Maud Gonne

I'd like to write a short blog about Maud Gonne, mostly because she was a great love of Yeats. SHe was born to English parents near Aldershot, and her father was a British officer. He was stationed in Ireland later on, and Maud grew to love the country. She claimed to be partly Irish but this was not true. She went with her father to various postings in Europe, after her mother's death. In 1882 Thomas, her father was posted to Dublin and she lived with him there til his death in 1886. A few years later, she met Lucien Millevoye, a French patriot. She became an ardent supporter of the nationalist cause in Ireland, which was unusual for Anglo Irish or English people. She was rich and independent, and she had an affair with Millevoye, and had a son by him, Georges. Georges died at a year old and Maud had become interested in spiritualism and the Order of the Golden Dawn, like WB Yeats. She conceived another child by Millevoye, a daughter Iseult, and hoped that it would be a reincarnation of her dead son. In the 1890s, she became more and more active in the nationalist movement, and organised a protest against Queen Victoria paying a visit to Ireland. She also became a Catholic. Yeats asked her to marry him but she refused. She felt he was not nearly radical or nationalist enough for her and she wanted him to become a Catholic. In 1903, she did get married, to John McBride, who had been exiled because he fought against the British in the Boer war. He was a rather boorish man and she soon felt she had made a big mistake. He expected his wife to be a stay at home dutiful woman, not an activist who disagreed with him. She had a son, Sean... but within a year, the marriage was over. She and McBride separated and she tried to get a divorce and custody of her son. Yeats alleged that McBride had molested Maud's daughter, Iseult and that there had been drunken marital violence, but its not clear if this is true. But the couple lived apart. M/F