A capacity to go outside herself and extract interest from her surroundings was one of Elizabeth Mathew Dillon's endearing qualities as a diarist.
She wrote a diary throughout her short but important life. It is preserved in 39 volumes among the Dillon Papers in Trinity College Dublin. A grandniece of the temperance apostle, Fr Mathew, she became the wife of John Dillon, a leading advocate of the Irish cause at Westminster for nearly 40 years.
Elizabeth died 100 years ago today, aged 42, after the arrival of her seventh child, a still-born baby girl. The probable cause of death was pneumonia. The tragedy which befell the Dillon family was not a rare occurrence in those days. (This diarist's grandmother died giving birth to his mother, also 100 years ago.)
Elizabeth Mathew and John Dillon first met in Killiney, Co Dublin. Her father, Sir James Mathew, was a judge of the High Court in London and it was the family's custom to spend part of his long vacation in Ireland. In 1886 they rented Killiney Castle, not far from Dillon's second home. Sir James was an Irishman and sympathetic to Home Rule. Elizabeth was a passionate nationalist and, indeed, already an admirer of Dillon.
"He is the first person who has awed me," Elizabeth recorded after their meeting, and she never ceased to regard him as "altogether remarkable and quite unlike ordinary beings". Be that as it may, there was nothing of the lovelorn maiden about her. She was a highly educated woman in the Victorian mode, well read in a number of languages, used to continental travel, and a frequent attender in the ladies' gallery in the House of Commons. Her devout Catholicism expressed itself in frequent attendance at Mass and in wide-ranging charitable work. Thus, in her personal religion - her most striking characteristic - her interest in politics and her passion for literature and the arts, she had much in common with Dillon from the start.
But he had made up his mind early in his career that devotion to Ireland must be set above private happiness. It was long before their acquaintance showed the least sign of blossoming into friendship, let alone anything deeper. Moreover, during the winter of 1886-67 he was preoccupied with the Plan of Campaign. He spent the winter mainly in Britain trying to rally working-class support for the Irish experiment in agrarian collective bargaining.
While based in London, he saw more of the Mathew family. Elizabeth noticed that he looked "very tired and wan" and spoke "with desperate calmness of the certainty he felt of being arrested directly he goes back to Ireland". His presentiment was speedily fulfilled. The Munster News commented that, given the state of Dillon's health, the sentence of six months' imprisonment had horrified the public on both sides of the channel. Although he was well treated, there were periodic rumours that the family curse of consumption was about to claim him.
Elizabeth found the recently-published biography of John Mitchel by William Dillon (John's brother) fascinating: "Of course John Mitchel cannot be regarded as a practical politician, but undoubtedly he was a pure-souled patriot, driven to despair by the wrongs and hopeless miseries of the country, and most certainly his transportation and exile broke his heart. The rest of his life he knew no peace and was incapable of happiness.
"When I said something of this kind to Mr Dillon, he remarked: 'Happiness, we must remember, must always be within a man and need not depend on his surroundings. Mitchel found Van Diemen's Land unbearable, but I question whether I myself would not have spent a happier life had I been these five years in Van Diemen's Land rather than in all this struggle.'
"'But,' I said, 'where would the country have been without you?' 'Ah well,' he said with a touch of bitterness [ and referring to the papal rescript condemning the Plan of Campaign], 'according to the Pope apparently, the country would have been happier too'."
After Dundalk prison Dillon spent a year on an Australasian fund-raising mission. In the internecine years which followed the Parnell split, it required the courageous initiative of Elizabeth (and the encouragement of his cousin Anne Deane of Ballaghaderreen) to rescue Dillon from his solitary, fastidious and dedicated life.
On October 11th, 1895, she recorded in her diary: "This afternoon John Dillon told me that he cared for me. We hope to be married, please God, next month. I cannot write about what is so sacred, but joy, awe and thanksgiving overwhelm me. May I always render thanks to Almighty God for his supreme goodness to me, and may my happiness be always sanctified by his grace. . .And so it has come to me in my beloved Killiney, and just nine years - within a few days - of the first time I met him." Leyland Lyons wrote beautifully about their subsequent marriage in the chapter of his Dillon biography entitled "A short happy life".