Unlikely Rebels

by Anne Clare

  The second Gifford grandson (Muriel’s son Donagh), who remembered May 1916 only vaguely, when his father was executed in Kilmainham Gaol, grew up to be a judge, a poet (like his father) and also a playwright: his Happy as Larry production was very successful. Although the MacDonagh family effectively abducted him from his Aunt Kate’s home in Philipsburgh Avenue, there seemed never to have been any animosity or ill-feeling as far as he was concerned between the two families. He became a district justice, but we get an insight into the man who was Muriel’s firstborn from his verse on the card sent one Christmas from him and his wife Nuala. It must be one of the most arresting word pictures of the Annunciation:

  In no rich robes of Babylonian stuff the maiden walks the simple garden dreaming of quiet marriage to her Carpenter. From her still beauty tree flower and gilded bee borrow new loveliness and the courtly fountain mirrors her grace; tuned to her steps, the music of all nature is grown sweet until from the magnificent heaven falls a shining Messenger dazzling the earth, announcing tidings more terrible than ever brazen trumpet sounded in peace or war. The maiden bows in obedience to that awful word and in the garden spring light is blasted and the air is rank with smoky torches; dim with presage of a Saviour betrayed.[7]

  Donagh remained in touch with his mother’s family. He was a special favourite of his Aunt Grace, and that affection was obviously reciprocated in the way he looked out for her when her health failed.[8]Grace and Kate had been the surrogate mothers of Donagh and Barbara in the immediate aftermath of their mother’s death.

  The only other Gifford grandson was Finian, whose artistic bent lay in photography, which materialised into cinematic reproductions, and he not only cared for Reuter’s newsreels at Paramount’s Abbey Street office but was also a cinema projectionist. His love of animals is reflected in numerous snapshots of his dog, but he had a more practical view of the more mundane aspects of daily living than his mother: it was his practicality that steered their domestic ship through economic storms with which the captain, ‘John’, was less able to cope.

  Barbara, Donagh’s young sister, was the oldest granddaughter. Her marriage to Liam Redmond, the Abbey actor, was a happy one, and they had three children. Their home welcomed Muriel’s sisters, and Kate was a particularly welcome visitor always – a great favourite of Liam.

  The second granddaughter, Maeve, grew to be a lady of great charm and integrity, twinning the genetic characteristics of art and love of animals. Even in her senior years she was beautiful, yet there was almost a complete dearth of photographs of her. In correspondence, Nellie described, nonchalantly, that Maeve got up at 6.30 a.m. so that she could walk the dogs. There is a word picture left by the late Frances White, who was Secretary to the North Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.[9]Frances said it was ‘something to see’ this beautiful young woman with long, curly hair, walking a bevy of small dogs along Carlingford Road in Drumcondra in the earlier hours of the morning, before going to work. Maeve became Assistant Secretary of Arks Advertising Agency. She took part in amateur dramatics and had her share of admirers. Animals were a particular love of hers, and she gave her services unstintingly to the North Dublin SPCA for most of her adult life. She was its treasurer for more than twenty years and its representative on the Dublin SPCA Committee. I can vouch for her unfailing and punctual attendance at their meetings. She listened to the points made in any relevant discussion, said very little, but cast her vote decisively. At one meeting, however, a matter arose concerning bloodsports which touched a nerve, and this quiet lady vehemently made known her abhorrence of such activities. Her words were concise, forceful and fruitful. She was also Honorary Secretary of the Shetland Sheepdog Club and, later, of the Japanese Chins Club, of which breed she had four – Alannah, Joy, Serena and Suki – as well as a grey parrot called Rocky who lived to be forty-three. Apart from art and love of animals, Maeve Donnelly had a third, very charming, genetic characteristic: like her Aunt Kate she had a most musical speaking voice and sang very sweetly.

  The youngest Gifford granddaughter, Geraldine, was born in the USA to Gabriel and his wife Mary. She was said to resemble Maeve in her good looks. She pursued a successful professional career and married a chemist named John Topliss from Nottingham, England, in 1958.

  In 1949, ‘John’ published a series of articles called ‘Dublin Fifty Years Ago’, in the Irish Weekly Independent. They were directed at Irish emigrants and brought Gabriel, on his reading them, in touch with ‘John’ again. In 1950 he and Nellie started writing to one another after Ada’s death. Nellie retained copies of her correspondence, and from these letters can be traced the receding tides of the lives of the children who had played in the top storey of the house in Temple Villas and the incoming tides of the next generation: the normal ebb and flow of family life.[10]

  Notes

  [1]Arthur Mitchell and Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, Irish Political Documents 1916–1949, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp. 164–169.

  [2]In conversation with Maeve Donnelly in the early 1990s.

  [3]NGDPs.

  [4]Ibid.

  [5]Cork Weekly Examiner, 6 March 1937.

  [6]NGDPs, press article.

  [7]Given to the author by Finian Czira.

  [8]Letter from the Assistant Editor of Drama to Donagh MacDonagh, regarding Twelve Nights at the Abbey Theatre, 13 January 1949; NGDPs; receipts from St Vincent’s Hospital.

  [9]In conversation with Marie O’Byrne, North Dublin SPCA, 2007.

  [10]Nellie’s correspondence with Gabriel, NGDPs.

  28 - For Whom the Bells Toll

  The only Irish grave of the sons of Frederick and Isabella as recorded in Nellie Gifford-Donnelly’s papers is that of Gerald, with whom his mother elected to be buried, in Mount Jerome Cemetery. Edward Cecil and Liebert almost certainly lie buried in North America, Claude in London, with no record in available data of Ernest’s resting place. By 1950, Gabriel seemed to have been sole survivor of the six Gifford sons, and he was still living in America.[1]

  After Muriel’s tragic death in 1917 there was a gap of over thirty years before Ada, the next Gifford sister, was to die. With her death a bright, vivid light was extinguished. It would have been fitting had her coffin been draped with the Tricolour, to acknowledge the passing of Ireland’s first self-appointed spy and to commemorate her joyful ride on top of the New York trolley in 1916, waving the new Irish flag. It is highly unlikely, however, that such an honour was accorded. Family papers indicate that she died in 1949 at the age of sixty-seven, and one of the fruits of her passing was renewed contact through correspondence between Gabriel and his sisters in Ireland, and in particular Nellie, these two especially drawn together by Ada’s passing, the third of their nursery trio who had been like a separate family within a family.

  In the exchange of letters between Gabriel and Nellie he emerges as a pleasant, loving husband and father. His comment, written on the back of a snap of himself, suggests that he inherited some of his father’s humour. In his straw hat, he bears a resemblance to Winston Churchill, and this is what he has to say:

  Aug 6: Ah, here he is, not Winston as you might think at first glance. I am forbidden to send this but I am taking the law into my own hands. I meant it to be me making a sketch but they say I look more like a cop taking someone’s license number. This farmer-like hat is really a smart new panama let me tell you.[2]

  In another letter he describes his meeting with Mary, who was to become his wife:

  Mary, when I first met her, was acting in one of Synge’s plays under the direction of J. Campbell. She was then in her late twenties, not much of an actress, but otherwise very sweet, a little woman with brown eyes and black hair. I used to take her to dinners and shows, etc. We began to like each other and got married. It has been a great success. We went through times bad enough to ruin any temper but she never was anything but cheerful, even when I wasn’t. It is hard to say what it is makes a person lovable but she has it in the highest degree.[3]
>
  Nellie and Gabriel began to exchange gifts at Christmas and in the course of correspondence hopefully envisaged their two families making visits to America and Ireland. They recalled their nursery days and wrote of their early, haphazard education by Isabella’s Mission Society friends. Gabriel lauds his St Andrew’s school education and Protestant education generally in Ireland for its ‘slovenliness’ and contrasts it with the rigid disciplines of Protestant education in England and Catholic education in Ireland. To support his argument, he instances great minds from Irish Protestant education: Hamilton for mathematics, Boyle for chemistry, Berkeley for philosophy, Burke for statesmanship and Wellington for military prowess. Obviously never touched, as his sisters were (and two of his brothers-in-law), by the spirit of Irish Ireland, Gabriel is dismissive of the Irish nation’s determination to promote the Irish language.

  His correspondence also reflects that his art became less financially rewarding than it had been, and his letters also reveal a twin interest with Nellie in their Huguenot ancestry, with his more focused historic interpretation of the purge that sent the Bissets to America. He makes a jocose claim that he should be a member of the peerage through some fault in the Cole-Hamilton Walsh line, and, though he is only four years younger than Kate, observes, ‘dear Kate. What a great old girl she is. Her handwriting is as firm as ever and her mind as clear. She is the one who should have come to America. She would have been Secretary to the President.’ But he is not being patronising to someone so close to his own age because he explains how he has always seen her ‘as something like an aunt or deputy mother’. Nellie’s childhood concept of Kate is even more exclusive as ‘a vague and rather terrifying elder sister distantly immersed in books in college’.[4]

  A copy of the first extant letter Nellie sent to Gabriel, dated 10 February 1950, contains a word picture of Kate. She has ‘a complexion like a rose’ and her hair has faded from the old ‘carrots’ to ‘golden’. Nellie asks Gabriel not to share their exchanged letters with other members of the family: ‘cut my small personality free’ is how she phrases her request.[5]

  It was clear that Ada’s death had brought the family closer together, but it also produced the problem of Charlie Constant, who seems to have been in a long-term relationship with her. He claimed they had been married (and that he was, therefore, entitled to her estate), but Nellie challenged this allegation. She says in her letter to Gabriel:

  Ada’s money, which is in the bank’s care, will, I imagine, be for her brothers and sisters. But the point of the marriage must be clear. Charlie has only written the one letter to me, the one which I answered and which you saw. Could you not face Charlie, get his marriage date (if any) and verify it by a phone call to the Bureau of Marriage Licences, or whatever they call the Department. Maybe the Irish Consul could tell you the proper procedure. As the USA and Ireland both come into the picture, one end of the story must be unravelled before anything can be done with the other. Katie says she does not mean to take any steps except to cable CC and ask him again.[6]

  It is not clear what relationship there had been between this Charlie Constant and Ada Gifford but, though Gabriel and Kate show a reluctance to pursue the matter, Nellie persevered, and the Irish Consul to America finally solved the problem. Constant’s claims that his birth and marriage certificates were burned were declared to be false, and Nellie referred scathingly to ‘Constant’s dull tricks’.[7] The estate amounted to very little, and Gabriel wrote and said that his share was to go to Nellie and Maeve, for a holiday (as was decided in family conference).

  Nellie shares in her letters, joyfully and nostalgically, her brother’s memories of their nursery days, much to the delight of his daughter Geraldine, who loved to hear of what her respectable father was up to in his youth. He is metaphorically brought back to Rathmines via memory lane and was assured that many of the shops are still there – Lee’s drapery, the Lucan Dairy and even the one ‘with the brownish red paint with no shine in it as you saw it last’.[8]

  Nellie’s pride and joy in Maeve are reflected in the correspondence: her responsible post in Arks Advertising Agency, her clear soprano singing voice, her rising so early to walk her beloved dogs, her partaking in amateur dramatics, the ease with which she took to driving her first car, the fact that the two of them had never a cross word and that Nellie worried, sometimes, that she may take too much of Maeve’s companionship. As against that, she mentions Maeve’s ‘admirers’ and the deep affection she holds for her.

  Typical of those who enjoy rude health, Nellie is not wholly sympathetic about Grace’s stays in nursing homes and shares her feelings with Gabriel that Grace’s ill health is due to ‘too much smoking, and too little exercise’.[9]A greater complaint, however, shared in this correspondence with Gabriel, is reflected in her observation that the municipal libraries are prone to have books by ‘quaint Irish priests’ whom she criticises for having ‘quashed’ the Mother and Child Scheme proposed by Dr Noel Browne, TD.

  It is obvious that Gabriel has agreed with her as she confides in him her distaste of hierocratic jurisdiction:

  I am the only one of the family now who is not swamped with Ortho-dox Catholicism. It makes it a little sad for me that in my own family I have no confidence in their opinions as they are merely the opinions they are told to have … Kate offends least. Grace lays it on ‘with a shovel’.[10]

  Nellie gets really angry, however, describing how Grace started to tell her of St Jude, the saint Catholics see as the solver of lost causes. When ‘John’ converts to Catholicism, Nellie expresses the hurt she felt that it had appeared in the press as a news item before Grace told her it was ‘rumoured’. There is even a little touch of Nellie’s feeling about Catholicism, as she tells Gabriel in a letter written in 1958: ‘Maeve is out with the “boy” at the moment, a nice lad and nice-looking but alas of the majority.’[11]That ‘alas’ tells it all, but may have been coloured by her own failed marriage.

  Very diplomatically, Nellie observes to Gabriel in one of her letters, ‘I think from your Christmas card that your drawing has changed a lot.’ Copies of his work he had sent her make it obvious that he had bowed to the Irish-American market, and his cards are much given to images of leprechauns. There is, however, in Nellie’s papers, a clever sketch by him of a man looking rather like himself, battling the wind on a stormy day. There is also extant a very pleasant picture of a lady resting, with a small dog on her lap.[12]

  Asthma and heart trouble eventually took their toll on Grace. She died on 12 December 1955. Despite Nellie’s impatience with her sister’s small Catholic pieties, she wrote nostalgically:

  I still find it hard to believe she is gone. She had many of the qualities attributed to songbirds, singing aggressively in her own patch … We miss her and will always miss her for the excited interest she took in the little things many people would not think worth a thought.

  Even today a little pang went through me that I could not see her surprise at the six-inch high sweet pea in the garden. I had nursed the seed in a shed and set it out to brave the frost, which they did. Moreover, the seeds had lain in a bureau two years. She loved any young, growing things, whether children, animals, cultures or ideas … Asthma over five or more years wrecked her health.[13]

  It was obvious that Grace’s affection for her favourite niece and nephew, Maeve and Donagh, was reciprocated, and there is evidence that Donagh, as well as Mr Burke, her solicitor friend, kept an eye on things for her.[14]

  Grace’s death was a lonely one. Maeve left the following, brief note on what transpired:

  At that time I was working in Harcourt Street so it was very convenient … Her doctor rang me to say he could not gain admission (he visited her constantly). I rang the landlord and John Burke. Landlord met us at the flat and opened the door. We found Grace (fully dressed) on the floor, slumped against the side of the bed. The gas fire was lit. Her death was clearly sudden and unexpected.[15]

  So the bride with the great, sad eye
s looking into a futureless marriage would no more smoke her forbidden cigarettes, no more defiantly sit out the national anthem. There is evidence that she had become reclusive in her declining years, and even somewhat asocial. She died the poorest of the Giffords, had never owned a house and left assets of less than £200, which, even in the 1950s, was no fortune. Her generosity, ill health and a diminishing ability to practise her craft had affected her economically. Her few effects included a sewing machine, with which she made many of her clothes, a talent she no doubt inherited from her mother. In a roughly pencilled note dated 8 May 1956, Nellie has recorded, ‘Gave Fiona circle and sword ring – and loose stone cross (for Jack Plunkett). Rosary beads and Joe’s confirmation prayerbook.’[16] So the scrapbook and bronze medal may have been deemed by Grace fit for rejection, but these other very personal items, apart from the major items on loan to museums, were carefully preserved for a period of almost forty years. Grace left also her clever, insightful sketches and some evocative poems that expressed her conviction that the troubled times, the gentle term used in Ireland to describe those difficult years, would eventually bear good fruit:

  To the Leaders

  Little we thought who watched your strength and power

  That you would be ‘defeated’ ’neath the sod;

  The flag is furled that knew your glorious hour,

  Your eyes are closed now by the hand of God.

  (And yet from age to age remember we

  Christ did not die in vain on Calvary.)

  Grace Plunkett,

  Larkfield, Kimmage,

  County Dublin, 1916

  This had been written in Joseph’s old home after his execution in 1916 and before the ensuing War of Independence. When Grace died, a healing branch was extended to her sisters by the Plunkett family, who offered a place in the family burial plot. It was Joseph’s younger sister, Fiona, most close to Grace during her stay in Larkfield, who initiated this arrangement.[17]