McCarthy was first elected to Parliament at a by-election on 12 June 1884, when he was returned unopposed as the Home Rule League member for Athlone, following the death of the Liberal MP Sir John James Ennis.

They married in Edinburgh in 1894, and though they divorced in 1899, she originated the role of Katherine de Vaucelles, the heroine in If I Were King in 1901.

[5] Among other works, he wrote biographies of Sir Robert Peel (1891), Pope Leo XIII (1896) and William Ewart Gladstone (1898).

[6] He also wrote: In 1893, he translated some Gazels from Divan of Hafiz, the 14th century Persian poet, which was published in a 152-page volume by David Nutt.

[10] McCarthy married musical artist Cecilia Loftus in 1893 in Edinburgh, Scotland, but the marriage did not last long and was dissolved in 1899.