Then Powerscourt understood. This was a change of plan. Old men didn’t like changes of plan. In his mind Uncle Peter was already lost in the details of Parnell’s funeral. Now he was asked for the view from the mountain top.
‘Let me try,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it won’t be very good but it might help.’ He paused briefly, marshalling his thoughts. ‘Born in famine times. Protestant landowner from County Wicklow. Elected to Westminster Parliament mid-1870s. By the end of that decade two bad harvests in a row filled the island with the terror of another famine. With Michael Davitt Parnell founded the Land League. Farmers asked their landlords for reduction or cancellation of their rents. Widespread agrarian violence. Landlords who refused were sometimes boycotted. Two results. Gladstone passed a law that made it easier for the tenants to purchase their land. And he imprisoned Parnell in Kilmainham Jail for inciting violence, which guaranteed Parnell immortality in Ireland. Became Leader of Irish Parliamentary Party in 1880. Turned it from undisciplined rabble into formidable fighting force. Parnell and his MPs fought for Home Rule for Ireland. Gladstone was converted to Home Rule, a form of devolution. Through the ’80s Parnell carried on a passionate affair with Katherine O’Shea, wife of another Irish MP. Cited as co-respondent in 1889 divorce case. Savaged by hostile publicity when details of the adultery came out in court. A few MPs stayed loyal, remainder fought him tooth and nail. Pro- and anti-Parnellites contested three by-elections in Ireland through 1891. Parnell lost them all. Married Katherine O’Shea June 1891.’
‘Admirable,’ said Uncle Peter. ‘Now then,’ he went on, wiping his mouth quickly with the sleeve of his jacket, ‘let us begin.’ He read in a light tenor voice that gradually filled the dining room. ‘“Chapter Twenty-Seven,”’ he said. ‘“Charles Stewart Parnell died at a quarter to midnight on 6th October 1891 in Mrs Parnell, formerly Mrs O’Shea’s house at Number 10 Walsingham Terrace in Brighton. He had been ill for some days. The months of strain as he campaigned unsuccessfully to hold on to his political base at those three by-elections in Ireland, the Irish Parliamentary split into bitter faction fighting after the shock of his divorce case, must have taken their toll. He had endured levels of abuse and hostility unparalleled even in Ireland. Lime had been thrown in his face. On another occasion eggs had been hurled at him and his trousers were torn in a scuffle in a hotel, the waiter repairing his breeches under the table while Parnell ate the remains of his supper. Everywhere he went he was pursued by the national anthem of his opponents, ‘Three Cheers for Kitty O’Shea’. Sometimes his enemies would shake battered clothes on poles at him, proclaiming to all and sundry that these were Kitty O’Shea’s knickers.
‘“On his last evening he asked his wife to lie down on the bed beside him. His old dog Grouse, at his request, was also present in the bedroom. He had not slept for two days and a local doctor had given him some medicine. Throughout his life Parnell was a superstitious man – the colour green had always been anathema to him – and he believed that his lack of rest was a bad omen. And it was October, a month he always said was his unlucky time of year. During the evening he dozed and Mrs Parnell thought she heard him mutter ‘Conservative Party’ as if he were planning some further political manoeuvre. If she touched him, he smiled. Later he said, ‘Kiss me, sweet wifie, and I will try to sleep a little.’ Those were the last words on earth of the man who changed the face of Irish politics. Just before midnight he was gone. He was only forty-five years old.”’
Uncle Peter’s voice began to crack towards the end, whether due to lack of refreshment or emotion unclear. As he topped up his glass he turned to his little audience of three.
‘What do you think of it so far?’ he asked. ‘Do you like it well enough?’
‘Excellent start,’ said Powerscourt.
‘Splendid,’ said Johnny.
‘Let’s have some more, Uncle Peter,’ said Young James in an uncharacteristically long speech.
‘Short sentences wherever possible,’ the historian declared, ‘nothing too ornate in the prose style department. Gibbon. Always liked Gibbon. Never got to the end of that Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, mind you. Don’t suppose many people did.’
He peered down at his black book once more, checking on the way that there were still plentiful supplies of port to hand. ‘“The news of his death travelled round the world. In New York’s fourth ward, heavily populated with Irish immigrants, portraits of the dead leader appeared in the windows, draped in black. About twelve o’clock on the morning of Saturday 10th October Parnell’s body set out on the long journey back to Dublin for his funeral and burial. A number of Irish MPs accompanied him on his journey. Mrs Parnell was too upset to travel, but her wreath went with him every step of the way: ‘My true love, my darling, my husband.’ Rain was falling heavily as his coffin, almost covered with wreaths of large white flowers, was carried out to an open-sided funeral carriage drawn by four black horses. The umbrellas of the small crowd were useless in the violent squalls of rain. They took shelter in the doorways and in the rooms of houses being redecorated close by, saluting the coffin respectfully as it passed. The route went along the King’s Road on the sea front, past Regency Square and the West Pier whose great girders were being pounded by the waves, its promenades totally deserted, and up West Street to Brighton station. The coffin was lifted into a van attached to a special saloon on the 1.45 to Victoria station in London. En route to the capital it was decoupled at Croydon and diverted to Willesden where many Irish men and women came to pay their last respects. Another wreath bore the message, ‘Charles Stewart Parnell, Salutation. He died fighting for freedom.’ Shortly before seven o’ clock the train set off from Willesden on its melancholy eight-hour journey through the dark heart of England to Holyhead and the Irish boat. Sixteen men carried Parnell’s coffin on to the steamer, the Ireland, where it was wheeled on a trolley into the smoking saloon on the lower deck, an appropriate, if temporary, resting place for a man so devoted to cigars. A black cloth was laid over it, covered in its turn by a green flag. Twenty-eight more wreaths, which had travelled north with the coffin, were placed alongside it. ‘Died fighting for Ireland’. ‘In fond memory of one of Ireland’s greatest chieftains who was martyred in the struggle for her independence.’ At two forty-five in the morning, nearly fifteen hours after the corpse left the house in Brighton, the Ireland set off to carry Charles Stewart Parnell on his very last crossing of the Irish Sea to Dublin.”’
‘Still awake, are ye?’ croaked the old man, pouring himself a tumbler of iced lemonade. ‘Plenty more to go.’
Johnny Fitzgerald rose and took one of the bottles of port from in front of the old man. ‘Thought we’d better keep you company,’ he said cheerfully.
Powerscourt was thinking that the political questions raised by Parnell in his lifetime, the land question, the precise relationships to exist between England and Ireland, the thorny conundrum of Home Rule, had not been answered yet. Gladstone had promised that it would be his life’s mission to bring peace to Ireland or perish in the attempt. It had been one of the chief political objectives of his long career. Well, Gladstone had perished. Ireland still did not have peace. Maybe another act in the long drama was being played out in these Irish rooms with the great holes on the walls where ancestors from centuries before had rested in their great houses. Maybe the theft of these paintings was the start of another chapter. Maybe they were all part of a story that went back eight hundred years.
‘“The Ireland was late arriving in Kingstown,”’ Uncle Peter continued, staring down at his book, ‘still battered by the storm, angry waves lashing at the harbour walls. Great crowds had often welcomed Parnell home from his Parliamentary triumphs here in the past, bands playing ‘The Wearing of the Green’ or ‘A Nation Once Again’. They were silent this morning except for a low moan as the coffin came into view. Among the crowd in Kingstown early that morning was the young Irish poet W.B. Yeats, come to greet his friend Maud Gonne who had met Parnell in Ireland in the days before his death.”’