Tom Kettle lived in the country till he was twelve, and the quiet charm and peace of the land cast a spell on him that held him always. He hungered to go back, to quit politics and platforms, and in a picturesque cottage cultivate literature and crops. It was a dream he would never have realised—he was born to be in the thick of things—but it was constantly before him like a mirage.
In one of his last letters he recurs to it—
“We are going to live in the country, and I am going to grow early potatoes. I am also going to work very hard and make very few speeches.”
He was educated first at the Christian Brothers’ school in Richmond Street, Dublin. In 1894 he went to Clongowes Wood College. He had a brilliant Intermediate career, obtaining First Place in the Senior Grade with many medals and distinctions. There is a story told that this year when his great success was a matter of public comment, his father’s only remark was, “I see you failed in Book-keeping.” It might strike as harsh those who did not know Mr. Kettle, but it was not really intended as such, it was meant rather to check vanity and a possible swelled head. To Tom, it was exquisitely humorous, and he loved the upright, somewhat stern old man none the less for his seeming lack of appreciation.
In 1897 he went to University College. In a year or so, he became Auditor of the Literary and Historical Society and obtained the Gold Medal for Oratory. His great gifts were already conspicuous. A fellow-student wrote of him: “Amongst them all, Kettle stood supreme. Already that facility for grasping a complicated subject and condensing it in a happy phrase, that bright, eager mind so ready to take issue on behalf of a good cause, that intellectual supremacy which was so pre-eminently his, had marked him out for far-reaching influence and a distinguished career.”
His University course was interrupted by a breakdown in health which necessitated his withdrawal from collegiate life for nearly a year. Over-study had strained his nervous system, and he never quite regained normal health. In 1904 a brother, a veritable twin-soul, to whom he was deeply attached, and of whom he had high hopes, died. This was an everlasting grief to him. This sorrow, together with his shattered nerves, was responsible for his somewhat tragic and melancholy temperament. In 1904 he went to the Tyrol to recuperate, and in that wander-year, Europe laid her spell on him. He was a fine linguist and, being an omnivorous reader, was soon intimately acquainted with the best European literature.
His journalistic talent was displayed as Editor of St. Stephen’s, 1903–4, a spasmodically produced college magazine which he described in a long-remembered phrase as “unprejudiced as to date of issue.”
In 1902 he had entered the King’s Inns as a Law student. Of this period, a friend writes: “At the students’ dinners Kettle was cordially welcomed, and though very young in those days, still at no time and in no place did rich humour and rare conversational power show to more advantage. The company one meets at Law students’ dinners is varied to a degree, boys in their ’teens sitting at table with men of middle age and over on even terms. Struggling poverty sits check by jowl with good salary and wealth. On one occasion when Kettle was dining, one of the men present was a very well-to-do business man of about fifty. This gentleman was holding forth very earnestly on the rights of property and the amount of violence a householder is entitled to display towards a burglar. Kettle suddenly startled him with the query: ‘Have you ever considered this question from the point of view of the burglar?’ The magnate was horrified and hastily withdrew.”
That story is typical of him. His term at King’s Inns concluded with his securing a Victoria Prize, and he was called to the Bar in 1905. With his oratorical gifts and passionate delivery, a brilliant career was foretold. A writer in the Irish Law Times says: “He did everything that came his way with distinction.... There was a freshness and vigour about his style and a rare eloquence in his language which satisfied everyone that he would be an instant success if he was going to make law his profession.” Personally, I think he would never have been happy as a lawyer. He was too sensitive. I remember his defending a criminal who was convicted and sentenced to penal servitude. The conviction worried him greatly. He used to say that it was a fearful responsibility to plead for a man and think that perhaps had another lawyer been chosen there would be no conviction. That the man was guilty mattered nothing to him. He went on the principle that the innocent are those who are not found out.
“Everywhere the word is man and woman;
Everywhere the old sad sins find room.”
He looked at the Law Courts and their victims, not with the eyes of a modern lawyer who seems as if a spiritual blotting-pad had been applied, draining him of all emotion—he looked rather with the eyes of a metaphysician. In The Day’s Burden, he wrote: “One does feel intensely that these legal forms and moulds are too narrow and too nicely definite, too blank to psychology to contain the passionate chaos of life that is poured into them.” He was at once judge and jury, prisoner and counsel. He had that uncanny gift of seeing everybody’s point of view with equal intensity of vision. Such a gift makes for a very lovable personality, but a lawyer should only see the point of view for which he is briefed.
When the opportunity offered he forsook the Law. In 1904 he was first President of the “Young Ireland Branch” of the United Irish League. In 1905 came his brief editorship of the Nationist. These two events were the stepping-stones to his political career, and it was upon them that he came to the notice of the public. The Nationist—a name he coined—was a weekly journal. He was editor for three months of its six months’ life. If its career was brief, it was brilliant. It was, perhaps, the most courageous of Irish papers—and what is more, courageous in consummate prose. He thoroughly enjoyed this period of journalistic activity. He was allowed rather a free hand by the proprietors, and it was a keen joy to him to exercise his powers in the endeavour to educate the young Nationalist mind. Finally, however, he was deemed too outspoken, and he left the editor’s chair with regret.
“If one had taken the precaution to have a father who had accumulated sufficient wealth,” he wrote once, “to allow his sons the caviare of candour, nothing would be more entertaining than starting a paper.”
In 1906 an opportunity was offered to him of entering Parliament. It was his chance, but it was a fighting chance. After the most strenuous of fights, he was returned as Parliamentary representative for East Tyrone. His majority was only sixteen, and it may be fairly said that only he could have won and held that seat in the Nationalist interest.
In the autumn of 1906 he went with Mr. Hazleton to America on a Home Rule Mission. His oratorical gifts were much appreciated there, and his six months’ tour of the States was a fine experience, if a physically trying one. He liked America, with her love of freedom and her genial, hospitable ways, and always hoped again to “cross the pond.”
I remember a few sayings which he brought back from America which he regarded as typical of American humour—such as “I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way,” and “We trust in God; all others pay cash.”
In 1908 he translated M. Dubois’ Contemporary Ireland, and wrote an introduction, which established his literary reputation.
At the general election in 1910 my husband increased his majority of sixteen to one of one hundred and eighteen. Mr. Shane Leslie, who gave him valuable help in this election, wrote thus—
“Kettle was the most delightful of platform speakers, and his witticisms and lyrical turns of speech made the election one long intellectual treat. He could turn over weighty questions of economics or of international policy with an ease that struck home to the peasant mind.... At one spot, I remember, he was greeted by a poverty-stricken populace, who had improvised a mountain band and crude home-made torches of turf