He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart

Yet I number him in the song.

A terrible beauty is born.

WHEN the poet W.B. Yeats sent his poem Easter 1916 Maud Gonne MacBride ew months after the Rising, she quickly informed him that she did not like the poem and that it was not worthy of him or its subject. She had earlier told Yeats that "Major MacBride, by his death, had left a name for Sean to be proud of. Those who die for Ireland are sacred."

Yet, for successive biographers of Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats, this same poem appears to be the starting point in their continuing demonisation of MacBride. Roy Foster, in his recent biography of Yeats, is but the latest writer to uncritically accept Yeats as an authority on John MacBride. Unfortunately Maud Gonne had earlier provided Yeats with her own black version of her husband's alleged misdeeds.

Major John MacBride of Westport, Co Mayo, became a national hero due to his organisation and co leadership of an Irish brigade which fought against the British during the Boer War in 1900. Afterwards, unable to return in safety to Ireland, he decided to become an emigre in Paris. There he was introduced to Maud Gonne by his good friend Arthur Griffith.

Over a period of three years, MacBride succeeded where many others had failed in wooing and marrying the English beauty. This marriage was attractive to Maud, because she was intent on establishing a career in Irish nationalism and the MacBride name would facilitate that. She also dearly wished to see the reincarnation of her dead infant son. All the friends and relations of the couple advised against the marriage. They claimed that it was doomed from the start, due to the vast differences between the pair.

The chief objector to the marriage was the poet W.B. Yeats. He had invested many years of his life as well as much poetical output, in a public pursuit of Maud. To add injury to insult, she was to convert to Catholicism, a religion of the masses, much despised by Yeats.

Within one year of marrying, Maud had her baby boy (the future Sean MacBride) and she had decided that her husband was to be removed from their lives. She had also become reconciled with W.B. Yeats.

Efforts to arrive at an agreed separation between Maud Gonne and John MacBride foundered on access to their baby and plans for his future life. A bitterly contested divorce case ensued in the French courts which lasted for up to two years.

Each party mustered support from France, England, America and Ireland. James Joyce, writing from Trieste, ridiculed the pair, dubbing them Joan of Arc and Pius the Tenth. An American friend of Maud's, John Quinn, hired private detectives to investigate MacBride's time spent in America. W.B. Yeats got his English theatrical sponsor, Miss Horniman, to travel to Westport to trawl for derogatory information at the MacBride family home.

Maud asked Yeats to approach the poet, Tom Kettle, to seek information on MacBride about his time spent in Dublin.

Most of nationalist Ireland remained supportive to MacBride, though desperately embarrassed by the affair. But Maud's own group, Daughters of Erin, remained faithful to her.

W.B. Yeats wanted to travel to Paris to support Maud but she warned against this. She told him that MacBride was insanely jealous of her male friends and had once threatened to kill Willie. She added that her husband had earlier removed all of Yeats's books from her house. But Maud was dependent on Yeats to a great extent all during the period, writing to him on a regular basis.

As the legal case gathered its own momentum, charges and counter charges were levelled by both sides. Maud accused John of drunkenness as well as serious sexual improprieties against female members of her house hold. He countered with allegations of drug addiction, being an English spy and the mother of an illegitimate child.

Both parties called their own witnesses. One notable witness was Eileen Wilson, a half sister of Maud and then married to a brother of John MacBride in Westport. She travelled to Paris to refute a charge that John MacBride had committed adultery with her. One potential witness, who did not take the stand at her mother's decision, was Maud's daughter, Iseult Gonne. It had been alleged that John had indecently assaulted her.

During all this episode, Maud was detailing her side of the story in letters to W.B. Yeats. He was, naturally enough, susceptible to accept all these shocking accusations, in support of the muse. These letters are all extant and have been used by several writers who wrote about both Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats. They were published in a volume in 1992 under the title The Gonne - Yeats Letters. Unfortunately almost all those who have written about Maud and Yeats appear to have accepted the contents of these letters concerning John MacBride as factual. They have neglected to advert to the fact that the charges about sexual improprieties were not upheld by the French court. MacBride left that court retaining the contested rights to his son along with his wife. No divorce was granted. As far as the French court was concerned the only accusation upheld against MacBride was that of drunkenness. Otherwise he was an innocent man.

But successive biographers armed with Yeats's poem, Easter 1916, and Maud Gonne's letters to Yeats have, to their shame, besmirched the good, name of John MacBride and that of Eileen Wilson MacBride.