Friday 14 January 2022

One Day He Will Come Again

See previous blog references to Charles Stewart Parnell.

Rumors that Parnell was still alive persisted because he died in middle age and because his body was never put on view. He was rumored to be hiding in South Africa, another country resisting British imperialism. These historical details are in Ulysses Annotated.

In Poul Anderson's multiverse, Parnell did not "come again" but did spend a short span outside our space-time in the Old Phoenix. We encounter a number of historical figures in Poul Anderson's works and might then learn more in non-fictional texts or on the internet.

7 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Did Parnell think his affair with a married woman wasn't going to come around and bite him on the ass?

Or that the Catholic church -- who'd never liked him because he was Protestant -- wouldn't use it and their weight with the Irish nationalist movement to discredit him?

He should have decided which was more important to him, his career or his personal relationships, and come down for one or the other.

As it was, his self-immolation drastically reduced the chance of a Home Rule bill, with negative consequences people are still dealing with.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

While I agree with what you said about how Parnell's folly helped to ruin Home Rule for Ireland, I don't think he alone wrecked that. I have read of how that "psalm singing hypocrite" (as you had Disraeli calling Gladstone in THE PESHAWAR LANCERS) also helped to ruin Home Rule. Simply put, Gladstone IRRITATED many people, rubbing them the wrong way. So I can imagine some MPs and Peers thinking to themselves: "This SOB is hot for Home Rule, so I will vote against it just to spite Gladstone!"

Voting against a proposed law for no better reason than dislike of its author was not right, I agree, but it's all too humanly likely!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

In the last few years in Britain, someone on the alternative, extra-parliamentary left came to grief not because of adultery (that wouldn't have mattered) but because of alleged sexual abuse. Far more serious.

S.M. Stirling said...

Note that Parnell's playing around wouldn't have mattered politically a generation before.

That was because the 'double standard' of sexual morality was becoming less uneven in late-Victorian Britain; men were catching more of the grief for straying that women always had.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

True, by the time of the first Home Rule bill, people were more censorious of men who played fast and loose with women than they had been in 1830.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: one of the few attractive things about Puritan New England was that punishments for adultery were identical both in theory and practice for men and women.

This was, by the standards of the day, bizarre and radical, and was much remarked upon.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Much as I would otherwise dislike the Calvinists of early New England, that stern consistency in punishing both men and women EVENHANDEDLY for the same offenses is worthy of respect.

Ad astra! Sean