Unlikely Rebels
Page 27
Grace thus excluded the scrapbook from deserving to be categorised as a manuscript. Certainly the revised scrapbook, edited by Grace, would afford less academic interest than Joseph’s, but might be sturdier and more artistically assembled.
Grace had been indicted for another seeming indifference – wanting to throw out Joseph’s love letters before Cathal Gannon persuaded her to give them to the National Library[11] – but the library’s records show otherwise: she held them to her dying day, having bequeathed them to Maeve, who arranged for their final deposit in the library. As for the discarded medal incident, this was certainly not the only rejection of honours by families of the executed, who, like Grace, saw the truncation of Ireland as a ‘sell out’ – not a matter of celebration by those responsible.
Over the years, despite Countess Plunkett’s initial kindness, there had been a lessening of and finally no communication between Grace and her husband’s family. In her leaner years, despite the fact that others seemed anxious to help her, there were no such offers coming from her in-laws. Their steadily worsening relationship went back to the 1920s when Grace was living in poor circumstances in Westmoreland Street.[12]Joseph Plunkett had wanted his family to give Grace her wife’s share of ‘everything of which I am possessed or may become possessed’. At that stage, he must have known that under the terms of the will of his great-uncle, Dr Cranny, who died in 1904, he was entitled to a part of the inheritance, after accumulated debts were paid and after due recognition was given to Dr Cranny’s widow, who died in 1930. Grace made efforts to have her husband’s wishes honoured, but to no avail.
Of course the will was not binding, being prenuptial and having only one witness’ signature, but there was a moral imperative there, a son clearly providing for his widow while facing execution. Geraldine Plunkett Dillon surprisingly stood up for her sister-in-law in the matter, but the Countess was adamant. It must be remembered that she had so disapproved of the marriage that she refused her son the £100 he requested for his wedding-day expenses, when the ceremony was to have been in Rathmines church. Nevertheless, one might have expected what was in effect her son’s ‘deathbed’ wish to be fulfilled. Apparently the Countess did not feel conscience-bound to honour the will and refused to bend on the matter. She was taken aback, however, when Grace publicised her stand by taking her mother-in-law to court.[13]To avoid further gossip, the Plunketts decided to settle out of court. Mr V. Rice, Grace’s senior counsel, explained that she had been trying for years to get an account of an estate which included many houses on the Elgin and Marlborough Roads in Ballsbridge and Donnybrook. Despite even Geraldine’s support, the estate was heavily encumbered, and provisions had to be made for Dr Cranny’s widow, apart from the heavy debts. Grace was awarded £700. Justice Johnson’s observation was: ‘I am very glad the Countess has seen her way to take over these assets and pay off this young lady.’[14]
The ‘young lady’ was then forty-seven years of age. The Count was co-defendant, but the justice apparently saw his status as nominal only. Grace really needed help when she pursued the matter in the 1920s, but at least part of her motivation was a doggedness to see her husband’s dying wish fulfilled. On the Countess’ part, it could be conceded that the estate was tied up financially for years, but an explanation to that effect might have calmed the troubled waters.
It would be a mistake to assume, however pleasant the seeming gallantry of many to help this tragic young woman, that the orders she got for her artistic output were based on sympathy alone. She had, in fact, become increasingly competent in her work. As far back as 1918 she had made a little money on a book of her cartoons called To Hold as ’Twere. It was warmly received everywhere, with one dissentient voice from a reviewer in The Irish Book Lover:
Readers who used to take delight in the clever cartoons that sometimes adorned the numbers of The Irish Review signed Grace Gifford will welcome a handsome quarto just issued by Mr William Tempest of the Dundealgan Press, Dundalk, at the price of half a crown … The likeness in many is well caught, the drawing is excellent, but the whole spirit of the work is too satirical.[15]
Grace’s satire was, in fact, variously described as gentle, impish or even ‘mischievous’. In any event, it had made her a little money. The impishness surfaced in recent years in one of Grace’s cartoons at Taylor de Vere’s gallery in Kildare Street: it was called irreverently On Board the HMS Hi You![16] Another signed, pen-and-ink cartoon, The Abbey Players, sold at Adam’s in 1996.[17]
In complete contrast had been Grace’s cartoons of the Simon Enquiry into the murder of Francis Sheehy Skeffington during Easter Week 1916. These had reflected the artist’s contempt for that enquiry. For some, her most interesting piece of work was a page of sketches, a sort of potted Irish history, to counteract conscription for the First World War. These were not money-spinners, but she did derive a small income from commercial advertising of such commodities as soap, Clarke’s shoes, the Irish Sweepstakes, biscuits and Gaeltacht industries. Grace was very businesslike in her approach and made out a schedule of deadlines for the various publications and the exact space she would require.
Between them, Irish Life and Irish Fun published over eighty of Grace’s cartoons, and other publications which used her work included some still known, others long since gone:
Bystander Irish Radio Journal
Catholic Pictorial Irish Sketch
Éire Irish Women’s Weekly
Herald Punch
Honesty Sunday Independent
Ideal Irish Homes Tatler & Sketch
Irish Independent The Studio
It is estimated that her cartoon output was in the hundreds, possibly a thousand pieces. None of her work looked as if it were ‘dashed off’. There is sometimes not only the mischievous element and the clever likenesses but also a delicacy of colour, never crude – particularly the use of a soft mauve, not usually associated with the more strident colours of many cartoons.
Colm Ó Lochlainn had worked with Joseph Plunkett before Easter Week in the disclosure of the Castle Document. Now his publishing firm, The Sign of the Three Candles, published a series of Grace’s cartoons of Abbey actors and actresses in a book called Doctors Recommend It. Its 200 subscribers had backed a winner. It was, deservedly, very well received, but Grace decided against a second edition in favour of another set of cartoons, equally successful. The editions were called respectively Twelve Nights at the Abbey Theatre and An Abbey Tonic in Twelve Doses. Drama, an English journal, republished the first of these two in 1949.[18]
Grace dabbled in poetry, more successfully, it has to be said, than Nellie. Her love for and admiration of her niece Maeve is immortalised in verse, and Joseph would have admired the poem she published on the humble animal who bore Christ to his Passion:
‘The Entry into Jerusalem’
Pace slow in mournful tread of humble beast.
Heed not the shouts of joy, the palm-strewn road.
Reluctant move, suffer the stinging goad,
lest you should speed the horror in the East.
Lest you should see, beneath the rising sun
the knout, the crown of thorns, the awful tree:
Oh humble beast, forever honoured be
for on your back there rides the Holy One.[19]
She signed herself ‘Grace Plunkett’ on this occasion but she also sometimes used Gráinne Uí Phluncéid, Grace Gifford-Plunkett and Grace Vandeleur Gifford Plunkett, still proud of her kinsman’s name, Vandeleur, because of his nineteenth-century association with the founding of the Ralahine Commune experiment in County Clare, where there was thought for the tenantry as well as for the landlord’s profit – not the more usual exploitation and indifference. It was another Plunkett, Horace, who initiated the cooperative movement in Ireland. So the juxtaposition of the two names in Grace’s signature – Vandeleur and Plunkett – however coincidental their closeness, forms an odd linking up of two of the landlord class who cared.
A shared prayer with
Joseph was the ‘bookmark’ of St Teresa of Ávila, found among Grace’s memorabilia:
Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing affright thee.
All things pass away;
God only is changeless.
Patience wins all things.
To him who possesses God
nothing is wanting.
God only sufficeth.
It is written on the back of her poem ‘The Entry into Jerusalem’ in her own handwriting, and the first letter of the word ‘patience’ is written with her distinctive P – a hallmark of her work, like a circle with an upright sword through it, a sort of pictorial representation of the title of Joseph’s book of poems.
During the 1920s and 1930s we get brief glimpses of Grace about Dublin, sketching, attending meetings of the Old Dublin Society, visiting friends – the Kellys on the North Circular Road and the Burkes in Rathgar, calling on her sisters, especially Nellie in Drumcondra, and visiting the cinema.
Lest there be any doubt as to Grace’s political leanings during this time, there is no better way to show her being a ‘sea-green incorruptible’ than the recollections of her niece Maeve during her late childhood and early adolescent years. Grace often brought Maeve on visits to the cinema or theatre. In those days the National Anthem was played after every social event, and the audience all stood silently and respectfully during its performance – honouring their hard-won freedom: all except one member of the audience that is, because Grace Plunkett refused to stand for a state for which her husband did not die – a truncated twenty-six counties. Maeve recalled that she enjoyed the outings but dreaded the finale when she stood with everyone else for ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’, while her aunt remained determinedly seated, an embarrassment to self-conscious adolescence.[20]
Notes
[1]NGDPs.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Letter from Robert Monks, Liam Ó Laoghaire Archives, National Library of Ireland.
[4]NGDPs.
[5]In conversation with Maeve Donnelly in the early 1990s.
[6]In conversation with Denis Sexton in the 1990s.
[7]Ibid.
[8]In conversation with Alan Hayes and Eilís Dillon, 1992.
[9]Letter to Grace from National Library of Ireland, 29 August 1938.
[10]Grace’s reply to National Library letter, 30 September.
[11]Charles Gannon, Cathal Gannon: The Life and Times of a Dublin Craftsman (1910–1999), Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2006, pp. 118, 149.
[12]Letter dated 16 January 1923, NGDPs.
[13]High Court Case 3787 (1934) National Archives.
[14]The Irish Press, 2 March 1925.
[15]UCD Archives, Belfield, vol. XI, J010.
[16]Taylor de Vere Gallery.
[17]Catalogue, Adam’s, Blackrock, 25 March 1996.
[18]Letter to Donagh MacDonagh from Assistant Editor, Drama, 13 January 1949.
[19]National Library Archives, MS 21597. It was published in the Catholic Bulletin, 1928.
[20]In conversation with Maeve Donnelly in the early 1990s.
27 - A State of Emergency
The Gifford daughters had been involved with all the major episodes of Ireland’s twentieth-century bid for freedom: the catalytic strike of 1913, the anti-conscription campaign, the insurrection of Easter Week, the War of Independence and the Civil War. The shambolic Boundary Commission ended with the signing away of the six northern counties by W. T. Cosgrave, Kevin O’Higgins, Ernest Blythe and John O’Byrne, leaving the nationalists in the north of Ireland still socially imprisoned, without votes and often without houses or jobs.[1] After the Civil War, Kate, Nellie and Grace stopped being hands-on involved with any turbulent rejection of the Treaty: only ‘John’ remained an active republican, partly through her writing but partly also because her friends were not only from the ‘arty’ stratum of Dublin society but also from the more persistently republican elements. In fact, Maeve Donnelly recalled a visit she and her mother made to Wicklow town where ‘John’ was acting as substitute editor to An Phoblacht, its editor, Frank Ryan, having gone to fight in the Spanish Civil War.[2] This would have been in the mid-1930s, when de Valera was coming down heavily on extremists.
The Treaty ended only armed conflict with Britain: the Economic War started with de Valera’s refusal to pay any more land annuities. Britain retaliated by rejecting Irish cattle; de Valera replied by rejecting British coal, leaving Irish householders with the doubtful joy of sodden turf. The Economic War ended with Ireland paying, in full and final settlement, £10 million for land annuities. The Irish ports, still held by Britain under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, were given back to Ireland. The return of these crucial ports enabled de Valera to opt out of the Second World War, when Britain declared war on Germany on 1 September 1939. Britain’s use of these ports would have made Irish neutrality impossible.
There is no mention anywhere during these years of Ernest Gifford, but the four sisters living in Ireland – Kate, Nellie, Grace and ‘John’ – kept in touch with him. They were now coping with the strictures of the Emergency. Nellie has left a pencilled note jotting down home details of her stringent day-to-day living during this time: Grace, obviously not as economically restricted as she had been before receiving her state pension, tried, on her visits to Nellie and Maeve, to bring food that would then have been rationed. A note records that Kate took them to a Local Defence Force concert and a show called Signal Fires. Mention is made of helping out ‘John’ with a rent problem. A footnote to the pencilled jotting gives a brief look at what the family were engaged in:
Summary, 1943
Kate at Hospitals Commission.
John at Views and News (Roleograph)
Finian mending films at Paramount Reuters’ Office, Middle Abbey Street.
Maeve advanced at last … to pen and ink illustration.[3]
There is a further note which lists prize money Maeve had won for artistic endeavours, one in Belfast on 9 February and two on 21 July – one first prize and another ‘special prize’. She was now illustrating books and obviously doing well.[4]
Muriel’s son and daughter, Donagh and Barbara, were also leading contented lives, as was Eric, Claude’s son, and ‘John’s’ son, Finian. In fact, all the children of the Temple Villas Giffords were making their way in the world. In contrast to the twelve offspring of Frederick and Isabella and the twenty-three children of Isabella’s grandmother, Emily, these Irish grandchildren numbered only six. Claude’s son, Eric was the eldest grandchild. He had been born in 1906 and spent some time living with his grandmother, Isabella. He also remained in contact with his Aunts Kate and Nellie over the years. Some time after Claude’s death Kate visited Eric and his mother in London. Ernest simply fades out of the family news. It is very interesting, however, to see family traits carried on down the generations: the old ability in art keeps cropping up, and also the love of animals. The following excerpt from the Cork Weekly Examiner, accompanying a picture of Eric, publicised his London exhibition of paintings:
Thirty-one-year-old Dubliner, Eric Gifford, nephew of Mrs Gifford-Wilson, Secretary of the 1932 Tailteann Games, and of Dublin artist, Grace Plunkett, whose first ‘one-man’ show of paintings is now at the Wertheim Gallery, London.
Mr Gifford spent six years in the Near East and most of his pictures were painted in Greece and Cyprus. He has vivid memories of Easter Week, 1916; a sniper was killed on the roof of his parents’ Baggot Street house. He left Ireland in 1920 to study in Rome.
He was in Madrid and Barcelona when Alfonso was driven from Spain in 1931. When he arrived in Cyprus the following year he witnessed the rebellion there, when the government house, occupied by Sir Ronald Storrs, the governor and commander-in-chief, was burned. He was at Athens at the time of the Venezilist revolt a few years later, and was in Spanish Morocco when last summer’s Franco revolt began. He just managed to escape through Tangier with his mother, but many of his paintings had to be left behind, as well as his personal belongings.[5]