The Rebel Countess of Ireland Constance Marcievicz
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The Canada Times … inspiring students to discover history The Rebel Countess of Ireland Constance Marcievicz March 2016 JEANIE JOHNSTON EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem The Rebel Countess of Ireland Constance Marcievicz Alan Hustak he was an Anglo-Irish blue blood, a Protestant with a Polish name – an unlikely heroine of the Irish Rebellion. Known to history as the “rebel countess,” Constance Georgine Marcievicz often described herself as “a rebel, unconverted and unconvertibleS pledged to the one thing – a free and independent Republic.” A century ago, she was sentenced to death by firing squad for her part in the 1916 Easter Uprising. At the time she was second in command of the Irish Citizen Army at St. Steven’s Green under Michael Mallin. When the uprising erupted, armed with a Mauser and an automatic rifle and with a cartridge belt slung around her waist, she was spoiling for a fight. Preparations for the rising were being made by the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Kerry. British detectives caught wind of it and according to one account warned the countess to stay away from Kerry. She was indignant. “What will happen to me if I refuse the order? Will you shoot me?” she asked. “Ah, madam, who would want to shoot you? You wouldn’t want to shoot one of us, would you?” “But I would! I’m quite prepared to shoot and be shot at.” True to her word, on Easter Monday 1916 she led her men through the gas-lit streets of Dublin and during the weeklong skirmish she is thought to have killed at least one British soldier. She was not prepared to surrender, and reluctantly followed orders to cease fire. She kissed her gun before she turned it over to the arresting officer, who in a typical twist of inbred Irish politics happened to be one of her cousins. Put on trial for treason, she refused to be cowed. “That what I did was right and I stand by it,” she declared. Both Mallin and the Countess were sentenced to death. Mallin was executed. But because the countess was a woman, her sentence was commuted. Outraged, she complained, “I do wish you had the decency to shoot me.” She spent a year in Aylesbury Prison in England where she became a Catholic convert. Released under the general amnesty The Countess Markievicz at home of 1917, she was welcomed home as a heroine by thousands who crowded Dublin’s streets in a torchlight parade. Soon after her release, she was charged with sedition and jailed again for her anti-conscription activities. While she was serving her sentence, her followers elected her to the House of Commons in Westminster, but she never took her seat because she refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the British monarch. Instead, she served as Minister of Labour in the first Dail, among the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position in government. A patriot to the end, she opposed the 1921 Treaty that gave Ireland Dominion Status within the British Empire. She died in 1927. Her path from aristocrat to professional agitator was unpredictable. Although her father the fifth Baronet Henry Gore-Booth of Lissadell was a notable Arctic explorer who owned an estate in County Sligo, she was born in London in 1868, the second of five children in a somewhat eccentric family. She grew up in an isolated, austere mansion overlooking Drumcliff Bay. Her father, Sir Henry, was rarely at home, and she was influenced by her headstrong mother, Lady Georgina, who established a school of needlework at Lissadell House for underprivileged women, and by her independent thinking younger sister, Eva, an outspoken pioneer of gender equality. She was immortalized by W.B. Yeats, who admired her “lonely Often forgotten in history: wildness,” and described her as a Gazelle. A member of Cumann na mBan “The year of the woman” … 2 … In 1897 Constance was presented at Court to Queen Victoria as “the new In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Irish Beauty,” but she was revolted by the lavish excess of the Queen’s Con Markievicz Jubilee and struck by the contrast between the rich in England and poor in The light of evening, Lissadell, Ireland. She began the fight for women’s suffrage, and in her words “for Great windows open to the south, the disposed people of the old Gaelic race, hidden away in their miserable Two girls in silk kimonos, both cabins among rocks on the bleak mountain sides, or soaking the slime and Beautiful, one a gazelle. the ooze of the bog lands, or beside the Atlantic shore where the grass is But a raving autumn shears blasted yellow by the salt west wind.” Blossom from the summer’s wreath; The older is condemned to death, She went to Paris to study art where she met and in 1900 married a Pardoned, drags out lonely years Conspiring among the ignorant. penniless Polish Count, Casmir Markievicz, who was widowed with a I know not what the younger dreams – son. Their daughter, Maeve was born the following year and they took up Some vague Utopia – and she seems, residence in Dublin in 1902. The publisher A.E. Russell predicted they When withered old and skeleton-gaunt, would be fixtures in the city’s social elite: “The Gore-Booth girl who An image of such politics. married the Polish Count with the un-spellable name… will help create Many a time I think to seek an art atmosphere,” he wrote. The artsy couple moved into a Georgian One or the other out and speak mansion, but they appear to have led separate lives. Of that old Georgian mansion, mix Pictures of the mind, recall The count started his own theatre troupe, The Independent Dramatic That table and the talk of youth, Company. The countess appeared on stage in a few of his productions, but Two girls in silk kimonos, both Beautiful, one a gazelle. the real drama was played out behind the scenes. After she met Padraig Pearse, the poet, and militant Irish nationalist and revolutionary playwright Dear shadows, now you know it all, Thomas Mc Donagh, she became consumed with the fight for Irish All the folly of a fight independence. During a retreat in the countryside, she discovered some With a common wrong or right. Irish revolutionary literature left behind in a cabin by a former tenant, the The innocent and the beautiful poet Padraic Colum. She returned and declared herself a rebel dedicated Have no enemy but time; to Ireland’s freedom. Joining Sinn Féin in 1908, she worked with union Arise and bid me strike a match leader “Big Jim” Larkin and James Connolly in The Lockout of 1913, the And strike another till time catch; labour strike that led to the creation of the Irish Citizen Army. She also Should the conflagration climb, established Fianna Eireann, the national boy scout movement that would Run till all the sages know. We the great gazebo built, later play a crucial part in the Irish rebellion. In 1911, she was arrested for They convicted us of guilt; taking part in a demonstration against King George V. Bid me strike a match and blow. It was, however, her relationship with James Connolly, the scrappy and William Butler Yeats brilliant socialist from the slums that proved the most significant of her life. He was her mentor and “Madame,” as she was now known, was his protector. When World War I broke out in 1914, both were active in the Irish Neutrality League – not only were Irishmen volunteering to fight for the Empire that had enslaved them but there was danger that the British government would, at any time, impose conscription. It also meant that the long-delayed Home Rule for Ireland bill would be put on hold once again. During a rally at Liberty Hall Dublin, Connolly denounced the war as the work of “a small clique of rulers and armament workers.” He took one side of a tremendous banner, “We Serve Neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland,” the Countess took the other – they unfurled it and a photograph was taken that went around the world. Her husband left Ireland to become a war correspondent. Although he never returned, they continued to be friends and corresponded with each other until she died in a charity ward presumably from tuberculosis. She was 59. She left everything she owned to the poor of Dublin. More than 250,000 people – or more than half of Dublin’s population at the time, lined the streets for her funeral. She is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. A statue of the fearless countess was unveiled on Tara Street in Dublin in 1998. It depicts her in the uniform of the Irish Citizen Army with her feisty dog, Poppet, at her feet. … 3 … From Sergeant at Arms to Ambassador Alan Hustak evin Vickers, Canada’s Ambassador to Ireland, is not a professional Alan Hustak Photo: diplomat. As an appointee of the previous Conservative government, hisK position is subject to review. But in the 15 months since he has been in the job, Vickers has served the country well, and it is unlikely Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal government will replace him. The ambassador’s ancestors came to New Brunswick in 1852 from the Wicklow mountains and perhaps from Vicarstown in Co. Laois. Vickers was with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 29 years before he distinguished himself as Sergeant at Arms in the House of Commons two years ago when helped to bring down a terrorist who stormed Parliament Kevin Vickers, Hill after killing a soldier who was standing guard at the war memorial.