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Updated: May 3, 2025
He left London on the evening when the Act was signed, motored to Holyhead, as he liked to do, in the big car which his friends had presented to him it was the only material testimonial which he ever received and crossed by the night boat, driving on in the morning to Aughavanagh. When he reached the Vale of Ovoca he found a muster of the East Wicklow Volunteers.
Redmond, a born artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to beauty in all kinds yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical, graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its beauty, and Redmond loved Ireland as a sailor loves the sea yet with a difference. Ireland to him in a great measure was Aughavanagh, and Aughavanagh was a place of rest.
He was part of the life of the House of Commons, for that was his place of work; and when he left it he went to Aughavanagh as a man returns from the City to his home. This home of his was in no sense connected with his active occupations.
He joined in singing "God save the King," in drinking the King's health, and at Aughavanagh now he flew the Union Jack beside the Green flag. He was willing to take part in any demonstration which implied that Nationalist Ireland under its new legal status accepted its lot in the British Empire fully and without reserve.
But on the Monday a heavy snowstorm fell; Redmond, shut up in his hills at Aughavanagh, could not reach Dublin. The roads were not open till the Thursday, and then he thought it too late to come. He was in truth already too ill to face any unusual exertion. The Convention had been summoned, not to receive a final report from the Grand Committee, but to face a new situation.
He was the one friend, I believe, whom Redmond would have taken with him to Aughavanagh after Willie Redmond's death. Now, Aughavanagh, which had been a place of rest, was a place of intense loneliness. Yet to Aughavanagh Redmond had withdrawn himself, like a wounded creature; and from Aughavanagh he came to Dublin for Pat O'Brien's funeral in Glasnevin.
After Parnell's death Redmond bought the barrack and a small plot of land about it, and it became increasingly and exclusively his home in Ireland. It was, indeed, Ireland itself for him. In it and through it he knew Ireland intimately, felt Ireland intensely and intensively, not only as a place, but as a way of being. Ireland to him meant Aughavanagh.
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