Meanwhile Sir Charles Russell, afterward Lord Chief Justice of England, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Guy, of the British bar, and Roger A. Pryor, of the American bar, worked faithfully, earnestly, and zealously, step by step, for the unfortunate prisoner. O'Donnell was a poor, ignorant man, who could not write his own name. In this country he had been a teamster in the Federal army during the Civil War. For a long time his countryman who had come so far to help him was not allowed to see him. Finally, this much was granted—and of great comfort to the doomed man were the sympathetic visits of my tender-hearted husband. His trial ended as everybody knew it must.
General Pryor felt keenly the embarrassment of his position, but before he left England nearly every club was open to him, and many dinners given in his honor by Lord Russell, members of the bar, Mr. Justin McCarthy and other literary men in London.
"At the royal geographical dinner," he writes, "I sat beside Lord Houghton, and opposite Lord Aberdeen, with both of whom I had pleasant talk. Other eminent men were there. Invitations followed which I must decline, infinitely to my regret, but I cannot neglect the business on which I came. A dinner is offered me in Dublin. Last evening, however, I was glad to dine with Charles Russell, Q.C., and Sunday I drive with him to Richmond. He pays me every possible attention, and I can see relies upon me in the conduct of the case. I live as retired as possible. My clients cannot suspect me of yielding to British blandishments! I have had interesting interviews with my poor client, in compliance with his urgent entreaty. He was very grateful to me and cheered by my presence."
He received marked kindness from Dr. Rae, the Arctic explorer, who had made important discoveries in King William's Land and found traces of Sir John Franklin; also in 1864 had made a telegraphic survey across the Rocky Mountains. Dr. Rae gave several delightful dinners to my husband, inviting him to meet Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, and sundry notable chemists and inventors. "Come to us Saturday at half-past seven," he wrote from Kensington, "a handsome [_sic_] should bring you in a little over half an hour if the beast is good." At Dr. Rae's he met Mathilde Blind, "a brilliant woman, a Jewess; and Justin McCarthy, a shy, silent man, spectacled and quite like a professor." Dining at the Café Royal, "who should come in and sit opposite to us but the Baroness Burdett-Coutts and her spouse. She is surprisingly juvenile in appearance—not at all as she has been represented. Her voice is quite girlish, and she moves with wonderful agility," etc.