FRANCE:Thirty-four Irish members of the Parnell Society are spending four days in Paris walking in the footsteps of Charles Stewart Parnell "to put flesh on the bones of history" in the words of Pat Power, the historian who organised the journey.
They are staying at the Irish College and were invited to the Irish Embassy yesterday by Ambassador Anne Anderson.
Parnell's maternal uncle Charles Tudor Stewart, who was American, leased a sumptuous apartment here from 1856 until 1873. His sister Delia, Parnell's mother, was born at the family estate in Wicklow and often brought her 10 children to Paris.
Today, there is a cafe downstairs at 122 ave des Champs-Élysées, where the Parnell family lived. Uncle Charles's first-floor apartment houses the offices of a perfume company. "No one there has any interest or knowledge of Irish history," sighs Pat Power.
In this Paris house, Parnell met Mary Woods, a wealthy young woman from Rhode Island, in 1870. Had she not shunned him, he might not have fallen in love with Katherine O'Shea 10 years later, and Irish history would have been transformed.
"Mary Woods jilted him," explained Prof Donal McCartney, the president of the Parnell Society.
"Everything was sublimated into politics. He never looked at another woman until he met Katherine O'Shea."
The surest way to offend a Parnellite is to refer to "Kitty" O'Shea. "That was a pejorative term used by [Parnell's enemy] Tim Healy," explained Noel Tierney, a trustee of the society. "A 'kitty' was a garrison girl who followed the soldiers."
Parnell made the Brighton Hotel, still located at 218, rue de Rivoli, his headquarters abroad. The Irish National Land League stashed its cash - mainly gifts from Irish-Americans - in two Paris accounts, away from the eyes of the British.
Parnell's parliamentary colleagues learned of his liaison with Katherine O'Shea in February 1881 because they intercepted a letter she posted to the Brighton Hotel. When Parnell did not show up for a week, they opened the letter looking for a clue to his whereabouts; he arrived just as two MPs were leaving to investigate the English return address.