Parnell and Katie became lovers,
and around 1881, O’Shea found out about it, and forbade her to see him. However, the relationship went on. It seems possible that when she became
pregnant with her first baby by Parnell, she resumed marital relations with
Willie. Parnell ended up in Jail, for a
time, due to his political activities. Katie due to her Liberal party
connexions, (since her family were traditional liberals) was involved at times
in negotiating between Parnell and Gladstone.
While he was in jail, he was paroled
in order to attend a family funeral, and at the time, his first child by Katie,
a baby girl called Claude Sophie, was taken ill and died. He visited Katie and saw the baby. Willie however seems to have believed that
the baby was his, and had her baptised as a Catholic.
Katie later claimed that Willie
himself was frequently unfaithful to her, and they continued to live
apart. however, since they were both
financially dependent on “Aunt Ben”, it seemed impossible to get a
divorce. Willie could have divorced his
wife for infidelity... but she would have had to claim some other reason, as
well as adultery, in order to sue him for divorce.
Since Mrs Ben Wood was very old,
it may have seemed to all three of them, Parnell, Katie and O’Shea, that it would
be better to wait a while and to go on with their triangular situation. Aunt Ben was a very proper old lady and would
have been horrified at the idea of her niece being involved in an affair or
getting a divorce. Willie was never well
off and may have reasoned that if he waited till Mrs Wood died and left her
fortune to Katie, he could ask for some financial inducement to allow himself
to be divorced for “adultery and cruelty” or some other cause.
Parnell was devoted to Katie. He was sincerely patriotic and passionate about
his work for Ireland, but his private happiness mattered a great deal to him. Katie was not very political, she was happy
as a wife and mother, though she did enjoy the “secret political negotiations”
to help her lover. as time went on,
Parnell lived secretly with Katie in Eltham, a London suburb, where she had a house
near to her aunt. She had two more
children, daughters, by him, Katie and Claire.
Many people in political circles knew about their affair but it was not
known publicly. Since Parnell was a
protestant, leading an Irish party of mostly Catholics, his behaviour was
dangerous. The Roman Catholic church had
enormous influence with the Irish voting public, and would have been horrified
to know that their political leader was a long term adulterer who was contemplating
marrying a woman who would have to get a divorce to become his wife.
However since divorce was still scandalous, it
is hard to blame Katie for not wanting to be the guilty party in a divorce... Parnell worked hard during the 1880’s with
the Land Campaign and convinced Gladstone that Home Rule was an inevitable step
forward. He was a skilled political
leader, with a disciplined party behind him, and it was hard to argue that the
Irish were “backward” or not fit for self-government, when they were playing
the political game so successfully. Parnell was eager to reform the land system
in Ireland, but as a landlord himself he was less radical in his beliefs than
the socialist Michael Davitt, who considered Land Nationalisation. He was himself an “improving landlord” at his
Avondale estate, but he could see the argument that in the Irish context, it
might be better to allow tenant farmers to buy out their farms and to be “peasant
proprietors”. But he was less
interested in land reform than in getting Home Rule for Ireland. This would not have meant complete
independence but it would have been a stepping stone, giving the Irish some power
of self-rule.
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