British followed in 1847 when an entire people had starved?
Parnell did not respond to Davitt's comment immediately. He appeared to be lost in thought, pondering some inner process, seeking something. Something forgotten? Or something not yet appeared...
John Dillon, looking from one man to the other, noted again the physical similarity of the two leaders. Both were tall, dark-haired, with deep set brown eyes, high foreheads, prominent cheekbones. Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell were both children of the Great Famine – born in the same year, 1846, although one was born into privilege and the other into poverty. Yet one was light, swift, rapid in his movements, quick in his responses, interested in everything. The other was a man under a much harsher self-rule.
Parnell looked over at Davitt, his gaze intense. ‘Yes, we have beaten them again,’ he nodded, but without smiling. ‘And now they will come for you.’
Davitt felt a slight chill enter him with Parnell’s quietly spoken words. As a paroled ex convict, Davitt had always been the most vulnerable of the League executive.
‘They will be coming for all of us,’ John Dillon said quickly, as if to protect Davitt from Parnell’s prediction. ‘It is only a matter of time. We are all at risk.’
‘I will leave for Paris,’ Patrick Egan, the League treasurer, spoke with urgency, ‘as soon as we can organise the safe transfer of League funds.’
Parnell nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, Egan, you must go. Those funds are the people’s sole resource.’
‘They’ll need access to it.’ Davitt said.
‘Lines of communication can be kept open.’ Parnell appeared untroubled.
‘But if we’re all in prison?’ Dillon was concerned.
‘Then we shall have the Ladies Land League to assist us.’ Davitt was smiling.
‘From New York?’ Parnell knew that his sisters’ Ladies League was proving very successful. In just three months Fanny and Anna – with the help of Ellen Ford at The Irish World - had built an organisation of five thousand women in twenty-five branches throughout North America. But a mighty ocean separated the American Irish from the struggle at home. ‘New York is further away than Paris.’
‘In Dublin,’ Davitt smiled. ‘An Irish Ladies Land League based in Dublin, and in the country. Working in the field, alongside the people.’
‘No!’ Parnell and Dillon spoke at the same time, equally horrified.
‘No, Davitt, please.’ Parnell repeated. ‘We will look the most terrible cowards. Hiding behind the skirts of women.’
‘We won’t be hiding behind them.’ Davitt spoke calmly. ‘We will be working with them. And if we all end up in prison, they will carry on the fight without us.’
‘Davitt’s right!’ Egan was an unexpected ally. ‘We need an auxiliary force. Someone the Government is unlikely to touch.’
‘But Michael,’ Dillon appealed to his friend, ‘would you have our girls sent to prison too?’
‘That's very unlikely. That's the whole point of it.’
‘You’re asking women to endanger their reputations?’ Parnell was amazed.
‘Better than a system which endangers their lives.’ Davitt was growing impatient with the gentlemanly perspective.
Parnell had got up to pace. ‘It is not honourable for a man to ask a woman to do his work for him.’
‘It is their country too.’ Davitt had set his jaw. ‘It is their fight too.’
‘Oh Davitt, this is a most dangerous experiment.’ Dillon was half persuaded despite himself.
‘Yes it is.’ Davitt said. ‘And I think that Mr Gladstone will eventually find it so too. Most dangerous to him, and to landlordism.’
‘What lady is going to be able to do this work?’ Parnell challenged, coming to stand over Davitt, ‘let alone be willing.’
‘Quite a few actually.’ Davitt rose up to face the agitated Parnell. ‘In fact, they’re lining up already in Dublin.’ He paused, ready now to play his trump card. ‘Including one Miss Anna Parnell.’
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