About Me
I was born on Dec. 20, 1865, in Aldershot, England, although Irish by extraction. My father was a wealthy British army colonel of Irish descent while my mother was English. Mother died in 1871, when I was ten. My father hired a governess to tutor me while in France. In 1882 my father was posted to Ireland, so I accompanied him to my native land. Father died in 1886, and thanks to wise investments he left me with the financial means to continue my interests in a free Irish state. Over the years I became involved in many nationalist causes, first and foremost being that of Irish independence. After becoming ill with a tumor, I relocated to France where I met the French journalist Lucien Millevoye, editor of "La Patrie." It was then that I began to work for both Irish and French nationalist causes.
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
-William Butler Yeats
I was introduced to Fenianism by my friend John O'Leary, a Fenian and veteran of the 1848 Young Irelander uprising. Irish politician Tim Harrington of the Irish National League befriended me and began to recruit my services as an agent of change, in hopes of my being an asset to the nationalist movement. I traveled to Donegal, where mass evictions of tenants were taking place. I began to organise protests of these activities, and fast became instrumental in a new social justice movement. You might say that I became an agent provacateur. I must have accomplished something as I was soon to be forced into exile in France to avoid arrest by the British government.
In 1889 O'Leary introduced me to a man who became my spiritual mate for all time, although I could not abide his cautious ways here on Earth when in service to the great cause of liberation of our country. Willie, my dear friend, became one of the most famous poets of all time, and was by far a beautiful, mystical man of great heart and soul. William Butler Yeats and I would spend our lives working together for our ideals, although he was positively exhaustive in his efforts to bed me. While I was not opposed to this in the strictest sense, I did feel that ours was a marriage of a much higher order than groveling about like animals. His infatuation with me, and my love for him, would last all of his life: I certainly maintained him in my heart and mind while I was alive, and now, in this veil of other, I rest with his spirit for eternity.
Dear Willie proposed to me on numerous occasions, and I declined each time. Ours was not a marriage of Earth, and later I was to meet and marry Captain John MacBride. As Yeats feared, and made known to me in countless remonstrations which wore me to a frazzle and nearly causing a final rift in our friendship, MacBride was a lout and a drunkard. What I needed, and what Ireland needed, was a hero. A leader. MacBride was that, and led a revolt in 1916 which cost him his life, as he was executed for his part in the Easter Uprising.
It was then that Yeats and I began our alliance of body, mind and soul to free Ireland from the yoke of the oppressive British lords. Willie became involved with me in Irish nationalism, picking up where MacBride fell, but more a warrior of words than with arms. This was perfectly wonderful, as a man of words will lay waste a thousand armies, while a man with martial forces will but win battles, and possibly lose the war. Or, as in John's case, his life.
It is written, presumably by my dear Willie, that all of his Earthly troubles began when he met me. I have to smile at that, for indeed our Earthly dalliances did cause great and severe rebuke, both of men and at times I think the immortals, but what life we led, and what more joy and sorrow could one ask for out of this life?
But for all the words wasted in ink on my loves and I, would add this postcript:
I was a fervent Irish patriot. I was a rebel, a revolutionary who was not afraid to use my voice in defiance of the Lion which stalked our moors. I began to speak at home and abroad; I founded the Irish League and helped organise many fine Irish brigades that fought against the occupying British forces in the South African Boer War. But in all my stealth and wisdom, I was never to understand the quiet reluctance of Yeats to support my efforts, as he often thwarted my intentions in misguided efforts to shield me from harm. I would gladly have given my life for the cause, and in effect I did just that. I made a promise to myself that my life would be sacrificed to the greater good of a free and unified Ireland. It is to my sorrow, that in this modern day, we have yet to see that Free State shorn of its British mane, and that we are still wrapped up tight in the butcher's apron.
I was called a spy, a traitor, a harlot and a charlatan. A liar and a thief. I wear these sobriquets proudly as my medals and ribbons on display for all to see.
But as I reminesce now, I remember, above all other things, that day when Willie and I were but 23 and met for the first time in France. His words to me are locked in some great eternal step, imbibed in the motion of our orbits about each other, and on the day he died, I wept, and part of me died as well.
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