Maud Gonne

Template:Short description Template:Use Hiberno-English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Maud Gonne MacBride (Template:Langx; born Edith Maud Gonne; 21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. She was of Anglo-Irish descent and was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of people evicted in the Land Wars. MacBride actively agitated for Home Rule and then for the republic declared in 1916. During the 1930s, as a founding member of the Social Credit Party, she promoted the distributive programme of C. H. Douglas. Gonne was well known for being the muse and long-time love interest of Irish poet W. B. Yeats.

Early life

Gonne was born in England at Tongham<ref>Template:Citation</ref> near Aldershot, Hampshire, in 1866, the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne of the 17th Lancers and Edith Frith Gonne (née Cook), both from established English families. Despite this, she sought to claim an Irish lineage, writing in her autobiography A Servant of the Queen that she was "the daughter of an Irish father and an English mother" and suggesting that her family came from County Mayo before being disinherited and turning to the wine trade.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> No evidence supports this assertion, and biographers have confirmed her ancestry was English for generations.<ref name="Pratt 1983"/>Template:Efn

In 1868, amidst high tension in Ireland following the 1867 Fenian Rising, Captain Thomas Gonne was appointed brigade major of the cavalry in Ireland and stationed at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare. That year, Maud’s sister Kathleen was born, and the family lived at Airfield near Donnybrook, Dublin, where Maud befriended Ida Jameson of the distilling family. Edith Gonne, suffering from tuberculosis, gave birth in London to another daughter, Margaretta, in 1871; both mother and child died soon after. Tuberculosis continued to affect Maud and Kathleen throughout their lives. The family moved between the Curragh and Howth for health reasons, and Howth became a place of lasting personal importance to Maud.<ref name="DIB"/>

After Edith’s death, Maud and Kathleen lived with relatives in London before joining their grandfather, Francis Cook, at Doughty House, Richmond, which housed an extensive art collection. In 1876, Major Gonne became military attaché to the Austrian court, taking the family to the south of France, where Maud grew fluent in French. Following a posting in India, Thomas travelled through Europe with Maud until 1882, when he returned to Dublin as assistant adjutant-general. Maud later recalled attending public events at Dublin Castle, including witnessing the state entry of the new lord lieutenant on 6 May 1882, the day of the Phoenix Park murders, and participating in the Castle season of 1886, which featured a St Patrick’s night ball attended by the Prince of Wales.<ref name="DIB"/>

Early career

Dublin, London and Paris

In 1882, her father was posted to Dublin. She accompanied him and remained with him until his death in 1886. With her sister Kathleen, Gonne spent an unhappy time in London under the guardianship of their uncle William Gonne. Unaware that she would inherit a fortune on her majority, she tried to become an actress but became ill with the tuberculosis that stayed with her throughout her life; in the summer of 1887, she went to the French spa town of Royat in the Auvergne to recover.<ref name=Breathnach2005>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In France, Gonne met Lucien Millevoye (1850–1918), a married journalist with fervid right-wing politics, a supporter of the revanchist General Boulanger. Her relationship with Millevoye, who was sixteen years her senior, was both sexually and politically driven. With Boulanger, he would redeem France by regaining Alsace-Lorraine. Her mission was Ireland, and together they would constitute an alliance against the British Empire.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

In December 1887, Maud Gonne inherited trust funds in excess of £13,000 and an unentailed sum from her mother's estate. She was a very wealthy woman and was free to live as she pleased. She travelled early in 1888 on a clandestine Boulangist mission to Russia, where she met the notable Pall Mall Gazette editor W. T. Stead, who wrote of meeting in St Petersburg "one of the most beautiful women of the world" (Review of Reviews, 7 June 1892).<ref name=":0" /> She returned to Ireland and worked for the release of Irish political prisoners from jail.Template:Citation needed

In 1889, she first met W. B. Yeats, who fell in love with her. Gonne was attracted to the occultist and spiritualist worlds deeply important to Yeats, asking his friends about the reality of reincarnation. In 1891 she briefly joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occultist organisation with which Yeats had involved himself.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Lewis, p. 140</ref>

Template:Multiple image In 1890, in France she again met Millevoye. They had a son, Georges, but the child died within the year, possibly of meningitis. Gonne was distraught, and buried him in a large memorial chapel. (Her distress remained with her; in her will she asked for Georges's baby shoes to be interred with her). After the child's death, she separated from Millevoye, but in late 1893 arranged to meet him at the mausoleum in Samois-sur-Seine and, next to their child's sarcophagus, they had sexual intercourse. Her purpose was to conceive a baby with the same father, to whom the soul of Georges would transmigrate in metempsychosis.<ref name="schofield">Template:Cite web</ref> Gonne's daughter by Millevoye, Iseult Gonne, was born in August 1894.

Inghinidhe na hÉireann

During the 1890s, Gonne travelled extensively throughout England, Wales, Scotland and the United States campaigning for the nationalist cause, forming an organisation called the "Irish League" (Template:Lang) in 1896.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1900, Gonne helped found Template:Lang (Daughters of Ireland). Twenty-nine women attended the first meeting. They decided to "combat in every way English influence doing so much injury to the artistic taste and refinement of the Irish people."<ref>Template:Citation.</ref>

At the same time, she conceived Template:Lang as a distinct voice for women in Irish affairs. In an early issue of Template:Lang, the organisation's journal, the editorial proclaimed, "Our desire to have a voice in directing the affairs of Ireland is not based on the failure of men to do so properly, but is the inherent right of women as loyal citizens and intelligent human souls."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1914 Inghinidhe na hÉireann merged into the newly formed women's paramilitary organisation Cumann na mBan.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Sinn Féin

In her autobiography Gonne wrote "I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

A second organisation, the National Council, was formed in 1903 by Gonne and others, including Arthur Griffith, on the occasion of the visit of King Edward VII to Dublin. Its purpose was to lobby Dublin Corporation to refrain from presenting an address to the king. The motion to present an address was duly defeated, but the National Council remained in existence as a pressure group with the aim of increasing nationalist representation on local councils.<ref name="davis21">Davis, Richard P. (1974). Arthur Griffith and non-violent Sinn Féin. Dublin: Anvil Books. p. 21.</ref>

The first annual convention of the National Council on 28 November 1905 was notable for two things: the decision, by a majority vote (with Griffith dissenting), to open branches and organise on a national basis; and the presentation by Griffith of his 'Hungarian' policy, which was now called the Template:Lang policy.<ref>Davis (1974), pp. 23–4</ref> This meeting is usually taken as the date of the foundation of the Template:Lang party.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Acting

Template:Multiple image In 1897, along with Yeats and Griffith, she organised protests against Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. In April 1902, she took a leading role in Yeats's play Template:Lang. She portrayed Cathleen, the "old woman of Ireland", who mourns for her four provinces which had been "lost" to the British. She was already spending much of her time in Paris.<ref>McCoole, "No Ordinary Women", p. 24.</ref>

In the same year, she joined the Roman Catholic Church. She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats, not only because he was unwilling to convert to Catholicism and because she viewed him as insufficiently radical in his nationalism, but also because she believed his unrequited love for her had been a boon for his poetry and that the world should thank her for never having accepted his proposals. When Yeats told her he was not happy without her, she replied, Template:Cquote

Marriage to John MacBride

MacBride, photographed in 1901

In the winter of 1900, Maud Gonne met John MacBride at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, where he arrived from the Transvaal to begin his exile after fighting with the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British. Both were active in Irish nationalist circles in the French capital, and their shared political commitments soon brought them closer. They toured the United States together in 1901 and again in 1902, speaking at nationalist gatherings and raising support for the Irish cause.<ref name="DIB Gonne"/>

In Paris in February 1903, after having turned down at least four marriage proposals from W. B. Yeats between 1891 and 1901, Maud Gonne married Major John MacBride, who had led the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War. Yeats pleaded with her not to go through with the marriage, as did Arthur Griffith, who was close to both of them, but Gonne was undeterred. Despite opposition from her own family and from the MacBrides, she converted to Catholicism on 17 February and married MacBride four days later in Paris. Almost immediately, she began to feel she had made a mistake;<ref name="DIB Gonne"/> Later writings by MacBride suggest that he found her bohemian independence incompatible with his expectations of a wife and that he hoped she would renounce significant parts of her past. The growing distance between them soon became evident in Gonne’s extended visits to Ireland, where MacBride, still under threat of arrest for his role in the Boer War, could not safely follow.<ref name="DIB MacBride">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="DIB Gonne">Template:Cite web</ref> The following year their only child, Seán MacBride, was born.

The marriage quickly broke down. By late 1904 Gonne and MacBride were living apart, and on 28 February 1905 she initiated legal proceedings in Paris seeking a divorce and full custody of their son.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The French court did not grant a divorce. The only allegation upheld against MacBride was one instance of drunkenness. He was awarded visitation rights twice weekly, while custody of Seán was given to Gonne.<ref name="DIB MacBride"/>

In the aftermath of the case, Gonne accused MacBride of domestic violence, and Yeats later alleged that MacBride had sexually molested Iseult, Gonne’s daughter from a previous relationship. Yeats repeated the claim in private correspondence, and it has been discussed by several of his biographers.<ref>Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 286.</ref> The charge was never substantiated in court, nor mentioned in Iseult’s own writings, and its reliability has been debated by historians. Some scholars argue that Yeats may have exaggerated or fabricated the story, motivated by his personal animosity towards MacBride after Gonne chose to marry him.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Others note that Francis Stuart, Iseult’s later husband, claimed she told him the allegation was true.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Gonne herself raised the matter privately with MacBride’s brother Anthony, but it was excluded from her court filings; the MacBride family subsequently introduced it in court to defend John’s reputation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The case became widely publicised, with MacBride’s subsequent libel action against the Irish Independent keeping the scandal in the public eye. The controversy severely damaged Gonne’s standing in nationalist circles, where she had previously been a prominent figure, and left her largely sidelined from advanced politics until 1916.<ref name="DIB Gonne"/> Following the separation, MacBride returned to Ireland and had little further contact with his son, who was raised by Gonne in Paris.<ref name="DIB MacBride"/> He later became involved with Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers. Arrested for his part in the Easter Rising, MacBride was court-martialled and executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol on 5 May 1916, alongside James Connolly and other leaders of the rebellion.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Gonne’s reaction to his death was ambivalent but public. Though their marriage had ended bitterly, she prayed for him and paid tribute to his sacrifice, later appearing in public mourning.<ref name="DIB Gonne"/> In correspondence with Yeats she described his execution as an expiatory act. MacBride’s death also allowed her to settle permanently in Ireland without fear of legal claims over custody of her son.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1916, Yeats, in his fifties, proposed first to Maud Gonne, who turned him down, and then to the 23-year-old Iseult, who did not accept either. He had known her since she was four, and often referred to her as his darling child and took a paternal interest in her writings (many Dubliners wrongly suspected that Yeats was her father).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Iseult considered the proposal, but finally turned him down, because he was not really in love with her and it would upset her mother too much.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Maud Gonne (far right) with relief agency members in Dublin in July 1922

Irish republican activism

Known as the "Irish Joan of Arc",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Gonne became known for her Irish republican views on a variety of contemporary social issues in Ireland. During the Template:Lang era, she supported Irish Catholic tenant farmers in their struggles against the Protestant Ascendancy and the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Land War. Gonne chaired several meetings of international groups to build sympathy for her causes among the American, British and French publics. During the Second Boer War, Gonne, along with a small group of republicans, supported the Boer republics by giving speeches and publishing newspaper articles advocating against Irish involvement in the war.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Gonne became known for her eloquence in her political speeches and they were credited for animating the founding of new Irish nationalist organisations.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In April 1900, Gonne wrote an article titled "The Famine Queen" for the United Irishman newspaper on the occasion of a planned visit by Queen Victoria to Ireland.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The newspaper was suppressed by the RIC but the article was republished in American newspapers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Gonne remained very active in Paris. In 1913, she established Template:Lang, a French newspaper. She wanted Cumann na mBan to be considered seriously: her idea was to get affiliation with the English Red Cross, and wrote to Geneva to gain an international profile for the new nationalist organisation.<ref>McCoole, p. 30 cites Barry Delany, Cumann na mBan, William Fitzgerald (ed.) "The Voice of Ireland", London, Virtue & Co Ltd, p.162.</ref> In 1918, she was arrested in Dublin, deported to England and imprisoned in Holloway Prison for six months.<ref>Dorothy Macardle (1951). The Irish Republic (Dublin: Irish Press Ltd), pp. 236 and 240</ref>

She worked with the Irish White Cross for the relief of victims of violence. Gonne moved in upper-class circles. Lord French's sister, Mrs Charlotte Despard was a famous suffragist, who was already a Sinn Feiner when she arrived in Dublin in 1920. She naturally accompanied Gonne on a tour of County Cork, seat of the most fervent revolutionary activity. Cork was under a Martial Law Area (MLA) prohibited to Irishmen and women outside the zone but the Viceroy's sister had a pass.<ref>Diary of Hanah Moynihan, KGC, Dublin, cited in McCoole, p. 80.</ref>

In 1921, she opposed the Treaty and advocated the Republican side. The committee that set up White Cross in Ireland asked Gonne to join in January 1921 to distribute funds to victims administered by Template:Lang.<ref>Diary of Hannah Moynihan, Autograph Books, Kilmainham Gaol Collection, Dublin.</ref> She settled in Dublin in 1922. During the street battles she headed a delegation called The Women's Peace Committee which approached the Dáil leadership, and her old friend Arthur Griffith. But they were unable to stop the indiscriminate shooting of civilians, being more interested in law and order. In August she set up a similar organisation, the Women's Prisoner's Defence League. The prisons were brutal and many women were locked up in men's prisons. The League supported families wanting news of inmates. They worked for prisoners rights, began vigils, and published stories of tragic deaths. Through her friendship with Despard and opposition to government they were labeled "Mad and Madame Desperate".<ref>Margaret Mullvihill, "Charlotte Despard", pp. 143–45, cited by McCoole, p. 96.</ref> Historians have related the extent of the damage done to her home at 75 St Stephen's Green, when soldiers from the National Army ransacked the place. Gonne was arrested and taken to Mountjoy Jail. On 9 November 1922, the Sinn Féin Office was raided in Suffolk street; the Free State had swept the capital, rounding up opposition committing them to prison for internment. The evidence comes from Margaret Buckley, who as Secretary of Sinn Féin acted as legal representative for the women but there was nothing prudish about their concerted opposition to civil rights abuses.Template:Citation needed

On 10 April 1923, Gonne was arrested. The charges were: 1) painting banners for seditious demonstrations, and 2) preparing anti-government literature. According to the diary account of her colleague Hannah Moynihan:

Last night [10th April] at 11pm, we heard the commotion which usually accompanies the arrival of new prisoners... we pestered the wardress and she told us there were four – Maud Gonne MacBride, her daughter Mrs Iseult Stuart and two lesser lights... Early this morning... we could see Maud walking majestically past our cell door leading on a leash a funny little lap dog which answered to the name that sounded like Wuzzo – Wuzzo.<ref>Diary of Hannah Moynihan, KGC, Dublin, as cited by McCoole, pp. 118–19.</ref>

She was released on 28 April, after twenty days in custody. Months later the women spread a rumour that Nell Ryan had died in custody in order to gain a propaganda victory.<ref>Nellie O'Cleirigh, p. 12</ref> Women continued to be arrested. On 1 June Gonne was standing in protest outside Kilmainham Jail with Dorothy Macardle, the writer and activist, and Iseult Stuart. They were supporting hunger striker Máire Comerford. Again the source for this story seems to be fellow ex-prisoner Hannah Moynihan.<ref>McCoole, p. 129.</ref>

Other activism

Gonne was a leading figure in the Catholic monetary reform movement in Ireland in the 1930s. Formed in 1932 as the Financial Freedom Federation, they became the Irish Social Credit Party in late 1935 and Gonne MacBride was a prominent member of the group throughout the 1930s. They were committed to reforming Ireland's financial and economic systems by way of instituting reforms laid out in the inter-war period by the originator of social credit economics, Major C.H. Douglas.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In the Irish Independent in 1936, Gonne criticised Ernest Blythe's denunciation of social credit economics. Opening, she wrote; "I read with amazement the report of Mr. Blythe's broadcast attack on Social Credit. Major Douglas's contention that production has outstripped distribution with disastrous results of unemployment and starvation, tending to war and anarchy is incontrovertible, and is apparent to all in the desperate scramble for markets, the restriction of output and destruction in almost every country of consumable goods, while millions of people who need these goods are allowed to starve."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In the 1930s, she was involved in the Friends of Soviet Russia organisation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She met and was photographed with the Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose when he visited Ireland in 1936.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Yeats's muse

Maud Gonne's gravestone, Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
May 2015

Gonne was a muse for Yeats. Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking."<ref name=EG>Template:Cite web</ref> He wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen ni Houlihan for her.<ref name=EG/>

Few poets have celebrated a woman's beauty to the extent Yeats did in his lyric verse about Gonne. From his second book to Last Poems, she became the Rose, Helen of Troy (in No second Troy), the Ledaean Body ("Leda and the Swan" and "Among School Children"), Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Pallas Athene and Deirdre.<ref name="Pratt 1983"/>

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she Template:Not a typo late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
(from 'No second Troy', 1916)

Yeats's 1893 poem "On a Child's Death" is thought to have been inspired by the death of Gonne's son Georges, whom Yeats thought Gonne had adopted. The poem was not published in Yeats's lifetime; scholars say he did not want the poem to be part of his canon, as it is of uneven quality.<ref name=schofield/>

Yeats proposed to Gonne at least four times but was rejected each time as Gonne disapproved of his lack of commitment to Irish republicanism.[1]

Political and social views

Gonne held a range of idiosyncratic views over the course of her lifetime. At the core of Maud Gonne’s politics was a deep hostility to the United Kingdom and its rule in Ireland, which she regarded as a source of oppression, exploitation, and moral corruption. This shaped her involvement in nationalist organisations, including her founding of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and informed her endorsement of physical-force methods of resistance, such as assassination or bombings,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> which she considered morally justifiable acts of war rather than crimes. Although she described herself as "by nature and philosophy a pacifist",<ref name="Pratt 1983">Template:Cite journal</ref> she justified violence against the British within an anti-imperial framework, contemplated schemes such as poisoning bailiffs or placing bombs on British troop ships, or assassinating King Edward VII,<ref name="Spiro May 2021"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and publicly praised those who used force as defenders of the Irish nation. In practice, however, she rarely carried out personal acts of violence, intervened on occasions to prevent attacks, and took steps to protect crowds at public events.<ref name="Pratt 1983"/> She consistently regarded constitutional nationalism as inadequate, criticised Charles Stewart Parnell for repudiating violence, rejected the Fenian John O'Leary's suggestion that there were moral limits to what one might do to save a nation, and explicitly encouraged targeted killings of English officials, arguing that the Phoenix Park Murders were insufficient and that every English king and every instrument of the state below him should be shot "one after the other".<ref name="DRB 2017"/> Politically, she associated with left-wing figures like James Connolly, Charlotte Despard, and Constance Markievicz, but she avoided socialism and lacked a systematic ideology, holding instead a traditional Irish nationalism rooted in opposition to British rule.<ref name="Pratt 1983"/>

Her politics were also influenced by her years in France and her long relationship with the Boulangist politician Lucien Millevoye.<ref name="DIB"/><ref name="Hanley 2021"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Immersed in right-wing and nationalist circles there, she absorbed ideas of plebiscitary dictatorship, national destiny, and the glorification of strong leaders. She expressed admiration for authoritarian figures and believed that nations were sometimes embodied in exceptional individuals, an outlook that later allowed her to view aspects of fascist and communist regimes as preferable to British liberal democracy. In the late 1930s, she suggested that Ireland "could learn from both Stalinism and Hitlerism",<ref name="DRB 2017">Template:Cite magazine</ref> though her overriding concern remained opposition to Britain rather than commitment to either ideology in full.

Gonne’s exposure to French right-wing politics led her to anti-Semitic beliefs and masonic conspiracy theories, including conspiracy theories about Jewish control of finance and politics.<ref name="Hanley 2021">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="DIB">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> During the Dreyfus affair, she rejected the pro-Dreyfus position and later recalled to Yeats that she had regarded Alfred Dreyfus as "an uninteresting Jew" whose cause was suspiciously well-funded.<ref name="Bendheim April 2021">Template:Cite news</ref> She aligned herself with French nationalists who opposed what they saw as Jewish and international financial influence in France. Even after Dreyfus was exonerated, she wrote that "no French institution is now safe from the domination of the agents of the synagogue".<ref name="Spiro May 2021">Template:Cite magazine</ref> This anti-Semitism remained a feature of her outlook throughout her life,<ref name="DIB"/> though it coexisted with her work alongside progressive figures in campaigns for labour rights, social justice, and the relief of poverty.

Gonne was an advocate for women’s political and social rights, founding and leading organisations such as Inghinidhe na hÉireann to promote women’s education, political participation, and engagement in nationalist causes, and she fought for her own rights in personal contexts such as her divorce. Her commitment to women's participation in the nationalist movement led her to promote female-led organisations, though she did not describe herself as a feminist, and her vision of women’s activism was largely framed by nationalist priorities rather than broader gender equality.<ref name="Pratt 1983"/> In addition to her organisational work, she supported the Gaelic revival, emphasising the Irish language, native arts, and civic education as means to strengthen national identity and encourage popular political involvement, and she engaged in practical social-welfare efforts, assisting evicted tenants, supporting relief initiatives, and promoting programmes such as free school meals to alleviate child poverty in Dublin.<ref name="DIB"/>

By the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Maud Gonne expressed strong support for Germany, and she maintained that Britain was Ireland’s true enemy while viewing Germany as a potential ally. Her criticism of British war aims was at times accompanied by language that excused or minimised German aggression, and she corresponded with the Deutscher Fichte-Bund seeking propaganda material.<ref name="DIB"/> She maintained a close friendship with Dr Eduard Hempel, the German ambassador in Dublin, and his wife Evelyn, whom Gonne regularly entertained at her home at Roebuck House. Irish military intelligence monitored Gonne's activities, suspecting her of involvement in the 1940 Hermann Goertz affair, a complex episode that implicated several adult members of the Gonne–MacBride–Stuart family.<ref name="DIB"/> Following the war, Gonne, reflecting on her wartime sympathies in a letter to her friend Ethel Mannin, wrote: "I’m not sure had I been a German after the Treaty of Versailles that I would not have become a Nazi, except for the Nazi exclusion of women".<ref name="Bendheim April 2021"/> Gonne also became a founding member, along with Goertz, of the Save the German Children campaign, which sought to provide foster homes for Catholic German war orphans after the war.<ref name="DIB"/>

Personal life

Maud Gonne MacBride published her autobiography in 1938, titled A Servant of the Queen, a reference to both a vision she had of the Irish queen of old, Kathleen Ni Houlihan and an ironic title considering Gonne's Irish Nationalism and rejection of the British monarchy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Iseult Gonne (1894–1954), her daughter with Millevoye, was educated at a Carmelite convent in Laval, France. When she returned to Ireland she was referred to as Maud's niece or cousin rather than daughter. She was to attract the admiration of literary figures including Ezra Pound, Lennox Robinson and Liam O'Flaherty. In 1916, in his fifties, Yeats proposed to the 22-year-old Iseult who refused his advances. Many Dubliners had suspected that Yeats was her father.<ref name="AF2">Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1920, she eloped to London with 17-year-old Irish-Australian Francis Stuart, who became a writer, and the couple later married.

Iseult was not acknowledged as her mother's daughter in Maud Gonne's will when Gonne died in 1953, possibly due to pressure from her half-brother Seán MacBride who did not want to reveal Maud's relation to Millevoye.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Iseult died less than a year later from heart disease.<ref name="AF2"/>

Gonne's son, Seán MacBride (1904–1988) was active in the IRA and in Irish republican politics. As Irish Foreign Minister (1948–1951) he was active the United Nations and helped secure ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights.<ref>William Schabas (2012). "Ireland, The European Convention on Human Rights, and the Personal Contribution of Seán MacBride," in Judges, Transition, and Human Rights, John Morison, Kieran McEvoy, and Gordon Anthony eds., Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2012</ref> He was later a founding member of Amnesty International and its Chairman, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Gonne died in Clonskeagh,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> aged 86, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Publications

• A Servant of the Queen Dublin, Golden Eagle Books Ltd. (Template:ISBN, 1995 reprint)

References

Bibliography

• Bendheim, Kim (2021), The Fascination of What's Difficult, A Life of Maud Gonne.
• Cardozo, Nancy (1979), Maud Gonne London, Victor Gollancz.
• Coxhead, Elizabeth (1985), Daughters of Erin, Gerrard's Cross, Colin Smythe Ltd, p. 19–77.
• Fallon, Charlotte, Republican Hunger Strikers during the Irish Civil War and its Immediate Aftermath, MA Thesis, University College Dublin 1980.
• Fallon, C, "Civil War Hungerstrikes: Women and Men", Eire, Vol. 22, 1987.
• Levenson, Samuel (1977), Maud Gonne, London, Cassell & Co Ltd.
• Ward, Margaret (1990), Maud Gonne, California, Pandora.
• Jordan, Anthony J. (2018), "Maud Gonne's Men", Westport Books.

External links

• The National Library of Ireland's exhibition, Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats Template:Webarchive
• Template:LCAuth
• Collection of information sources on the history of the Gonne family
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats Papers
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Maud Gonne Collection
• Yeats and Gonne, a love story