`IF any man would help me, he must give me himself, give me all." The actress who spoke these memorable lines from Yeats's play, Caitlin Ni Houlihan, has been synonymous with art and artists, romance and revolution. However, a retired south Mayo businessman believes the more private side of Maud Gonne MacBride's character has been overlooked - her deep faith and her commitment to religion.
John Waldron, a native of Claremorris, is no relative of Madame MacBride, as she was known in Inione ine na hEireann, even though her family had Mayo connections. Nor had he any great interest in her life before he acquired an item which is said to have belonged to her. Made of solid glass, the veiled translucent female head with a halo was probably mass-produced and purchased as a religious artefact.
The simple object has a complex story attached to it, both in terms of its former owner and the circumstances under which the present owner came across it. A former executive with Pye, Mr Waldron made some of the first television sets in Ireland and lived in England with his wife and family for several years. He returned to Claremorris and began his own business, while also pursuing other interests, including a passion for motor cars.
At one point, a Humber of his required some "delicate attention". There was only one man in the locality who could service it - Paddy Mellett, who ran a garage in the Mall in Castlebar. While chatting to the garage owner in his office, Mr Waldron noticed the translucent "madonna" on display. Paddy told him his father been made a present of it by an angling friend, a Mayo surgeon and brother of Major John, Dr Anthony MacBride.
Mr Waldron thought no more of it until he had some further dealings with Mr Mellett. "I had bought a second-hand station wagon from Paddy, and it looked great," he recalls, speaking in the front room of his house in Claremorris. "Unfortunately, it developed an electrical fault, and the very next day it caught fire and was burned to a crisp. Luckily, no one was in it at the time."
"Paddy was terribly upset - I think he was more devastated than me," Mr Waldron said. "Rather than put him under financial pressure, I accepted his offer of the head which I had admired. I took it and I've had it ever since."
The new owner decided to conduct some research. He discovered that Maud Gonne MacBride had made at least one pilgrimage to Lourdes. In the summer before the outbreak of the first World War, she certainly made one detour there while seeking relief for her rheumatism at a spa in the Pyrenees. Both she and her friend and fellow member of Inione ine na hEireann, Helena Moloney, had been inspired by a Eucharistic Congress, according to one of her biographers, Nancy Cardozo.
Mr Waldron believes she bought the head as a souvenir, and at some point she gave it to her brother-in-law, Dr MacBride, who in turn passed it on to his angling friend, Mr Jack Mellett. Dr MacBride lived and worked in Mayo; he was appointed surgeon to Castlebar hospital in 1907, four years after his brother, Major John, married Maud Gonne.
"It could have been one of many gifts from her, designed to create the right impression, because I think she would have been particularly anxious to have good relations with her in-laws," Mr Waldron speculates. Though fiercely independent, Maud Gonne had good reason to make that extra effort. In her autobiography, A Servant of the Queen, she describes reading a letter sent to her future husband from her prospective mother-in-law.
"I have seen Maud Gonne. She is very beautiful; she is a great woman and has done much for Ireland but she will not make you happy," old Mrs MacBride wrote to her son. "You will neither be happy, she is not the wife for you. I am very anxious. Think well what you are doing."
As we know, the predictions came true, as did the warnings from others, including Arthur Griffith - who had introduced the couple in the first place. After the birth of their son, Sean, they separated, and Maud Gonne lived in Paris for a time as she feared losing custody of her child.
When she returned to Ireland in 1917, the country was in turmoil in the wake of the Easter rising of the year before and the execution of its leaders, including her estranged spouse. By 1918 she was in jail in Holloway, along with Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Kathleen Clarke, Countess Markievicz and others for participating in the anti-conscription movement; and the rest of her life, including her support of the republican cause, is familiar history.
John Waldron has become very attached to the little artefact she once carried back in her bag from France, and he has deposited it in his local bank for safekeeping. He has had it valued, and he says that a west of Ireland jeweller has expressed an interest in putting it on display.
He is still undecided as to its future. Without giving too much away - including his precious madonna - he would be very interested to hear suggestions. Responses will be forwarded to him c/o this column.