by Anne Clare
The Irish Press, in an article on the widespread interest in the event, described Mrs Nellie Gifford-Donnelly as ‘the Secretary and moving spirit’. The reporter also said, ‘The collection does not purport to be in any way complete. It is, however, remarkably good, considering the fact that it was collected in three weeks. As soon as more space is available in the museum, many important additions will be made to it.’[14]The Evening Press repeated that report and commented that the exhibition was ‘daily attracting vast throngs of both Irish and foreign visitors, who are displaying the keenest interest’.[15]
By October 1933, the temporary exhibition, which had been in existence for over a year, was being dissolved, and the obvious desirability of permanency was gaining ground, resulting in a voluminous correspondence. Assumptions were made in the early exchanges which did not materialise: the 1916 Club still saw the exhibition as theirs, and they asked Dr Mahr for a report on its success to support their plea to the Dáil for its permanent status. He willingly lent that support, as did Mr Gogan of the museum’s staff. The official correspondence seemed to go along with the permanency idea. Gradually, however, that outlook was reversed, particularly when the 1916 Club pressed the point that a specialist should be appointed to take care of ‘their’ exhibition and that the person chosen should have taken part in the fight for freedom. It is not difficult to read between the lines that the specialist they had in mind was Nellie. In reply to a letter from de Valera’s private secretary, Nellie herself explained, ‘The 1916 Club have given me sole charge of the collection,’ and in an article in The Irish Press on the matter she concluded:
The great interest roused by the temporary exhibition has shown the necessity of making a permanent collection. The 1916 Club Research Committee, Abbey Street, asked me as their Hon. Secretary to approach the government on the matter. The public will be glad to know that the government has now given permission for housing a permanent collection in the National Museum, Kildare Street, Dublin.[16]
In a letter to The Irish Press in 1935, Grace gave her views:
The many suggestions to use Kilmainham Jail as a home for the 1916 collection brings up another side of the question. When Mrs Gifford-Donnelly conceived her idea of making the collection she had to spend months of hard, personal work interviewing possible donors, to induce them to part with their treasured possessions. As it is obvious that no building could contain all the mementos of all who fought in 1916, she was in the unique position of knowing the relative value of the mementos. Her position as sister-in-law of Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Plunkett and her record of service in 1916 and in the Citizen Army and other branches of national affairs made collecting with discretion possible.
She argued that Nellie’s personal and family ties with the movement made her invaluable. Grace referred to a letter from de Valera’s private secretary regarding the inadequacy of the exhibition’s accommodation and added, ‘This letter, coupled with the fact that the collection is now being dealt with by museum officials who had no personal connection with the fighting, speaks for itself.’
Grace suggested optional venues: the Vice-Regal Lodge, Kilmainham Gaol or an art gallery in Harcourt Street. She concluded by declaring her intention of withholding her late husband’s relics pending proper housing: they included the ‘bogus’ Castle Document which she stated she vividly remembered being written out as he decoded it and the much-criticised bracelet she had given Joseph.
The official door, however, had been clanged shut on the idea of Nellie being offered a paid job for managing what was obviously a rapidly growing collection. The officials with whom she had worked treated her gently: Mr Ó Cléirigh, who was to be in charge of the permanent exhibition, wrote to assure her that her request to have her name removed from the descriptive labels would be honoured.[17]Mr Westropp pledged to credit the 1916 Club with the foundation of the collection and also that in the 1935 communiqué issued through the Government Information Bureau on the matter due credit would be given to the 1916 Club and to its honorary secretary.[18]In a reply to Mr Westropp’s letter containing that promise, Nellie wrote:
Though I had a dream of building up that collection as a permanent tribute to our fighting men and women, Dr Quane gave me a rude awakening when he reminded me that I was ‘only a member of the general public’. However true remarks like that are, they hurt. I have had this object so long in my heart that I feel sad that I have not the handling of it still.[19]
She ended this letter by thanking them all for their courtesy and wishing them every success with the permanent exhibition. It seems that Dr Quane was appointed to oversee the exhibition and especially to cut costs. He had spoken of her as ‘only a member of the general public’, but Nellie Gifford had enabled James Larkin to fulfil his promise to address the workers in Sackville Street, she had conceived and implemented the idea of the Bureau in Dawson Street to place republicans in jobs, she had instigated Alfie Byrne’s very significant question at Westminster about conscription, she had served in Commandant Mallin’s outpost at Easter 1916, she had drummed up enormous support for the movement in America, and she had, practically single-handedly, presented the highly successful temporary exhibition. Such involvement hardly made her fit Dr Quane’s disparaging description. If Nellie were ‘only a member of the general public’, one may wonder what kind of person, in this context, might be regarded as unique.
How many artefacts had been destroyed or lost in the years that had elapsed since Nellie’s first approach to the Department? How many more would have been lost in the passing of how many more years until officialdom awoke to the importance of the work of Nellie Gifford-Donnelly? Whatever was due to her, it was far from the scathing rejection she received.
Nellie decided to write a booklet on the exhibition. The Department of Education also vetoed this suggestion ‘for the present at any rate’ because such a publication was already in preparation by officials of the National Museum. It was a courteous rejection, as had been Mr Westropp’s letter of 1 February 1935, in which Nellie had been assured that her part in the exhibition, and that of the 1916 Club, would be acknowledged in press reports for which the museum was responsible. There were such acknowledgements, but they gradually disappeared, and today’s exhibition in Collins Barracks does not give Nellie Gifford-Donnelly any credit whatsoever.
Nellie mentioned in a letter to Mr Ó Cléirigh her intention of writing newspaper articles on the collection because, in her own words: ‘As I have to fend for myself and my little girl, this business of filthy lucre counts.’[20]She published two such surviving articles: that entitled ‘Mementoes of Easter Week’ and ‘The Three Printers of the Proclamation’. The latter was a particularly excellent article, enhanced by the fact that Nellie organised a photo get-together of the three men, Christopher Brady (printer), Michael Molloy and Liam O’Brien (both compositors). All three had worked through the night in an ill-ventilated room and with the use of only a dilapidated printing press to produce the declaration of Irish freedom. Nellie’s article can rightly be regarded as an important historical document in itself, presenting as it does details of that dangerous vigil in Liberty Hall and a picture of the heroic men who could have been imprisoned for this work, which they said was an honour. Another fruit of this association was that Christopher Brady gave on loan to Nellie for her exhibition the shooter and palette knife used in printing the Proclamation.
Even at this late stage it would be a fitting gesture if the authorities of the National Museum were to place a commemorative plaque on a wall of the 1916 Exhibition, now attracting a steady flow of visitors from all over the world. It could acknowledge that it had all started with the determination of a lady making her way around Dublin, seeking worthy mementos. The exhibition means that the state remembers. The plaque would mean that it does not forget.
Notes
[1]NGDPs; in conversation with Maeve Donnelly in the early 1990s.
[2]NGDPs.
[3]Ibid.; in conversation with Maeve
Donnelly in the early 1990s.
[4]NGDPs.
[5]Ibid.
[6]Ibid.
[7]Ibid.
[8]Nellie sometimes used the English ‘Eileen’ bestowed on her by Americans and sometimes the Gaelic ‘Eibhlín’.
[9]Mrs Clarke’s letter appeared following Nellie’s article on the exhibition in The Irish Press, 4 April 1934, entitled ‘Mementoes of Easter Week’.
[10]NGDPs.
[11]The Gaelic American, 9 July 1932.
[12]NGDPs.
[13]Ibid.
[14]‘Relics of 1916 Rising’, The Irish Press, 25 June 1932.
[15]‘Widespread Interest in Growing Collection’, Evening Press, 25 June 1932.
[16]NGDPs; Gifford-Donnelly, ‘Mementoes of Easter Week’.
[17]NGDPs.
[18]Ibid.
[19]Ibid.
[20]Ibid.
26 - Grace’s Restless Years
A measure of Grace’s restlessness after her tragic marriage is reflected in the number of times she changed residence over the years, from when she left her childhood home in Temple Villas in May 1916. First, after the executions, she went to Joe’s ‘House of Larks’, at his mother’s invitation. Then there was the move to Kate’s home in Philipsburgh Avenue. From there, it was imprisonment in Kilmainham Gaol and the NDU during the Civil War. On her release, she stayed with Mary Kelly at North Circular Road until Kate’s release and then returned to Philipsburgh Avenue. After that her moves were continual, staying at first briefly, in 1923, in a Westmoreland Street flat she described as ‘sub-standard’. Later addresses were at Harcourt Street, Upper Chatham Street and over offices near the Presbyterian Church corner of Parnell Square, where she had a studio on the upper floor, which was convenient for any work she did for the Gate Theatre. After receipt of the state pension awarded to her by Éamon de Valera following his accession to office in 1932, she rented two rooms in Nassau Street, overlooking the playing fields of Trinity College. Her stay there was her longest, but the stairs became too difficult, and 1950 found her in Lower Leeson Street. In 1953, she wrote to de Valera from 53 Terenure Road East. Her final address was 49 South Richmond Street. Even excluding her incarcerations in Kilmainham Gaol and the NDU, this list of moves covers twelve changes and cannot be regarded as the residential profile of a settled person. Nevertheless, Grace stoically carved out a life for herself after her personal tragedy.[1]
The award of the state pension not only made sub-standard flats avoidable but also enabled Grace to demonstrate tangibly the affection she felt for her sisters’ children, especially Maeve and Donagh; she brought Donagh on a continental holiday. On a visit to France in 1924 she produced clever sketches of fellow passengers on the Rouen to Paris train – a gendarme, an old lady enjoying a glass of wine and a young garçon bringing home a roll of bread – pictures that captured France for those at home far more than words.
Apart from her political involvement with the movement detailed already, two other aspects of her life – social and economic – are recorded in her papers, and in those of Nellie. There is a pleasant, though indefinable, feeling that some of the men whom she met made chivalrous efforts to shelter her, economically and psychologically, after her tragic wedding. Occasionally she had lunch with Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir in the restaurant over the Savoy Cinema in O’Connell Street where they could enjoy not only lunch but also the music of Madame Van Allst’s trio of piano, violin and cello. Another of their luncheon venues was the restaurant over the Carlton Cinema, opposite the Savoy. Edwards and Mac Liammóir gave Grace what work they could arising from their Gate productions and, in fact, she has left a detailed account – and costing – of the making of theatrical masks, requiring plaster of Paris, pieces of buckram and wood, sandpaper, Vaseline, cellulose paint and oil paint, bought in both Sibthorpe’s and Lambert, Brien & Co. She shared a skill somewhat akin to that of her great-uncle, Sir Frederick, who had made the death mask of James Clarence Mangan. She also shared, with Nellie, an inventive streak and recorded such ideas as a home-brewed cough cure and a home barometer.[2]
Grace’s connection with the Gate led to a misconception regarding her relationship with Blake Gifford, a young actor associated with the theatre and with Morris Davidson’s first film. Davidson assumed from the comradeship between Grace and Blake, and their unusual surname, that they were brother and sister. Others shared this assumption, but the surnames were merely coincidental.[3]
Jimmy O’Dea, who had helped Grace on the beach at Skerries on the day of Muriel’s drowning, gave her orders for designing posters for his famous pantomimes. Archbishop Byrne of Dublin ordered four gilt-framed certificates on vellum which Grace carefully costed for materials at £3.19 and for which she received £25. She also prepared scrolls for the Leinster School of Music, and Joseph Holloway, a legendary theatregoer, bought her pieces consistently, both before and after 1916, as well as giving her advice on commercialising her work.[4]Michael Noyek also extended the helping hand of friendship: he had been a contemporary of her brothers at the High School but, unlike them, was a supporter of Arthur Griffith and Sinn Féin. As a practising solicitor, he had worked under great difficulty in the courts of the underground First Dáil. A member of Dublin’s Jewish community, Robert Briscoe, TD, also helped, and Dublin solicitor John Burke became a sort of legal guardian angel, and he and his wife welcomed Grace into their home, bought her sketches and tried to steer her towards suitable accommodation during her frequent relocations. They also did their best to nurture in her a more businesslike approach in her dealings when her generosity overcame her good sense, which was not infrequently.[5]
In listing those who reached out a helping hand to Grace, two others must be included: Hanna Sheehy Skeffington did her best to organise a woman’s group in Irish-American circles to help Grace financially, and, most of all, Éamon de Valera had shown his concern as soon as he came to power, by having her included in the civil pension list.
Cathal Gannon, a fellow member of the Old Dublin Society (as were Nellie, Kate and ‘John’), which had been founded in 1934 to promote the study of Dublin and Dubliners, was among those who would come round to Grace’s Nassau Street flat after a lecture in the nearby premises of the society in South William Street. Cathal did odd jobs for Grace, including putting a door on the entrance to the top-floor flat in Nassau Street, thus creating a little hallway of her landing and cutting it off from the other floors. This was especially useful when she kept a Pekinese, so that the little dog would not be wandering around the offices in the building. This friendship later cooled considerably when Cathal married, because he had less free time, especially after his day’s work in Guinness and new commitments. Grace felt slighted.
Gannon recalled one instance when he was doing some work in the Nassau Street flat, which Grace had leased after her pension boost. After the sound of a car drawing up outside – an unusual sound in those days – there was a ring at the door. Grace looked down from her upstairs window. She identified the caller and said, ‘It’s Eddie de Valera. I’m not going down.’[6]So the Taoiseach of Ireland went back to his chauffeured car. It was not that she was ungrateful for her civil-list pension – quite the contrary – but she found his intellectualism daunting, and, perhaps, at the back of it all, there was the anti-Treaty feeling that even Fianna Fáil had sold out Northern Ireland.
Before taking his seat in the Dáil, de Valera had confided in Grace his indecision as to the best course to take and concluded his arguments by the very human rhetorical question: ‘Grace, what am I to do?’ There is the possibility, of course, that he was sounding her out. If he was seeking her reassurance, he got none, though she respected him as the only surviving commandant of Easter Week, saved from execution with the others only by an accident of birth. He respected her stand also; after all, it had been his for over ten turbulent years. In fact, he never gave up his solicitude for his young fellow commandant’s widow. Yet even when de Valera later visited Grace in hospital,
though she appreciated the kindness, she still found it less than easy to cope with him conversationally, which was not characteristic of her. Nevertheless, that she trusted this most famous of her caring circle of sympathisers is best illustrated by the fact that it was to de Valera she wrote in 1953 when she was ill, letting him know of her wish to dispose of such important papers as the famous Castle Document. F. Bowyer Bell and other biographers have noted this conciliatory vein in de Valera’s political make-up: there were those in his party who would have been militant against the diehards, but de Valera still found it difficult to condemn out of hand the old friends of the glory years.
A friend of the Gannon family, Denis Sexton, was told that Cathal had seen a scrapbook of Joseph Plunkett in the refuse bin at Nassau Street, along with a bronze medal relating to him.[7] In an interview, the late Eilís Dillon used this incident, possibly from the same source, to illustrate what she called ‘Grace’s improvidence’.[8] The criticism seems valid, but because Grace is not here to defend herself, several points need to be made to explain this seeming indifference. First, it was out of character. She kept bills for thirty years, as her sister Nellie ruefully recorded; she had all Joseph’s other papers, the historically important ones, and, as was disclosed in her letter to the press, she thought too much of her husband’s keepsakes to lend them to a permanent exhibition until a suitable premises could be found. Second, she prepared a scrapbook relating to Joseph which almost certainly incorporated everything she felt was important from the discarded book. Third, in Nellie’s careful notes of material received for her museum exhibition, Grace’s contributions, all carefully noted, include Joseph’s GPO diary, his crucifix, rosary beads, prayer book, signed books, photographs, one of his poems and the bracelet she had given him. Fourth, she may have excluded from the old scrapbook any pictures of the Plunkett family and any allusion to Joseph’s first love, Columba, his ‘white dove of the wild, dark eyes’ – leaving out his family perhaps because of deteriorating relationships and his first young love for obvious reasons. The National Library wrote to Grace asking her if she had seen or heard of the publication of Sonnets to Columba.[9] She replied, ‘I have not seen or heard of the publication of Sonnets to Columba. All other Mss. by my husband are in my possession – with the exception of some which have recently been presented to an American Jesuit College.’[10]