Maud Gonne McBride

Edith Maud Gonne McBride (1866–1953), the political activist was born on 21 December 1866 at Tongham Manor, Farnham, Surrey and was the eldest daughter of three daughters born to  Capt. Thomas Gonne and Edith Cook. Gonne’s family were wealthy importer of Portuguese wines and the Edit Cook came from a family of successful and respected drapers in London. Edit, who suffered from tuberculosis, sadly died in London after giving birth to her third daughter. The infant, Margaretta, died soon afterwards.

Maud Gonne McBride

In 1876 then Maj. Gonne was appointed military attaché to the Austrian court, and the family spent time in the south of France. Maud liked being in France as much as being in Ireland or England, and spoke French fluently. In 1882 Gonne, after a stint in India, was posted to Dublin as assistant adjutant-general at Dublin castle. Maud said that she watched the arrival of the new lord lieutenant from a window in the Kildare Street Club on the 6^th May 1882, the same day that the Phoenix Park murders took place.

By 1886 Maud Gonne’s political thinking was shifting to that of a nationalist, after she and her father witnessed the horror of the evictions in the country. She said that he was going to resign from the army and stand as a home rule candidate. This, however, never happened as Gonne died from typhoid fever on the 30 November 1886.

William Butler Yeats

She met WB Yeats in Dublin 30 January 1889 and he was immediately besotted with her beauty: tall, bronze-eyed, and with a ‘complexion . . . luminous, like that of apple-blossom through which the light falls’. He fell in love with her, and wrote many poems about her. She played the lead role in his play Cathleen ni Houlihan, and although he proposed to her twice she refused his offers.

She died at Roebuck House, Clonskeagh, Dublin on 27 April 1953 and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery two days later.

On the radio

A few days ago I was delighted to be a guest on The History Show on Limerick City Community Radio, hosted by John O’Carroll. The two topics I talked about were:

• The publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922 (95th anniversary) and the growth in popularity of Bloomsday; and
• The premiere of GF Handel’s Messiah in 1742 (275th anniversary) and his time in Dublin.

 

Link (click to listen): The History Show

James Joyce

GF Handel

 

CS Parnell – Uncrowned King of Ireland

Avondale House

Although I was familiar with his statue at the end of O’Connell Street, I had never been to his home, Avondale, in Rathdrum, County Wicklow until recently. It is a wonderful Georgian building designed in 1777 by James Wyatt for the barrister Samuel Hayes, who was a pioneer of reinstating forests in Ireland. When Hayes died, in 1795, he left his property to his friend Sir John Parnell, the great-grandfather of CS Parnell.

CSP on O’Connell Street

CS Parnell was born on the 27th June 1846 in Avondale and was named after his maternal grandfather Charles Stewart who was a hero of the War of 1812 (1812-1815). He was a naval officer who commanded the USS Constitution when it captured two British ships, HMS Cyane and HMS Levant, on the same day, 20th February 1815. In fact, the Admiral’s mother, Parnell’s great-grandmother, was a member of the House Of Tudor and, therefore, related to Royal Family. His father, John Henry Parnell, was the grandson of the Sir John Parnell who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Grattan’s Parliament, who lost his position in 1799 when he opposed the Act of Union. With such a lineage it was no surprise that CS would himself one day be involved in the business of politics.

Early on he was sent to school in England and later went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, although due to financial concerns at Avondale he never graduated.

He was first elected as an MP for Meath in 1875, and later as MP for Youghal, Cork from 1880-1891. Later, he became president of the Irish National Land League on 21 October 1979 when it was established in the Imperial Hotel, Castlebar, Co Mayo. This brought most of the groups that were involved in land agitation and the rights of tenants together, with the following aims:

• to bring about a reduction in rents, and
• to achieve ownership of the land.

In December 1979 he travelled to America, visiting 62 cities, and helped raise £70,000 for famine relief in Ireland.  In Washington he met President Hayes before being invited to speak to the House of Representatives. The tour was a massive success and Parnell was soon hailed as the ‘Uncrowned King of Ireland.’

By the late 1880s he was at the peak of his power and pushing Prime Minister Gladstone on the issue of Home Rule. They pair held meetings in March 1888 and in late 1889, but he was brought down when news of his affair with Mrs Katherine (Kitty) O’Shea was made public in 1890. Although the League passed a resolution that confirmed Parnell’s leadership, the Catholic Church disagreed, distressed by news of his immorality, and decided it could no longer act as his ally.

On 25th June 1891 he married Katherine and they moved to Hove, England where he died of pneumonia on 6th October 1891. His body was returned for burial, on the 11th October, in Glasnevin Cemetery where a crowd of 200,000 attended. The renowned historian AJP Taylor commented: ‘More than any other man he gave Ireland the sense of being an independent nation.’

Avondale – path to house

Avondale forest