The customary device, where contemporaries are concerned, of disembowelling the victim’s name, and leaving it a skeleton of consonants, is a formal concession which in effect concedes nothing.  Nor is there any reason why it should; for the only valid objection to the medium of dialogue is in cases where its form might mislead the reader into mistaking fiction for fact, and the author’s invention for the ipsissima verba of the characters he portrays.  I hope that this book will attract no readers so unintelligent.  Having chosen dialogue for these studies of historical events because I find in it a natural and direct means to the interpretation of character, my main scruple is satisfied when I have made it plain that they have no more authenticity because they happen to be written in dramatic form, than they would have were they written as political essays.  These are imaginary conversations which never actually took place; and though I think they have a nearer relation to the minds of the supposed speakers than have King’s speeches to the person who utters them, they must merely be taken as a personal reading of characters and events, tributes to men for all of whom I have, in one way or another, a very great respect and admiration; and not least for the one whom, with a reticence that is symbolical of the part he played in the downfall of “The Man of Business,” I have here left nameless.

The King-maker

  Note

Readers of this dialogue may need to be reminded, for clearer understanding, of the following sequence of events.  On November 15th, 1890, a decree nisi was pronounced in the undefended divorce suit O’Shea v.  O’Shea and Parnell.  On November 24th, Gladstone, in a letter to John Morley, stated that Parnell’s retention of the Irish leadership would be fatal to his own continued advocacy of the Irish cause.  In December, the majority of the Irish Party threw over Parnell in order to placate the “Nonconformist conscience,” and retain the co-operation of the Liberal Party under Gladstone’s leadership.  During the months following, Parnell and his adherents suffered a series of defeats at by-elections in Ireland.  In June 1891, immediately on the decree nisi being made absolute, Parnell married Katharine O’Shea.  On October 6th he died.

Dramatis Personae.

CHARLES STEWART PARNELL (Dethroned “King” of Ireland)
KATHARINE PARNELL (His wife:  divorced wife of Captain O’Shea)
A MAN (Ex-valet to Captain O’Shea)
A SERVANT

The King-maker

Brighton.  October 1891.