by Anne Clare
Other members of the family were going out into the world, however, in a more real sense. The shadowy Liebert, second son of Frederick and Isabella, had left home by the time of the taking of the 1901 census, when he was twenty-five years of age. His was a strange name, rather musical and Norman, and its choice was equally unusual. At his birth, the name was familiar to Isabella as the trade name of some household commodity. She fancied the sound of it, and, alone among her sons, he received at baptism only one first name.[7] He joined the British Merchant Navy and sought Canadian citizenship.
Edward Cecil, Grace’s twin went to America and there seems to have been little if any contact between either him or Liebert with the family over the years. A letter was delivered one day to Temple Villas with an apologetic note from the Rathmines post office.[8] The franked stamp indicated a date ten years past. The letter had fallen behind a grid and had lain there till some reconstruction work on the office was being done. It was from one of the absent boys, Liebert or Edward Cecil, but it is unclear which one. Other than this letter, the two seemed to fade from the family history books. Neither Nellie nor ‘John’ say much of them in their family records.
The eldest boy, Claude Frederick, went into his father’s legal office. Frederick had left the Bachelor’s Walk address, and, in 1895, Frederick Gifford & Son operated at 46 Dawson Street. In 1901, Frederick Gifford & Claude Gifford are at 5 Dawson Street, and in 1906 they have moved to No. 16 where they stayed until 1913. The last listing, for Claude only, is 1913.[9] By that time his father was seventy-seven. Later, Claude is listed as Lieutenant Claude F. Gifford, 50th Battalion Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. By Easter Week 1916, however, the Claude Gifford family home was in Baggot Street, not very far from where Commandant de Valera was holding Bolands Mills and still nearer to the little Irish Volunteer outpost at Clanwilliam House.
The third Gifford boy, Gerald Vere, had also studied law. He had just done his finals in 1901 when he contracted meningitis and died unexpectedly, aged twenty-three. The family, and especially his mother, were devastated.
Gabriel, the fourth son, took up the study of art, which brought him to London and fraternisation with W. B. Yeats. The poet wrote a poem (lost unfortunately) about their walks in London parks. Gabriel’s next move was to America, where he made his living as a commercial artist. He married there and had a daughter, Geraldine, called after Gerald perhaps. His letters show him to be a good family man, but with a decided distaste for both Irish Ireland and Catholic Ireland, in whose faith he had been baptised.
Frederick Ernest, to give him his full name, was the ninth child of Frederick and Isabella. While art, the armed services and the law had provided careers for his brothers, it was decided to make Ernest an electrical engineer, even though he, too, had artistic leanings. It was a sensible choice, in that electricity was obviously an increasingly important source of power. He was placed for his training with an electrical firm in Kildare and, since his work was often at night, his social life was minimal. The firm moved to Rawmarsh, Yorkshire, and later to London. Ernest moved with them. Here too his work inhibited social relaxation so that he had to make a determined effort to find himself an outlet for his leisure time. He discovered a sort of literary club in London, and it was there that he met Sylvia, the wife of Robert Lynd. The warm-hearted girl had observed a tall, red-haired young man, standing shyly and alone at his first meeting. She welcomed him and introduced him to her mother, Nora Dryhurst, whose husband was director of the London Museum and who was herself a journalist and a sort of collector of nationalist causes: the young Indian movement, Young Egyptians, Young Irelanders – they were all grist to the mill of her enthusiasm. She seemed unaware that Ernest might not have had any anti-loyalist feelings, and there is a brief, mind-boggling reference to her attempt to do Irish step-dancing with Indians and Egyptians who wanted their countries to be free of English power and English influence. During these attempts at multi-racial Irish step-dancing they were ‘like wooden figures’, and there was much laughter at their attempts to keep the feet in perpetual motion and the torso in statuesque immobility.
Ernest was invited to Nora Dryhurst’s London home, and she was delighted to hear of his talented family. She learned of Liebert and Edward Cecil, who had gone off to America; of Claude, who was partner in his father’s legal firm; of Muriel who was still in Dublin; of Kate, who had got her degree; of Nellie, who was housekeeping at home; of Gabriel, Grace and Ada, all of whom hoped to make a career in art; and also of his youngest sister, who had left school and wanted to be a journalist. He showed her an article by ‘John’ published in Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Féin and some pictures too, including a reproduction of a painting by William Orpen of Grace, a student at the Slade School of Art. Nora Dryhurst’s interest in the colourful careers of Ernest’s brothers and sisters led to her friendship with the whole family, to her introducing them to Æ … and to two doomed marriages.[10]
The girls were also making their way in the world. Because she was over twenty, Kate was allowed to read the newspapers, denied to the younger ones for fear of corruption. She drew Nellie’s attention to a government advertisement in the press announcing a new scheme of training, which was to produce at its conclusion ‘An Itinerant Cookery Instructress under the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland’ to teach all over Ireland. This grandiose title was soon to be reduced to ‘The Cookin’ Woman’ by its rural female students. Its training centre was at 20–21 Kildare Street, Dublin, and it was called the Irish Training School of Domestic Economy.[11] In fact, the course was in ‘household management’ and included both laundry and dressmaking. Kate pointed out that the paper suggested taking a ‘trial course’ and thought this was an excellent opportunity for Nellie. Nellie raced off to her amused father to coax the required £1 entrance fee from him because she had no pocket money at that stage. She acquitted herself well at the Kildare Street interview, but she herself remarked, wryly, that several family strings had to be pulled for her to be admitted to the course. Unionist strings would have been almost standard, as they were with practically every post apart from the most menial. Nellie learned that she would require a white apron, that the course would last for six weeks and that, as surprised as she was joyful, she would then be a salaried lady.
Once qualified, Nellie had to provide herself with all her own cooking paraphernalia, and, since her lessons were sometimes held in vacated schools or even sheds (one shared with a sheep shearer), she had to bring not only her pots and saucepans, ingredients and implements, but also a collapsible table. She often had upwards of twenty girls and women in her classes, and the six-week course actually lasted for twelve weeks because it was deemed that a continuous six weeks would be too demanding for the students. She would alternate one group with another, spreading the lessons over twelve weeks in all.
She hired a pony and cart, or donkey and cart – whichever was available – to bring all the gear from venue to venue, including the pièce de resistance, which was called a ‘mistress’ stove, of reputedly American origin. One English inspector expressed horror when he saw ‘the stable’ as he called the shed in which Nellie at that point was teaching, but the young domestic scientist piously (and perhaps not very appropriately) mentioned in defence the most famous stable in the world.
Another difficulty for Nellie when she was working away from Dublin was accommodation. The ‘big houses’, owned almost exclusively by Nellie’s own class, would never take boarders, so she was obliged to take accommodation in cottages, varying from the very comfortable to the cold and damp. She and her fellow instructors had been warned in their training how to test for a damp bed: on their first night in a bed, in which there was usually placed an earthenware hot-water bottle, they were to insert a mirror between the sheets. If the mirror became misted, the bedclothes were dangerously damp. Nellie solved one such situation by spreading the bedclothes out to dry at the fire and sleeping in a bare but dry bed, wrapped in her warm dr
essing gown. One cottager with whom she stayed economised (as most of them did) by using dripping instead of butter on the bread. The dog in the house thrived gratefully on the ‘drippinged’ bread that Nellie slipped to him.[12]
Such discomforts she took in her stride, considering her sheltered upbringing. She has left behind an indication of her affection for these Irish country folk in both a fairly excruciating poem, technically speaking (though full of warmth), and a very beautiful and moving short story. It was a love story on both sides for rural Ireland and Nellie Gifford. The country people were reincarnations of her beloved nurse, Bridget Hamill, and she had no difficulty in loving them. She played her violin for their set dances in the evenings, and we get a marvellous glimpse of her ‘goings on’ from Patrick Galligan, Thomastown, Kilbeg, County Meath, interviewed in his own home on 12 November 1970, when he was seventy-four years of age:
There’s a bit of history attached to this house that I live in. It was built for a man called Denis Creevan and was finished around 1904 or 1905. There was a cookery class started in the parish, cookery and domestic economy and all to this. The lady that was sent to us was a Miss Gifford and she turned out in later years to be [a sister of] the lady that was the maid, the bride and the widow the one day. She was married to the 1916 leader [Joseph] Thomas [sic] Plunkett.
Well, she left this house and went to lodge above in Dunne’s of Marvelstown. The reason that she had come to this house was that it was hard to get any place to stop at the time. She was stopping in Kells, I suppose. Father Clavin was after coming here and he was anxious to get some place for her so he got on to the Creevans to know if they could keep her. Julia Creevan stopped with her and she slept above here in this room. But anyway she left because Paddy Creevan was reported for keeping lodgers in a county council cottage.
She remained in Dunne’s for some time. But she was a grand person. I remember her well, I used to be a young fellow there doing jobs in the evening for Mrs Dunne and getting my dinner into that. But, anyway, there was nothing for her only Irish tradition, all about Ireland. One thing she longed for turned out to be the cause of her misfortune here, and got her out of the parish. She wanted to see an Irish wake.
Well, there were two old Lynch brothers, Pat and Farrell. Farrell was a process server. Pat was a good old character but he died and didn’t she get around Michael Dunne and Dan to bring her to the wake – they were going to the wake and she would go with them. She went in, so she did, and she heard the songs, cut the tobacco … Mrs Dunne wasn’t to have heard anything about it because at that time, do you see, it was a terrible crime for a young one to go to a wake. No women were allowed at wakes, only the immediate friends. Well, it reached Fr Clavin’s ears and didn’t he go up the next day and got on to Mrs Dunne about her and, sure Mrs Dunne didn’t know anything about her going to the wake. What kind of a character would she be that would go out at that time of night? With the result that Mrs Dunne got rid of her. She had [another] sister who got married to Tom MacDonagh. Her son is a district justice.[13]
Nellie not only attended a wake and learned the local ballads during her ‘cookin’ woman’ career, but she also had several ballads written about herself, her charm and her beauty. She liked Limerick least of her venues and most enjoyed County Meath. On one train journey, she carried a Persian kitten Isabella had given her for one of her Meath friends who particularly wanted a ‘Dublin’ cat. It was closeted in a basket, and the fear was that the ticket collector would deem it against the by-laws and banish it to the luggage compartment. An animated discussion ensued. Dogs were forbidden but did this cover cats too? The consensus was that the less these officials knew, the better, and since the kitten at this stage was heaving in the basket and causing it to creak, as well as emitting a faint miaow, the whole carriage collaborated, and when the collector arrived they fussed and carried out various acoustic diversionary tactics – coughing, laughing and talking – and all this put him off the scent. When he had safely departed, and when all the windows and doors had been closed, it was thought that the Persian needed air and exercise, and the released kitten happily spent the rest of the journey wandering across the laps and shoulders of the passengers and even perched on top of a man’s hat until Nellie’s station meant necessary captivity in the basket once again. Before that, in her chat with a fellow passenger, when Nellie asked who was minding her children at home, the answer was that they were being looked after by ‘the boy’ (the hired help) and that she had every confidence in him: ‘That fella,’ she said ‘could mind mice at a crossroads.’[14]
It was usual to have a helping woman who gave a hand with cleaning the demonstration venues and setting up the equipment. One of these helpers came to Nellie with a tale of woe: her son had broken the ‘weddin’ present’ – a pot oven. This was a major loss in a cottage household, and Nellie promised to replace it on her next trip to Dublin. The helper would have been ‘touchy’ at any hint of charity, to use Nellie’s expression, and so she was asked to do something in return, to keep the balance even – a mini cooperative as it were.
Grace often went to Broadstone Station in Dublin to ‘see Nellie off’, and on this occasion went with her on her, so far, fruitless search for the required pot oven, which, she was told, was out of date and, if there was one in Dublin, she would most likely get it in Moore Street. When they arrived there, Nellie left her bags with Grace and went off to the recommended shop. On her return, complete with pot oven, she found Grace in conversation with an elderly lady. It was Nora Dryhurst. They had never met her before but she had simply walked over to Grace and said, ‘You must be Ernest Gifford’s sister Grace. He showed me sketches of you in London.’[15]
By 1911, all the boys had left Temple Villas, but not all the girls. Nellie was surprised, on one of her early visits home from Meath, to find that her sisters were actually receiving pocket money, something she had never enjoyed, despite her housekeeping role. Grace showed a definite artistic flair which had motivated her parents to arrange for her to study at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and, later, on the advice of Sir William Orpen, at the Slade in London, where she was a pupil of his. It was there, in 1907, when she was nineteen years of age, that she sat for him for the portrait, a copy of which was shown by Ernest to Nora Dryhurst and which Orpen had called, somewhat prophetically, The Spirit of Young Ireland. He seemed to have supplied some of the jewellery she wears in the picture – she referred afterwards, jocosely, to her ‘necklace of rosary beads’. Grace spent a year at the Slade before returning to Dublin in 1908. Meanwhile, Muriel had tried nursing but found the actuality far more demanding than her idealised concept of it had been and she had not, as yet, replaced it with anything else. ‘John’ was beginning to make her way, not very lucratively, in the field of freelance journalism. Ada was experiencing a little friction with her mother, and, just as Kate had initiated Nellie into her career as rural instructress, so too Nellie now supplied the money for the fare to America where Ada wanted to exploit her undoubted artistic talent as a way of living. By the end of that year Ada had made the move to America. She kept in touch intermittently, but never returned to Ireland.
That left only Kate and, in the Victorian Age, the eldest almost automatically became her mother’s household aide-de-camp and, in the case of large families, a surrogate mother to the younger ones. Such was the case with Kate Gifford. Gabriel, Nellie and Ada, the trio in the middle of the family, and only half a dozen years or so Kate’s junior, sometimes saw her on a seniority pinnacle, remote from their childhood and their world. This sense of otherness most probably evolved from the fact that Bridget Hamill, in her nursery eyrie under the roof, had only a clutter of juniors at a time. Kate had well left babyhood by the time they were weaned, and she had graduated to dining full-time with their parents, not just once a week. Another factor which, perhaps, also set her apart was that she was the best-educated girl of the family. Some time after her graduation from the Royal University in 1898, she went to G
ermany and taught English, recalling later a noticeboard in the hall of the establishment where she taught. It set out the names and nationalities of the language teachers: there was just one odd one out. The French, Spanish and Italian teachers all hailed from a town in the country whose language they taught, but for the teaching of English, where one might expect an English name and city, there appeared instead ‘Miss Kate Gifford, Dublin, Ireland’. Her German students had no problem with this.[16]
Kate was never considered beautiful. Apart from her strong features, dark-haired Irish beauties were the conceived stereotype of Irish good looks in her youth. Fairly tall, the blue-eyed Kate had the most uncompromising red hair of them all – her brothers called it ‘carroty’ – and she had a high colour, which did not help. Despite all this, there is evidence that in Germany her hair received much admiration.
In 1957, six months before she died at the age of eighty-two, Kate went over all her papers. She decided to destroy a great bundle of correspondence consisting largely of letters from her parents during the German sojourn of their eldest daughter. The letters must have been a comfort to the young teacher in a Germany that was very different from that of today. There were no shoals of Irish students doing sabbaticals or taking summer jobs, no Irish bars for fraternisation. Kate had only the loving letters from Temple Villas, starting with the familiar salutation ‘My dear Kate’ and ending with a parental benediction. Who else would keep a bundle of letters for sixty years right through all that lay before her: a return from Germany, an insurrection, a civil war and imprisonment in Kilmainham Gaol?