On the 25th of June 1891, Charles Stewart Parnell married Katherine O’Shea. Just over 3 months later, he would die in the arms of his new wife. Professor of Modern Irish History, Diarmaid Ferriter joined Sean O’Rourke in studio this morning to take him through the complicated journey Parnell and O’Shea faced to call each other husband and wife.
Parnell and O’Shea met in the summer of 1880. At the time, Katherine was married to Captain William O’Shea, who Diarmaid describes as “an odious character”. Captain O’Shea was eager to get into politics and asked Katherine to make contact with Parnell, hoping he might assist him in getting on a ticket. As leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Parnell was a “hugely powerful” player in the political sphere at the time. When Katherine went to Parnell to invite him to dinner, the pair shared an instant connection.
“That’s where the love story begins. They were completely besotted with each other. They were both very lonely and isolated characters…If you consider the fame that Parnell had…he was a very lonely man. And Katherine was very lonely, trapped in that marriage. The marriage was already well over.”
While it does seem to have been “love at first sight” for both Charles and Katherine, their journey would not be a smooth one, as Diarmaid explained.
“It’s a great love story. But of course, you’ve got to consider all the complications.”
One of those complications was formalising the relationship between Charles and Katherine. Though Katherine and Captain O’Shea lived apart the majority of the time and Katherine claimed that O’Shea was violent, a reckless gambler and committed adultery with her sister, talk of a divorce proved hugely controversial, to say the least.
For starters, William did not want to divorce. As Diarmaid explained, he was waiting on an inheritance he hoped would come following the death of Katherine’s aunt.
“He stayed in that marriage for money because of Aunt Ben. This was Benjamin Wood, who was Katherine’s mother’s sister, who was a very, very wealthy woman… That was certainly a factor in why he held out. But he was also determined to destroy Parnell.”
The “Victorian climate” proved fruitful when it came to Captain O’Shea’s wishes to harm Parnell’s political career. When the details of the relationship between Charles and Katherine emerged, Charles found himself faced with the possibility that he would lose his political power.
Even though many of his critics were known to live with mistresses themselves, the “greatest crime”, as Diarmaid put it, “is to be caught”. There was a question over whether Charles should remain leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. But he was not about to bow out gracefully. Diarmaid quoted IPP MP, Justin McCarthy.
“The way that McCarthy described it later – and I think it encapsulates much about Parnell – he said that Parnell would rather be uprooted and broken than to bend to the prevailing winds.”
In the end, the winds did prevail. The party split and wouldn’t recover fully for decades. Katherine took a lot of the blame for this in the eyes of the public. Diarmaid told Sean that it was around this time she got a new name.
“She becomes ‘Kitty‘. ‘Kitty’ wasn’t her name. ‘Kitty‘ was Victorian slang for a prostitute…She was regarded as meddlesome, as destroying Ireland by destroying Parnell.”
It all took a toll. But the scandal surrounding their union doesn’t seem to have caused either Charles or Katherine to falter. When Charles died, Katherine placed a red rose he had given her the day they met in the coffin with him, deciding not to attend the funeral herself. Diarmaid said that for her “Parnell was everything”.
“There’s terrible tragedy. There’s a lovely romance there, there’s no doubt about it. They found each other’s soulmate. But the costs were enormous.“
Listen back to the full discussion on Today with Sean O’Rourke here.