Unlikely Rebels (31 page)

Thirty-five years ago I remember as a very small child hearing a ballad maker in the County Clare singing a song of his own composition:

‘I loved Joe Plunkett and he loved me,

He gave his life to set Ireland free.'

That was a very few years after the Easter Rising of 1916, and my aunt Grace Plunkett had already entered the most secure of all National Parthenons: the world of the ballad.
[18]

When Kate Gifford-Wilson died in 1957, at the age of eighty-two, she was not accorded state honours, and was buried with her husband, Walter, though there is no inscription on the tombstone to record her passing. She left behind a remembered glow; you could see eyes light up in the remembering. For instance, the late Frank Cleary, who was to found Scoil na Ceathra Maistrí in County Donegal (one of the then much-needed secondary schools founded by private individuals in rural Ireland), remembered Mrs Kate Wilson as a respected teacher of French before she left the teaching profession in 1924. Eddie Kelly's description of Kate came in staccatoed remembrances: distinguished, kind, gentle, dignified, sincere.

It is to the Scott family, close friends of Kate, that we owe the most detailed word picture of their ‘Aunt Katie', an honorary title. Dymphna, Eithne and Frazia had their respective contributions. There was her physical presence: with the arrival of other adult visitors, the Scott children would leave the grown-ups and resort to the garden; with Aunt Katie, it was different. ‘Elegance' and ‘fascination' were words used to describe her presence, but certainly not beauty, she had a square jawline and straight reddish-grey hair. The youngest sister, Frazia, said she sat ‘entranced' listening to their visitor's words, not always fully understanding them; they were spoken in a clear, very musical voice and were usually about family matters and politics. Her words were enhanced by her beautifully beringed hands with which she gestured. She smoked through a long cigarette holder. Her other jewellery was also remembered: long, dangling earrings and amber beads.

Above all, the girls remembered the personality that shone through the words: Kate had definite views but was never aggressive about them, and, in an era when it was considered that ‘children should be seen but not heard' they remembered her listening to them and never making them appear ‘gauche or stupid'.
[19]
There were eight children in the Scott household and therefore sixteen godparents. Kate was godmother to the lucky Walter, who was the envy of his siblings because of her generosity. When the Royal Dublin Golf Club burned down, Aunt Katie offered to replace the golf clubs of Larry, the eldest of the Scotts. As it happened, his clubs were unharmed, but the kind thought was there.
[20]

In 1957, this gentle lady passed on, having been in her time a standby for her parents, a surrogate mother to her younger brothers and sisters, a teacher in Germany and in Parnell Square, Registrar of the First Dáil, a prisoner in Kilmainham Gaol whose release would mean, according to the Minister for Defence in 1923, ‘that the public safety would be endangered', General Secretary of the revised Tailteann Games in 1924, Assistant Director and Woman's Organiser in the initiation of the new Irish broadcasting service which was to become 2RN and, finally, an employee of the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes.

The three sisters lie close together in Glasnevin's Mount Prospect Cemetery: Muriel, buried with her daughter Barbara and her son-in-law Liam Redmond; Grace in the Plunkett family grave; and Kate, buried with her husband Walter.

Notes

After the deaths of Ada, Grace and Kate, the surviving sisters, Nellie and ‘
John', were inevitably brought closer together. Their lifestyles were still very different, ‘
John' fraternising with her more ‘arty' friends and Nellie, described by Eddie Kelly as ‘down to earth', contentedly living with her daughter Maeve and engaging herself in such a variety of activities as to exclude any suggestion that she had ‘settled down'. Apart altogether from housekeeping and her beloved garden, among her more sedentary occupations was a keen interest in her forebears, though even this involved some footwork. There was nothing to glean from her father's ‘only child' status, but her mother's colourful background was a rich field to harvest.

Meanwhile, Nellie continued to correspond with Gabriel and signed off a letter of 19 April 1958 with the phrase ‘Till next week – Love to you three, Nellie'.
[1]
There is a gap in the correspondence – Gabriel has moved house. Finally, there is a copy of a letter Nellie sent to Mary dated 15 December 1960. It is, sadly, addressed to Gabriel's widow. Nellie speaks, among other things, of how her brother always loved children and they him. So, as far as records are available, the last of the Gifford Palatine Pact sons, baptised Catholic but Protestant and unionist each one to his life's end, had passed on. All that remained now of the Temple Villas Giffords were Nellie and ‘John'.

Though Nellie had written to Gabriel about her diminished sense of patriotism, there is no indication of that diminution in another of her hobbies – preserving newspaper cuttings. They represent, in fact, a sort of history of pre- and post-Treaty Ireland and are a treasure trove for researchers.
The 1930s' and 1940s' letters and articles constitute a mini-history of the Rising and the exhibition. Apart from the press reports on Grace's funeral, there is a lull for the 1950s. With the approaching advent of the half-century anniversary of the Rising, however, Nellie's patriotic feeling, never dead, is obviously rekindled, with family interest also appearing now and then.

In this mélange of 1916 memorabilia, Nellie has also cut out from some newspaper a short, illustrated article on the symbol chosen by the Government for the 1916 commemorative events: the sword of light.
[2]
On 11 April, three days before District Justice Donagh MacDonagh was conferred with an honorary doctorate, his sister, Barbara, had opened the Thomas MacDonagh Memorial Hall in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary, where her father had been born.
The Irish Times
published a picture of Barbara and beneath detailed her relationships with Pádraig Pearse (her godfather) and her aunts, Grace Plunkett and Helen (
Nellie) Donnelly, mentioning Nellie's active service in the insurrection and stating that it was she who had initiated the 1916 collection in the National Museum. An
Irish Independent
article on Britain's failed Irish Conscription Bill for the First World War had also caught Nellie's attention, as did an article in the
RTÉ Guide
entitled ‘Insurrection', the eight-part series on the Rising. An
Irish Times
‘London Letter' dealt with Lady Lavery's picture on the Irish £1 and 10-shilling notes and, in the same issue, Grace's sojourn in the Metropolitan School of Art is covered in ‘An Irishwoman's Diary' by ‘Candida'.
The Irish Times
elsewhere celebrated the publication by Corgi Books in paperback of Dorothy Macardle's masterpiece,
The Irish Republic
, of special interest to Nellie because Grace and Kate had been imprisoned with the author. Preserved also by Nellie, whose patriotism was obviously still very much alive, was an article on James Connolly by Frank Robbins.

Another bit of memorabilia Nellie preserved is her description of ‘The last concert held in Liberty Hall'. This story relates how James Connolly heard of an unfortunate group of homeless people, stranded on Dublin's quays. Nothing would do for Connolly, beset by problems regarding the insurrection, but to help this wretched group, which included children. There was no cash in hand, so a concert would have to be organised to make some money. Nellie volunteered to run this fund-raising event, and she sought the help, willingly given, of her friends, Máire Perolz and Helena Molony. They had no problem finding vocalists and musicians in Dublin, but Nellie decided that a band would give the concert an artistic flip, so she wrote to two bands, including St James' Brass and Reed Band, who agreed to do the concert. The name of the secretary of that band happened to be James Connolly, and Seán Connolly, a member of the Citizen Army and Abbey actor, was also involved. Furthermore, Commandant Connolly gave them a play he had written, so it might have been called
The Connolly Concert.
Held in Liberty Hall, it was a great success, and the stranded family was rescued – all through the offices of a great labour leader and a caring family man. Nellie has left this extraordinary glimpse of Connolly, of his deep compassion for the down-at-heel, even in the extremely difficult preparations for that Easter Week. Was there ever a general, anywhere, who took the trouble, just before a major conflict, to reach out a helping hand to a poor, unimportant, stranded group?

Nellie was also interested in saving pictures and film of historic interest and received acknowledgement of a series of photographs of Countess Markievicz from the curator of Sligo County Library and Museum. Her interest in locating historic film surfaced in her search for a 1915 film recording that year's Wolfe Tone Procession to Bodenstown. In 1913, Thomas Clarke had requested (for John Devoy's propaganda efforts in the USA) James T. Jameson of the Irish Animated Picture Company to record the 1913 event. Though fearful of its not being popular, Jameson complied. Captured on film were the thousand-plus pilgrims, with Pádraig Pearse giving the oration. Shown initially in the Round Room of the Mansion House and in the Town Hall, Rathmines, it would then have been shown in Jameson's cinemas, on the Curragh and in Cobh, Galway and Tralee, as well as on Jameson's touring shows. It was an unqualified success, and Thomas Clarke reported ‘no picture Jameson had ever shown had received such tremendous applause'. The following year, 1914, that success was repeated. Filmed this time were The O'Rahilly, Seán Mac Diarmada, P. H. Pearse, Éamonn Ceannt and Countess Markievicz marching with Na Fianna and also James Larkin with the Irish Citizen Army.
The Freeman's Journal
had this to say of it:

The picture was received with possibly the greatest applause yet extended to any film previously shown in this house and especially the portion containing the march of the Irish Volunteers to the graveside. Much enthusiasm was expressed at the announcement that the Irish Ladies String Orchestra under the able direction of Miss May Murphy would play
The Volunteers' March.

In fact, Nellie's worthy search for a 1915 film of the Bodenstown Commemoration was futile, because there was no repetition of the event in that year.
[3]
The Volunteers' split had ensured that and, on the day, resulted in Redmond addressing a meeting at the Parnell monument in O'Connell Street on the advisability of joining the British army and, further up O'Connell Street, at its junction with Abbey Street, Pearse urging the rejection of such recruitment. Meanwhile, in the Phoenix Park, the anti-Redmondites were training in manoeuvres.

Nellie contacted several people who might have known something of a 1915 film's whereabouts, including Maurice Gorham of Radio Éireann, Gearóid Ó Lochlainn, Vice-Chairman of Equity, Nancy Wyse-Power, Donagh MacDonagh and Owen Sheehy Skeffington. Nellie's efforts were indeed futile, but they show her commitment and her usual thoroughness.

In June 1966, she wrote to Ida Grehan regarding, amongst other things, the desirability of including in a tourist guide a note on No. 2 Dawson Street, headquarters of the Irish Volunteers and, incidentally, of her very useful Bureau of Employment, ‘The Burra'. She also urged that a note on the bust of James Clarence Mangan by her great-uncle, Sir Frederick, be included.

Nellie's newspaper clippings tell the tale: there were no knitting patterns, no recipes. Most of them reflect the nationalism which she alleged to Gabriel had lost much of its interest.
[4]
This very alert lady seems not to have been assessed accurately as a person who did not benefit from schooling after the age of fifteen. Perhaps her own explanation was right: she was a ‘book under the desk' student with an educational independence learned at the Miss Fitts
'
‘academy'. Neither does all this reflect her alleged loss of interest in things patriotic. She might better have explained to Gabriel, perhaps, that while Grace and Kate were imprisoned during the Civil War, she, on her return to Ireland in 1920, had been absorbed in marital problems and in the care of her daughter. As well as that, her friends, unlike many of those of her Catholic sisters, might have met her in the church and been less likely to have had republican political thinking. She most certainly was less involved politically than her sisters in Ireland but still commemorated the movement in her drive for a museum.

So, in her later years, Nellie kept house, did the garden, cooked, decorated rooms, read avidly, watched documentaries on TV, corresponded happily and at length, looked after household pets, prepared scripts for radio and engaged in freelance journalism. As well as all that, during the 1966 commemoration of the Rising, when she received her well-earned gold medal, she met many interesting personalities from abroad.

Her agile mind was a veritable factory for ideas: in 1949, one of her inventions, the ‘toy book cover', won a bronze medal at the Third Exhibition of Irish Inventions, Ideas, Handicrafts and Designs, her exhibit being featured at the Mansion House Exhibition of that year. Nellie contacted Fine Art Plastics in Middle Abbey Street and had them fashion clear plastic cylinders to fit the spines of children's storybooks. A suitable toy teddy bear, a ‘Cinderella' or ‘Little Red Riding Hood' could be inserted into the cylinder, adding enormously to the young reader's enjoyment. Unfortunately, the idea was not economically viable – the 1940s and 1950s were not exactly a boom time financially, so Nellie had to be content with the honour awarded.

Her radio contributions under the heading ‘Suggestions' included a feature on swimming, which embodied a programme for safety, including rafts at swimming places, lifebelts, a rowing boat (preferably with an engine) and the organisation of a life-saving Congress to include the Royal Lifeboat Institute, St John's Ambulance, rowing and yachting clubs, swimming clubs and athletic clubs. Other ideas included more leg room in cinemas and a cloakroom for wet coats after patrons had queued in the rain; a law against despoiling the countryside and its wild flowers; an ingenious birds' nesting place and a suggestion that visitors to Ireland be invited to ‘plant a tree'; school libraries stocking films to record Irish events; rubbish providing steam power or being recycled, thus providing jobs; kerbless frontage on paths to allow for transit of wheelchairs and prams. Nellie was ahead of her time – her ideas were all comprehensive and excellent. One sees two ghosts, perhaps, hovering behind her idea for life-saving: ‘the swimmin' woman' of the Gifford childhood holidays at Greystones and the tragic drowning of Muriel in 1917.

Nellie's stories show most of their subject matter to have derived from her Meath sojourn; there is the whiff of the turf fire, the sound of the melodeon, the hand-to-mouth economy demanding that a little girl be ‘sold' into service in ‘the big house'. There is also the tragedy of emigration, the
fleadh
, the empty pot, and Irish dancing. She even contrived a kitchen ballet.

Inevitably, however, the machine wore down a little, and her final months had to be spent in a retirement home. The picture taken there shows a woman of contentment. She left this life, to which she had given so much, on 24 June 1971. The records of the cemetery where Nellie lies at rest with her daughter Maeve, at Balgriffin, Malahide, show Maeve's religion as Presbyterian. Nellie, irritated by Catholic pieties as she was, is recorded as ‘RC', a sobering indication that what one finds in the records is not always true.

Now ‘John' was the only living graduate of Bridget Hamill's nursery. Appropriately, the youngest was the last to die. She had always been somewhat apart: the only girl with a brown head of hair among all the golden redheads. She was always rather isolated, being the baby of the family, and she was the first to take an active part in republicanism, using her pen.

‘John' ploughed her own furrow, even in America, and John Devoy's contemptuous dismissal of republican women, not unlike the viewpoint expressed later by Kevin O'Higgins, left her unfazed as she made her own way in republican circles. She left a little gem of a book, covering her Victorian childhood, her American sojourn and the troubled times. It is episodic and not, therefore, by its very nature, a comprehensive study, but it offers illuminating insights into events, family and friends. The debt for rescuing this material is owed to Gifford and Craven who published it under the title
The Years Flew By
shortly after ‘John' died. In 2000
Arlen House republished an enlarged edition with a comprehensive essay on the six Gifford sisters written by Alan Hayes. In the book ‘John' has captured pithily ‘the troubled times'.

Apart from being the youngest and the only brown-haired member of the family, it became obvious from the reactions of those who met her that ‘John' was the most volatile of the sisters, Ada perhaps excepted. Though she had her father's sense of fun, coupled with a gift of mimicry, her reactions to others varied between charming approval and somewhat contemptuous dismissiveness. A letter she wrote to a friend, still extant, could be termed gushing, yet her niece Maeve did not speak much of her and indeed seemed to treat her rather distantly, confessing that she and ‘John's' son, Finian, opted out of conversations between their mothers, because the talk was almost invariably political. Kate had considered sharing accommodation with her youngest sister, but it was felt that ‘John's' artistic friends and irregular hours would not make them suitable housemates.