A Short History of Ireland's Rebels by Morgan Llywelyn

Author:Morgan Llywelyn [Morgan Llywelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847178282
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Constance, Countess Markievicz (1868–1927)

‘The Rebel Countess’

Constance Georgina Gore-Booth was born at Buckingham Gate, London. Her family were members of the Ascendancy, the landed Protestant class in Ireland. Among other properties, they owned Lissadell, an extensive estate in Sligo. Constance and her younger sister Eva Gore-Booth grew up in an atmosphere of wealth and privilege. William Butler Yeats was a frequent guest at their Sligo home, where he was inspired by the beauty of the two sisters to write one of his best-loved poems, ‘Lissadell’. As a girl, Constance fell in love with the vision of Gaelic Ireland which Yeats’s poetry evoked.

When she was of age, Constance was duly presented at court. Considered one of the beauties of her season, she could be expected to continue to lead the pampered life of a young woman of her class, revolving around dressmakers and travel, society soirées in London and Dublin, long weekends at country houses enlivened by shooting parties and hunt balls, and eventually a brilliant marriage. Her husband would be wealthy, preferably titled – and unquestionably Protestant. With all the conventions satisfied, Constance would then retire into dignified matronhood and raise another family of aristocrats.

Instead she went off on her own to London and Paris to study art. A photograph taken during that time shows her smoking a cigarette and wearing knickerbockers that revealed her lower legs. This was only a foretaste of things to come.

When she was 30 and a confirmed spinster living in Paris, Constance fell in love with Count Casimir Markievicz. He was not wealthy, being a second son, and his title was one of courtesy only. Worse yet, from the Ascendancy point of view, he was a Roman Catholic. ‘Casi’ was also six years younger than Constance and married, with two sons, though he was estranged from his wife. In 1899 Casi’s wife died and Constance married him the next year.

Their only child, a daughter they named Maeve Alys, was born in 1901 at Lissadell. But Constance was neither wifely nor maternal by nature. Con, as her friends called her, showed a tendency to go her own way. Her husband referred to her as ‘my loose cannon’. She had many enthusiasms and felt passionately about equality and women’s suffrage. Invited to a meeting to discuss the establishment of a journal for women, she came straight from a dinner at Dublin Castle, still attired in her ball gown, and promptly offered to sell her jewellery to finance the project.

The women’s movement in Ireland was not only supportive of suffrage, but nationalistic. Con joined the Sinn Féin party and further dismayed Ascendancy friends by becoming active in Inghínidhe na hÉireann and a regular contributor to the journal, Bean na hÉireann. Her Irish nationalism was becoming ever more apparent. In 1909 she helped to found Na Fianna Éireann, an organisation inspired by the boy scout movement in England. Con’s Fianna were considerably more militant, however. A veteran of Big House shooting parties, Con taught them to shoot with a deadly accuracy they would put to good use later.

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