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Show The Tragic House of Parnelf (By T. P. O'Connor, M. P.) A letter in the newspapers from Mrs. Dickenson, a . sfster of the last Mr. Parnell, recalls the family and its tragic history to the attention of the world. Mrs. Dickenson makes the demand de-mand that certain moneys shall be devoted de-voted to paying off the mortgages on the Parnell estate, so as to allow the survivors of the family to live there once again. I ,do not enter into the details of the' controversy which Mrs. Dickenson raises; I simply allude to the letter as reviving many memories connected with the late leader of the Irish race. There are certain families which at all times of human history seemed to be pursued by some furies that drove them to premature and tragic destruction. This is the idea which underlies many of the dramas of ancient Greece stories that thrill us even in our own days, and through the medium of an imperfectly understood language. These stories belong to a Greece that lies half hidden in the midst of long forgotten for-gotten centuries, but in Ireland of today, to-day, unfortunately, this haunting spirit of tragedy still exists. I knew a family when I was living in Galway, forty years ago, which then counted twelve persons. It was a remarkable family in many ways wonderfully gifted by nature, all highly intellectual, and all, at the same time, marvelous examples of robustness the men athletes without with-out nerves and without fear. Not one member of that family lives in Galway today, and many of them have died in far off climes in London, in the United States, in South America, everywhere except In the historic old town in which they were born. " Some such malignant destiny seems to have pursued the family of the Par-nells. Par-nells. In the days when Charles Stewart Stew-art Parnell was the powerful political leader who was shaking an old society to its foundations some of his more ill natured opponents used to recall the fact that there had been more than cne tragedy in his family history, and used charitably to ascribe his own apparently apparent-ly reckless acts to hereditary influences of that kind. And in Parnell's own face there was always something of the tragic. I remember hearing an Irish-American Irish-American poet once say years before Parnell's death that he had the face of a man who could not die a natural and ordinary death; that it was the face of one who was bound to die on the scaffold. scaf-fold. The tall, spare form, the long, thin, classic nose, the beautifully shaped forehead, but, above all, the eyes red flint in color and a little wild, and later on a little hunted in expression expres-sion these were the things in the face that made it different from that of the ordinary man,, and surrounded it with a halo of mystery, sorrow, arc presage of an unusual and tragic ending. My Irish-American friend who foretold fore-told the scaffold for Parnell was more accurate in his forecast than he thought, perhaps, for, though Parnell died in his bed a9 a matter of "act, his ending had all the misery, and, perhaps, per-haps, even all the suffering of death by the executioner.' And, though some members of his family survive, many have either preceded or followed hiin to an arly and painful death. Next to himself the most interesting member of his family was his sister Fanny. I never saw her, but I am told by those who did that she was a beautiful beau-tiful woman. She was certainly a woman wo-man of great intellectual gifts. She wrote at least one beautiful and eloquent elo-quent poem; it is constantly quoted in Irish newspapers. She was found dead in her bed one morning taken off in a night. His mother, who lived to a great , age, died finally .as. the result of an accident. One of his sisters, who once took a prominent part in politics, and who had much of his own strength of character and vehemence of conviction, con-viction, has taken up her dwelling place in isolation from the world which once rang with her name. Two of Parnell's sisters are widows; one was happily married to a young naval officer of-ficer in the 'SOs, and is, I believe, still alive, and, I hope, enjoy the rare satisfaction, sat-isfaction, in her family history, of happiness. hap-piness. It was there he used to live in his early days. I saw him there in the '80s, shortly before he came down to my then constituency to make the historic his-toric speech about "taking off his coat." Then he seemed happy there, after his simple and almost rustic fashion. fash-ion. For he was a man of the simp- 'lest tastes in everything; did not know or understand the meaning of comfort; ate simply, dressed badly; was "near" in expenditure on himself, though no man wasted money so foolishly where j anything that appealed to his love of machinery and experiment was concerned. con-cerned. I remember, when the suggestion sug-gestion was first made to give him a big fund, I was asked to lay it before be-fore him by the late Edmund Dwyer Gray. He at first refused to sanction it. He said he had but little, but it was enough. Afterwards the matter was taken out of his hands and 40,000 was collected and presented to him one of the handsomest tributes ever given by a nation to its leader. But even of this money though it had all disappeared at the time of his death Parnell spent little on himself. A fried sole, a chop, toasted brown bread, a bottle of the cheapest Moselle this was Parnell's lunch, and this also was his dinner. Sometimes he so neglected his hair that it lay in long masses almost down to his shoulders; and he wore for years in succession an appalling Cardigan waistcoat which reminded one in its combined shabbiness and anxiety against cold of the black mittens one sees on the hands of those poor, forlorn for-lorn old Englishwomen who sit aU day long at trie table in Monte Carlo. The house at Avondale, when I saw it, seemed to have fallen asleep in the eighteenth century, and not to have again awoke. . The door I remember to this day as having that look of shabby gentility which is the note of almost everything in Ireland. I think that the knocker was all awry, the paint had almost entirely disappeared; in i short, neglect, disuse, and the genteel poverty which is worse than real, downright poverty, were written largely large-ly on the whole place. But outside there was the emerald green of the grass; there was the fresh, reviving air of Wicklow; there were the dimly suggested mountains ,in the distance; and some way ofE there was the Meeting Meet-ing of the Waters, with all their peace, and memories, and sadness. It is a little like the life of the famous, strong, stern, unhappy man who was its last owner, with splendor and misery commingled, com-mingled, and black fate and ruin o'er-hanging o'er-hanging all. Chicago Tribune. |