"Our Dead Chief:"The Irish Press and the Death of Parnell Michael de Nie Sometimes imperious, always emotionally distant, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–91) was an enigma even to his closest companions. Nonetheless, with unceasing resolve and supreme self-confidence Parnell bent others to his will and transformed Irish nationalism. But, at the peak of his popularity and influence he suffered a sudden and terrible fall and was subsequently hounded to the grave by the braying British press and sanctimonious Irish Catholic prelates. Or so the story goes. These well-worn narratives of Parnell's rise and fall have deeply influenced both popular memory and academic study of the Irish leader. The meaning of Parnell and Parnellism, however, has always been contested, from the biographies that appeared within weeks of his death up to the present day.1 One of the prime theaters of this contest was the Irish newspaper press—where the majority of the Irish public learned of the leader's death and read the first postmortem meditations on his life and career. The story of the Parnell Split is well known, but it is helpful to begin with a quick overview of the key events and how the Irish newspapers positioned themselves during the controversy. In December 1889, Captain William O'Shea [End Page 106] sued his wife Katherine for divorce, naming Parnell as co-respondent. Parnell and Katherine had been carrying on an affair since late 1880 and he had fathered two of her daughters, yet he was amazingly confident that the messy divorce proceedings would have no impact on his political career. The initial response seemed to justify Parnell's sanguinity, as his political allies rallied to his side and the bishops remained silent. The trial proved extremely embarrassing to Parnell, who offered no defense in order that the divorce be granted so that he might marry Katherine. A decree nisi (that is, a ruling that the divorce could proceed) was delivered on November 17, 1890, but Parnell's supporters reasserted their loyalty at a November 20 meeting in Dublin and then re-elected him chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party on November 25. On that same evening, things began to unravel for Parnell after William Gladstone published a letter in a special edition of the Pall Mall Gazette indicating that he could not continue to work for home rule with the Irish Party if Parnell remained its leader. With his Nonconformist political base scandalized by the conduct revealed at the trial, Gladstone knew that he could not continue the Liberal-Irish alliance unless Parnell stepped aside. The choice was now Parnell or Home Rule, and within a week many of those who had proclaimed the Chief indispensable now called for him to step down. Parnell's position was further undermined over the next two weeks by the publication of his badly received Manifesto and statements from the delegates in America and the Irish Catholic hierarchy. On December 6, a majority of the Irish MPs voted to repudiate the Chief, splitting the party. Over the next ten months what remained of Parnell's support in Ireland steady evaporated as he was attacked across the Irish press and his rump party lost several by-elections. A somewhat pathetic figure by the fall of 1891, Parnell died suddenly on October 6. Generally speaking, the Irish press followed the same trajectory as the Irish Parliamentary Party. The majority of newspapers strongly supported Parnell in the week or so after the divorce decree was issued. Like the Irish MPs, they began to peel away from the leader after Gladstone's letter was published. By the time the party officially split, the majority of Irish newspapers had already come out against Parnell, although with varying degrees of vehemence. Of the thirty-five newspapers examined for this paper, five remained true to Parnell, twelve were anti-Parnellite, eleven were Unionist, and three were nonpolitical newspapers that tried to avoid taking a position. The remaining four newspapers can be regarded as special cases. The weekly United Ireland came out strongly against the Chief in early December but was reclaimed for Parnell after a mob, led by the man himself, famously attacked the...