Maud Gonne MacBride (; born Edith Maud Gonne; 21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. She claimed Anglo-Irish descent, but had been born in England to English parents. Gonne actively agitated for Home Rule and then for the republic declared in 1916. During the 1930s, as a founding member of the Social Credit Party, she promoted the distributive programme of C. H. Douglas. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, she expressed support for Germany. Gonne was well known for being the muse and long-time love interest of Irish poet W. B. Yeats.
Early life Gonne was born in England at Tongham near Aldershot, Hampshire, in 1866, the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne of the 17th Lancers and Edith Frith Gonne (née Cook), both from established English families. Despite this, she sought to claim an Irish lineage, writing in her autobiography A Servant of the Queen that she was "the daughter of an Irish father and an English mother" and suggesting that her family came from County Mayo before being disinherited and turning to the wine trade. No evidence supports this assertion and biographers have confirmed her ancestry was English for generations.
In 1868, amidst high tension in Ireland following the 1867 Fenian Rising, Captain Thomas Gonne was appointed brigade major of the cavalry in Ireland and stationed at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare. That year, Maud's sister Kathleen was born and the family lived at Airfield near Donnybrook, Dublin, where Maud befriended Ida Jameson of the distilling family. Edith Gonne, suffering from tuberculosis, gave birth in London to another daughter, Margaretta, in 1871; both mother and child died soon after. Tuberculosis continued to affect Maud and Kathleen throughout their lives. The family moved between the Curragh and Howth for health reasons, and Howth became a place of lasting personal importance to Gonne.
After Edith's death, Maud and Kathleen lived with relatives in London before joining their grandfather, Francis Cook, 1st Viscount of Monserrate, at Doughty House, Richmond, which housed an extensive and important art collection (he was extremely rich through the family's clothing and textile business). In 1876, Major Gonne became military attaché to the Austrian court, taking the family to the south of France, where Maud grew fluent in French. Following a posting in India, Thomas travelled through Europe with Maud until 1882, when he returned to Dublin as assistant adjutant-general. Maud later recalled attending public events at Dublin Castle, including witnessing the state entry of the new lord lieutenant on 6 May 1882, the day of the Phoenix Park murders, and participating in the Castle season of 1886, which featured a St Patrick's night ball attended by the future King George V.
Early career Dublin, London and Paris In 1882, her father was posted to Dublin. She accompanied him and remained with him until his death in 1886.
In 1889, she first met W. B. Yeats, who fell in love with her. Gonne was attracted to the occultist and spiritualist worlds deeply important to Yeats, asking his friends about the reality of reincarnation. In 1891 she briefly joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occultist organisation with which Yeats had involved himself.Lewis, p. 140
In 1890, in France she met French politician and journalist Lucien Millevoye. They had a son, Georges, but the child died within the year, possibly of meningitis. Gonne was distraught and buried him in a large memorial chapel. (Her distress remained with her; in her will she asked for Georges' baby shoes to be interred with her.) After the child's death, she separated from Millevoye, but in late 1893 arranged to meet him at the mausoleum in Samois-sur-Seine and, according to Yeats, next to their child's sarcophagus, supposedly had sexual intercourse. Her alleged purpose was to conceive a baby with the same father, to whom the soul of Georges would transmigrate in metempsychosis. Gonne's daughter by Millevoye, Iseult Gonne, was born in August 1894.
Inghinidhe na hÉireann During the 1890s, Gonne travelled extensively throughout England, Wales, Scotland and the United States campaigning for the nationalist cause, forming an organisation called the "Irish League" () in 1896.
In 1900, Gonne helped found (Daughters of Ireland). Twenty-nine women attended the first meeting. They decided to "combat in every way English influence doing so much injury to the artistic taste and refinement of the Irish people"..
Sinn Féin In her autobiography Gonne wrote "I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy".
A second organisation, the National Council, was formed in 1903 by Gonne and others, including Arthur Griffith, on the occasion of the visit of King Edward VII to Dublin. Its purpose was to lobby Dublin Corporation to refrain from presenting an address to the king. The motion to present an address was duly defeated, but the National Council remained in existence as a pressure group with the aim of increasing nationalist representation on local councils.Davis, Richard P. (1974). Arthur Griffith and non-violent Sinn Féin. Dublin: Anvil Books. p. 21.
The first annual convention of the National Council on 28 November 1905 was notable for two things: the decision, by a majority vote (with Griffith dissenting), to open branches and organise on a national basis; and the presentation by Griffith of his 'Hungarian' policy, which was now called the policy.Davis (1974), pp. 23–4 This meeting is usually taken as the date of the foundation of the party.
Acting
In 1897, along with Yeats and Griffith, she organised protests against Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. In April 1902, she took a leading role in Yeats' play . She portrayed Cathleen, the "old woman of Ireland", who mourns for her four provinces which had been "lost" to the British. She was already spending much of her time in Paris.McCoole, "No Ordinary Women", p. 24.
In the same year, she joined the Roman Catholic Church. She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats, not only because he was unwilling to convert to Catholicism and because she viewed him as insufficiently radical in his nationalism, but also because she believed his unrequited love for her had been a boon for his poetry and that the world should thank her for never having accepted his proposals. When Yeats told her he was not happy without her, she replied,
Marriage to John MacBride
In the winter of 1900, Maud Gonne met Major John MacBride at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, where he arrived from the Transvaal to begin his exile after fighting with the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War. Both were active in Irish nationalist circles in the French capital, and their shared political commitments soon brought them closer. They toured the United States together in 1901 and again in 1902, speaking at nationalist gatherings and raising support for the Irish cause.
In Paris in February 1903, after having turned down at least four marriage proposals from W. B. Yeats between 1891 and 1901, Gonne married MacBride. Yeats pleaded with her not to go through with the marriage, as did Arthur Griffith, who was close to both of them, but Gonne was undeterred. Despite opposition from her own family and from the MacBrides, she converted to Catholicism on 17 February and married MacBride four days later in Paris. Almost immediately, she began to feel she had made a mistake. Later writings by MacBride suggest that he found her bohemian independence incompatible with his expectations of a wife and that he hoped she would renounce significant parts of her past. The growing distance between them soon became evident in Gonne's extended visits to Ireland, where MacBride, still under threat of arrest for his role in the Boer War, could not safely follow. The following year their only child, Seán MacBride, was born.
The marriage quickly broke down. By late 1904 Gonne and MacBride were living apart, and on 28 February 1905 she initiated legal proceedings in Paris seeking a divorce and full custody of their son. The French court did not grant a divorce. The only allegation upheld against MacBride was one instance of drunkenness. He was awarded visitation rights twice weekly, while custody of Seán was given to Gonne.
In the aftermath of the case, Gonne accused MacBride of domestic violence and Yeats later alleged that MacBride had sexually molested Iseult, Gonne's daughter from her previous relationship with Millevoye. Yeats repeated the claim in private correspondence and it has been discussed by several of his biographers.Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 286. The charge was never substantiated in court, nor mentioned in Iseult's own writings, and its reliability has been debated by historians. Some scholars argue that Yeats may have exaggerated or fabricated the story, motivated by his personal animosity towards MacBride after Gonne chose to marry him. Others note that Francis Stuart, Iseult's later husband, claimed she told him the allegation was true. Gonne herself raised the matter privately with MacBride's brother Anthony, but it was excluded from her court filings; the MacBride family subsequently introduced it in court to defend John's reputation.
The case became widely publicised, with MacBride's subsequent libel action against the Irish Independent keeping the scandal in the public eye. The controversy severely damaged Gonne's standing in nationalist circles, where she had previously been a prominent figure, and left her largely sidelined from advanced politics until 1916. Following the separation, MacBride returned to Ireland and had little further contact with his son, who was raised by Gonne in Paris. He later became involved with Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers. Arrested for his part in the Easter Rising, MacBride was court-martialled and executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol on 5 May 1916, alongside James Connolly and other leaders of the rebellion.
Gonne's reaction to his death was ambivalent but public. Though their marriage had ended bitterly, she prayed for him and paid tribute to his sacrifice, later appearing in public mourning. In correspondence with Yeats, she described his execution as an expiatory act. MacBride's death also allowed her to settle permanently in Ireland without fear of legal claims over custody of her son.
In 1916, Yeats, in his fifties, proposed first to Maud Gonne, who turned him down, and then to the 23-year-old Iseult, who did not accept either. He had known her since she was four and often referred to her as his darling child, taking a paternal interest in her writings (many Dubliners wrongly suspected that Yeats was her father). Iseult considered the proposal, but finally turned him down, because he was not really in love with her and it would upset her mother too much.
Irish republican activism
Known as the "Irish Joan of Arc", Gonne became known for her Irish republican views on a variety of contemporary social issues in Ireland. During the era, she supported Irish Catholic tenant farmers in their struggles against the Protestant Ascendancy and the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Land War. Gonne chaired several meetings of international groups to build sympathy for her causes among the American, British and French publics. During the Second Boer War, Gonne, along with a small group of republicans, supported the Boer republics by giving speeches and publishing newspaper articles advocating against Irish involvement in the war. Gonne became known for her eloquence in her political speeches and they were credited for animating the founding of new Irish nationalist organisations.