Nationalism, Motherhood, and Activism:

The Life and Works of , 1881-1920

Melissa S. Bowen

A Thesis Submitted to the Department of History California State University Bakersfield In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History May 2015

Copyright

By

Melissa S. Bowen

2015

Acknowledgments

I am incredibly grateful for the encouragement and support of Cal State Bakersfield’s History

Department faculty, who as a group worked closely with me in preparing me for this fruitful endeavor. I am most grateful to my advisor, Cliona Murphy, whose positive enthusiasm, never- ending generosity, and infinite wisdom on Irish History made this project worthwhile and enjoyable. I would not have been able to put as much primary research into this project as I did without the generous scholarship awarded to me by Cal State Bakersfield’s GRASP office, which allowed me to travel to and study Beatrice Elvery’s work first hand. I am also grateful to and professionals who helped me with my research such as Dr. Stephanie

Rains, Dr. Nicola Gordon Bowe, and Rector John Tanner. Lastly, my research would not nearly have been as extensive if it were not for my hosts while in Ireland, Brian Murphy, Miriam

O’Brien, and Angela Lawlor, who all welcomed me into their homes, filled me with delicious

Irish food, and guided me throughout the country during my entire trip. List of Illustrations

Sheppard, Oliver. 1908. Roisin Dua. St. Stephen's Green, . 2 Orpen, R.C. 1908. 1909 Seal. The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, Dublin. 3 Kay, Dorothy. 1918. Child at Prayer. Private Collection, Cape Town. 6 Beatrice Elvery. 1900. Photograph of J.W. Elvery's. Irish National Museum, Dublin. 24 Beatrice Elvery. n.d. "Book Plate." National Library of Ireland. The . 32 Dublin. Orpen, William. 1909. Bridgit--A Picture of Miss Elvery. Private Collection, Dublin. 36 Beatrice Elvery. 1908. Queen VIctoria Memorial. House, Dublin. 37 Beatrice Elvery. 1903/4. The Mother. Private Collection, Dublin. 38 Beatrice Elvery. 1906. Mother and Baby. Private Collection, Dublin. 39 Beatrice Elvery. 1904. Glendalough. , Dublin. 40 Beatrice Elvery. 1907. The Good Samaritan and The Prodigal Son. Tullow Parish, Dublin. 42 Beatrice Elvery. 1909. The Bath. Private Collection, Dublin. 45 Gentileschi, Artemisia. 1609. Virgin and Child. Spada Gallery, Rome. 45 Beatrice Elvery. 1910. "The Virgin Ironing." Cuala Press. Dublin. 47 Beatrice Elvery. 1911. "The Nativity." National Library of Ireland. The Cuala Press. Dublin. 52 Beatrice Elvery. 1913. "Prayer for a Little Child." Private Collection. The Cuala Press. 56 Dublin. Beatrice Elvery. 1913. "The Faery Harper." Maunsel & Co. Heroes of the Dawn. Dublin. 57 Beatrice Elvery. 1914. "He Kissed them Both." 61 Beatrice Elvery. 1914. "Mother and Child Lying very Still." 62 Beatrice Elvery. 1907. Éire. Private Collection - Lady Davis Goff, Dublin. 74 Beatrice Elvery. 1907. "Color Illustration." Gaelic League. Íosagán Agus Sgéalta Eile. 75 Dublin. Beatrice Elvery. 1907. Íosagán (Watercolor). Museum, Dublin. 76 Elvery, Beatrice. 1910. An Íosagán. Patrick Pearse Museum, Dublin. 78 Unknown. 1916. Photograph of Constance de Markievicz. Dublin. 85 Beatrice Elvery. 1920. War Memorial. Tullow Parish, Dublin. 91 Lavery, Sir John. 1928. Lady Lavery. Central Bank of Ireland, Dublin. 106 Hughes, John. Since 1986. Queen Victoria Memorial. Queen Victoria Building, Sydney. 108 Table of Contents

Glossary…………………………………………………………………………………… i

Timeline…………………………………………………………………………………… xv

Introduction: An Artist, Her Nation, and a Revolution…………………………………… 1

Chapter 1: The Birth of an Artist (1881-1898)……………………………………………. 19

Chapter 2: An Artist Blooms (1898-1910)………………………………………………... 34

Chapter 3: An Irish Artist in London (1908-1918)……………………………………….. 50

Chapter 4: The Artist and the Schoolmaster (1902-1916)………………………………… 69

Conclusion: An Artist not quite Forgotten………………………………………………... 87

Afterword: The New Irish Woman: Beatrice Breaks the Rules…………………………... 93

Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………... 108

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………. 110

Beatrice Elvery: Glossary i

Notable Terms and Figures

1839 Tender Years Doctrine: Officially known as the Custody of Infants Act of 1839, reformist Caroline Norton influenced the doctrine. Her pamphlets argued children belonged with their mothers through an inherent right. The act stated that the court awards all children under seven be to the custody of their mother; the act also guaranteed visitation rights to the mother—unless the mother was deemed unfit by the courts, through adultery, insanity, or criminal behavior. 1884 Reform Act: Also, known as the Representation of the People Act, the act extended voting rights to a larger population of citizens than before. The law made all voting rights available in the towns to extend to rural areas. It also allowed non-landowners voting rights, which increased the overall British electorate to 5,500,000. Abbey Theatre: Irish: Amharclann na Mainistreach, also known as the National Theatre of Ireland or Amharclann Náisinta na hÉireann. The Abbey debuted its first performance December 27 1904. The original building burned down in 1951, but the theatre remains active today at its new location on 26 Lower Abbey Street in Dublin proper. The British government originally subsidized the theatre, but since1925, the has supported the Abbey. It was initially known for its association with the Gaelic Revival and the artists involved. An Tr Gloine: Irish for Tower of Glass, the studio founded by artist in1901, was a center for the that produced windows for various churches throughout Ireland. Eventually, the studio completed commissions for secular buildings, public exhibitions, and even organizations overseas. Active throughout the first half of the 20th century, the studio housed such artists as Michael Healy, , Beatrice Elvery, , , and founder Sarah Purser. Edward Martyn originally opened the studio to service the construction of the Roman Catholic cathedral in Loughrea, County Galway—St. Brendan’s. Co-founder Sarah Purser hoped the studio would become a hub for Irish artisans to supply an alternative to importing goods from England. Anglo-Irish Treaty: Irish: An Conradh Angla-Éireannach, signed December 6, 1921, between Great Britain and Ireland that concluded the Irish War of Independence. It created the establishment of the Irish Free State as a self-governing entity within the British Commonwealth. It also provided Northern Ireland the option to opt out, which it did and thus still remained a subject of Great Britain to this day. As required by its terms, the agreement was ratified by the members elected to Irish Parliament and British Parliament. Though the treaty was narrowly ratified, the split still led to the Irish Civil War, which was ultimately won by the pro-treaty side. Anti-Treatyites: Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, the IRA in the southern 26 counties split between supporters and opponents of the Treaty. The Anti-Treatyites sometimes referred to by as Irregulars spent several months laying siege on public buildings as well as storming private residences of those thought to be important members of the pro-treaty side. Archduke Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand (18 December 1863 – 28 June 1914), Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia. Beatrice Elvery: Glossary ii

His assassination in Sarajevo may have led to Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia, which in turn resulted in the declaration of war between Serbia and the Central Powers, starting World War I—although Ferdinand’s assassination being the actual cause of World War I is still a heavily debated topic among historians. Arts and Crafts Movement: An international movement in the decorative and fine arts that flourished between 1880 and 1910. It consisted of traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and it often used medieval, romantic, or folk styles of decoration. It often coincided with the social idea of local or nationalist commerce that encouraged domestic trade and placed focus on a handcrafted rather than factory-made product. Its influence existed until Modernism displaced it in the 1930s, but continued among craft makers, designers, and city planners who wished to appeal to a local pride. Ascendancy: originating from wealthy or powerful Protestant landowners, the group eventually came to include professional Protestant Anglo-Irish who garnered most of the power and control in Ireland up through the early 20th century. Balfour, Arthur: Arthur James Balfour (25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930) was a British politician who was the British Prime Minister from July 1902 to December 1905, and then Foreign Secretary. Entering Parliament in 1874, he was well known as Chief Secretary for Ireland, he attempted to quell rural unrest by standing up to absentee landlords. He opposed Irish Home Rule, arguing that it was not feasible to have a semi-independent Ireland and that Ireland was not self-sufficient enough to be completely independent. From 1891, he led the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, serving under his uncle, Lord Salisbury, whose government won large majorities in 1895 and 1900. Baroque: A period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion, intense shading, and detailed imagery to produce drama, realism, movement, and awe within the visual arts. The style began in 16th century Rome, but spread to most of Europe well into the 18th century. The style was heavily influenced by the Catholic Reformation and Council of Trent, which stipulated specific guidelines for acceptable forms of art within a Catholic society. Beckett, Samuel: Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is most known for his play Waiting for Godot. Bloody Sunday: Irish: Domhnach na Fola was a day of violence in Dublin on November 21 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. Thirty-one people died – fourteen British, fourteen Irish civilians and three Irish republican prisoners. The day started with an Irish Republican Army (IRA) operation organized by Michael Collins to execute a team of undercover agents working and living in Dublin. Although several days with this name exist before and after this date, November 21 1920 is the most known for this title. Bodenstown: Irish: Baile Uí Bhuadáin is a town on the outskirts of Sallins in County Kildare, Ireland. The cemetery, gravesite of 18th century revolutionary and leader of the Society Beatrice Elvery: Glossary iii of the United Irishmen, Theobald Wolfe Tone, has been a common site for celebratory memorials. Various members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood hold ceremonies every June, a tradition honored since the late nineteenth century. Brugha, Cathal: Charles William St. John Burgess (18 July 1874 – 7 July 1922) was an Irish revolutionary and politician, active in the , Irish War of Independence, and the Irish Civil War. He was the first Ceann Comhairle (chairman) of Dáil Éireann (Assembly of Ireland), and a casualty of the Irish Civil War. Campbell, Patrick: Campbell was son of Charles Gordon Campbell, second Baron Glenavy, and Beatrice Lady Glenavy. During the Second World War, he served as a Chief Petty Officer in the Irish Marine Service. After the war, he joined The Irish Times and took charge of the column “Irishman’s Diary”. He had a weekly column for the Irish edition of the Sunday Dispatch before working on the paper in London from 1947 to 1949. He was assistant editor of Lilliput from 1947 to 1953. His writings also appeared in The Sunday Times. Carco, Francis: (1886–1958) was a French author, poet, novelist, dramatist, and art critic. His memoir, The Last Bohemia: From Montmartre to the Latin Quarter depicts the Bohemian lifestyle in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is also known for his affair with Katherine Mansfield in 1915. Casement, Roger: Ruairí Dáithí Mac Easmainn (1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916) was an Irish diplomat, human rights activist, Irish nationalist and poet. Although he was knighted for his work in uncovering human rights abuses in Peru and awarded honors for his report on the Congo, his work during World War I with Germany to obtain arms for Easter Rising ultimately led to his assassination in 1916. Cathleen Ní Houlihan: a one-act play written by William Butler Yeats and in 1902. It was first performed on 2 April of that year and first published in the October issue of the literary journal Samhain. The play centers on the 1798 Rebellion, but reflects twentieth century opinions about the desire for Irish independence from Great Britain. The play suggests that young men sacrifice their lives for the hero Cathleen Ni Houlihan, who represents an independent and separate Irish state. Celtic : See . Celtic Revival : covers a variety of movements throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and art, as well as Hiberno-Saxon styles reminiscent of archaeological discoveries throughout Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. It is best known for the work of the through Irish writers including William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, “AE” Russell, Edward Martyn, and Edward Plunkett (Lord Dunsany) who influenced a new appreciation of Irish literature and Irish poetry. Chesterton, G.K.: (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer, lay theologian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, literary and art critic, biographer, and Christian apologist. Beatrice Elvery: Glossary iv

Church of Ireland: an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church is organized on an all-Ireland basis and is the second-largest Christian denomination on the island after Roman Catholicism the church identifies as both Catholic and Reformed. For historical and cultural reasons, the Church of Ireland is generally identified as a Protestant church, although many Anglicans do not consider themselves Protestant. Clarke, Harry: (17 March 1889 – 6 January 1931) was an Irish stained-glass artist and book illustrator. Born in Dublin, he was a leading figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement. Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales was his first printed work, in 1916—a title that included 16 colour plates and more than 24 illustrations. This was followed by illustrations for an edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, with eight colour plates and more than 24 halftone images was published in 1923. His work exists throughout Ireland in museums and churches alike. Coleridge, Mary E.: (23 September 1861 – 25 August 1907) was a British novelist and poet who wrote essays and reviews. She taught at the London Working Women’s College for twelve years from 1895 to 1907. She wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos. Collins, Michael: Irish: Mícheál Ó Coileáin (16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary, but also served as Minister for Finance, Director of Information, and Teachta Dála (TD) as early as 1919, Adjutant General, Director of Intelligence, and Director of Organization and Arms Procurement for the IRA. He acted as President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood from November 1920 until his death. He also served as part of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. Collins died in 1922, ambushed by Irregular forces during the Irish Civil War. Counter Reformation: Also the Catholic Revival or Catholic Reformation was the period of Catholic resurgence beginning with the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and ending at the close of the Thirty Years’ War (1648), and was initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation. Cuala Press: an Irish private press set up in 1908 by Elizabeth Yeats with support from her brother William Butler Yeats that played an important role in the Celtic Revival of the early 20th century. Cumann na mBan: The Irishwomen’s Council is an Irish republican women’s paramilitary organization formed in Dublin on 2 April 1914, merging with and dissolving Inghinidhe na hÉireann; in 1916 it became an auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers. Darwin, Gwen: born in Cambridge in 1885, she was the daughter of Sir George Howard Darwin and his wife Lady Maud Darwin, née Maud du Puy. She was the granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin. De Markievicz, Constance: Polish: Markievicz, née Gore-Booth (4 February 1868 – 15 July 1927), was an Irish politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragist, and socialist. In December 1918, she was the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, though she did not take her seat. She was also one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position (Minister for Labor of the Irish Republic, 1919–1922). She was also the only woman to be charged with Beatrice Elvery: Glossary v treason in 1916’s Easter Rising, although her death sentence was commuted and she was originally freed. De Valera, Eamon: (14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was one of the most prominent political figures in twentieth-century Ireland. His political career stretched from 1917 to 1973; he served multiple terms as head of government and head of state. His participation in the struggle for Irish independence along with his work in America made him a household name in Ireland and the subject of many historical endeavors. He also led the introduction of the Constitution of Ireland. De-Anglicisation: A cultural process in regions that were once under colonial rule, where vestiges of colonial domination are a sensitive subject. Following centuries of English rule in Ireland, delivered an argument for de-Anglicisation before the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, 25 November 1892: “When we speak of ‘The Necessity for De- Anglicising the Irish Nation’, we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and, indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English.” This led to a widespread Buy Irish movement, which in part influenced the Celtic Revival and Irish Arts and Crafts movements. Dekulakization: (Ukrainian: розкуркулення, rozkurkulennia) was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better- off peasants and their families from 1929 to 1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies. More than 1.8 million peasants were deported between 1930 and 1931. The stated purpose of the campaign was to fight the counter-revolution and build socialism in the countryside. This policy was accomplished simultaneously with collectivization in the USSR and effectively brought all agriculture and peasants in Soviet Russia under state control. Dublin Castle: Irish: Caisleán Bhaile Átha Cliath off Dame Street, Dublin was until 1922 the seat of British rule in Ireland, and is now a major Irish government complex. Most of it dates from the 18th century, though a castle has stood on the site since the days of King John, the first Lord of Ireland. The Castle served as the seat of the English, then later British government of Ireland under the Lordship of Ireland (1171–1541), the Kingdom of Ireland (1541–1800), and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1800–1922). After the signing of the Anglo- Irish Treaty in December 1921, the complex was ceremonially handed over to the newly formed Provisional Government led by Michael Collins. Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA): Situated on Thomas Street, the school started as a private drawing school and has become a national institution educating over 1,500 day and evening students as artists, designers, and art educators. The College was founded in 1746 as a private drawing school set up by Robert West in George’s Lane. This school was taken over by the Dublin Society and later the . Throughout the eighteenth century, there were three schools: Figure Drawing, Landscape and Ornamental Drawing, and Architectural Drawing. In 1811, the school of modeling was added. The Department of Science and Art, London controlled the institution from 1854; it was renamed the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1877. Control was taken by the department of education in 1924, and in 1936, it became Beatrice Elvery: Glossary vi the National College of Art. It is now known as the NCAD or National College of Art and Design. Beatrice Elvery scholar Nicola Gordon Bowe is a tenured member of the faculty there today. Dubliners: a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce first published in 1914.They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce’s idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination. The collection of stories as a whole is also considered a larger coming of age tale. Easter Rising: Irish: Éirí Amach na Cásca, also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. Irish republicans wished to end British rule in Ireland, secede from the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and establish an independent Irish Republic. Revolutionaries used the fact that the United Kingdom was heavily engaged in World War I to stage the Rising. Although the Rising failed in the short-run, the long run resulted in the Anglo-Irish War, the Irish Civil War, and ultimately the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which led to the Irish Free State. Edwardian Era: The Edwardian Era or Edwardian period in the United Kingdom is the period covering the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910, and is sometimes extended beyond Edward’s death to include the years leading up to World War I. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 and the succession of her son Edward marked the end of the Victorian era. The era was marked by significant shifts in as sections of society that had been largely excluded from wielding power in the past, such as common laborers and women, became increasingly politicized. The Edwardian period is frequently extended beyond King Edward’s death in 1910 to include the years up to the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, the start of World War I in 1914, the end of hostilities with Germany in 1918, or the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Fitzgerald, Geraldine: born in Greystones, County Wicklow, south of Dublin, her father was Catholic and her mother a Protestant who converted to Catholicism. She studied painting at the Dublin School of Art and inspired by her aunt, the actress/director Shelah Richards, Geraldine Fitzgerald began her acting career in 1932 in the theatre in her native Dublin before moving to London where she studied painting at the Polytechnic School of Art and was taken to Studios where she played a small role in a British film 1934. She quickly came to be regarded as one of the British film industry’s most promising young performers, and her most successful film of this period was The Mill on the Floss (1937). Fitzwilliam Square Fitzwilliam Square is a Georgian garden square in the south of central Dublin, Ireland. It was the last of the five Georgian squares in Dublin to be built. The square was a popular place for the Irish Social Season of aristocrats entertaining in Dublin between January and Patrick’s Day each year. Beatrice Elvery: Glossary vii

Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA): Irish: Cumann Lthchleas Gael, is an Irish and international amateur sporting and cultural organization, focused primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball and rounders. The Association also promotes Irish music and dance, and the . Gaelic League: founded in Dublin on 31 July 1893 by Douglas Hyde, with the aid of Eugene O’Growney, Eoin MacNeill, Thomas O’Neill Russell and others. The organization developed from Ulick Bourke’s earlier Gaelic Union and became the leading institution promoting the Gaelic Revival, carrying on efforts like the publishing of the Gaelic Journal. The League’s first newspaper was An Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light) and its most noted editor was Patrick Pearse. The motto of the League was Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin amháin (Ourselves, Ourselves alone). Gentileschi, Artemisia: (July 8, 1593 – c. 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. Gibbon, Monk: William Monk Gibbon (1896 – 29 November 1987) was an Irish poet and prolific author, known as “The Grand Old Man of Irish Letters”. His collection of over twenty volumes of poetry, autobiography, travel, and criticism are kept at Queen’s University Belfast. He also wrote many published novels. Glendalough: Meaning “The Valley of the two lakes,” this is a glacial valley in County Wicklow, Ireland, renowned for an Early Medieval monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St Kevin. The lakes are a popular travel spot for locals and tourists alike. Holodomor: (Ukrainian: Голодомор, “Extermination by hunger”) was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932 and 1933 that killed an estimated 2.5–7.5 million Ukrainians, with millions more counted in demographic estimates. It was part of the wider disaster, the Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country. Home Rule: The Irish Home Rule movement articulated a longstanding Irish desire for self- government within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The movement drew upon a legacy of patriotic thought that dated back at least to the late 17th century. Home Rule held out the promise of a new constitutional order and harnessed the energies of a more recent militant tradition, providing an alternative to nationalist militancy. For almost half a century – from the early 1870s to the end of World War I – Home Rule was both the single most dominant feature of Irish political life and a major influence within British politics. Hone, Evie: Eva Sydney Hone RHA (22 April 1894 – 13 March 1955), usually known as Evie, was an Irish painter and stained glass artist. Her most important works are probably the East Window for the Chapel at , Windsor (1949–1952) and My Four Green Fields, now located in Government Buildings, Dublin. Beatrice Elvery: Glossary viii

Hughes, John: (30 January 1865 – 1941) was an Irish sculptor. Hughes was born in Dublin, entered the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1878, and trained as a part-time student for ten years. In 1890, he won a scholarship to the South Kensington School of Art, London, after which another scholarship took him to Paris. He then studied further in Italy. He was appointed as teacher to the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1894 and in 1902 became Professor of Sculpture in the School. From 1903, he lived in Italy and in France; he died at Nice in 1941. Huxley, Aldous: (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer, philosopher and a prominent member of the Huxley family. He was best known for his novels including Brave New World, set in a dystopian London, and for non-fiction books, such as The Doors of Perception, which recalls experiences when taking a psychedelic drug, and a wide-ranging output of essays. He spent the later part of his life in the US, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. Irish Free State: Irish: Saorstát Éireann (6 December 1922 – 29 December 1937) was the state established in 1922 as a Dominion of the British Commonwealth of Nations under the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed by British and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand. On the day the Irish Free State was established, it comprised the entire island of Ireland; but, as expected, Northern Ireland immediately exercised its right under the treaty to remove itself from the new state. The Irish Free State effectively replaced both the self- proclaimed Irish Republic (founded 21 January 1919) and the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. W. T. Cosgrave, the first President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, had led both of these governments since August 1922. Irish Land League: Irish: Conradh na Taln was an Irish political organization of the late 19th century, which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period of the Land League’s agitation is known as the Land War. Irish National Volunteers: Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann was a military organization established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was formed in response to the formation of the Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was “to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland”. The Volunteers included members of the Gaelic League, Ancient Order of Hibernians and Sinn Féin, and, secretly, the IRB. Volunteers fought for Irish independence in 1916’s Easter Rising, and were joined by the Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan and Fianna Éireann to form the Irish Republican Army. Irish Renaissance: See Celtic Revival Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB ): Irish: Bráithreachas Phoblacht na hÉireann was a secret oath-bound fraternal organization dedicated to the establishment of an “independent democratic republic” in Ireland between 1858 and 1924. The IRB played an important role in the history of Ireland, as the chief advocate of republicanism during the campaign for Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom, successor to movements such as the United Irishmen of the 1790s and the Young Irelanders of the 1840s. Beatrice Elvery: Glossary ix

Irish Womens Workers Union: was a trade union, which was set up 1911 in Dublin. Delia Larkin had organized the meeting. In 1937 the union, led by Louie Bennett, objected to passages in the new Irish Constitution, and were joined by the Irish Women Graduates’ Association and others. The union was created because other trade unions of the time excluded women workers. Johnston, Denis: (William) Denis Johnston (18 June 1901 – 8 August 1984) was an Irish writer. Born in Dublin, he wrote mostly plays, but also works of literary criticism, a book-length biographical essay of Jonathan Swift, a memoir and an eccentric work of philosophy. He also worked as a war correspondent, and as both a radio and television producer for the BBC. He played a minor role in the 1935 film version of ’s Riders to the Sea. Joyce, James: (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters. Kay, Dorothy: (1938 – 1964) Born and trained in Ireland, Dorothy Kay was a member of the Elvery family, which was the subject of one of her most famous group portraits (1938), now in the collection of the Iziko SA National Gallery. The artist’s sister, Beatrice, Lady Glenavy (1881-1970) was a highly active painter, stained glass designer and associate of Sir . Dorothy Elvery came to South Africa to marry Dr. Hobart Kay FRCS in 1910. By 1916, the Kays had settled in Port Elizabeth, where Dorothy immediately became a doyenne of the arts. She was a founder member of the Eastern Province Society of Arts and Crafts (EPSAC). Kickham, Charles: (9 May 1828 – 22 August 1882) was an Irish revolutionary, novelist, poet, journalist and one of the most prominent members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Koteliansky, S.S.: Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky (February 28, 1880 – January 21, 1955) was a Russian-born British translator. He made the transition from his origins in a small Jewish shtetl to distinction in the world of English letters. Although he was not a creative writer himself, he befriended, corresponded with, helped publish, and otherwise served as intermediary between some of the most prominent people in English literary life in the early twentieth century. Ladies Land League: Anna Parnell (1852-1911), sister of Charles Stewart Parnell, was one of the founders of the Ladies’ Land League. Anna and her sister Fanny had lived in Paris and the USA where they gained experience of running organizations, fund raising and gaining publicity. When it seemed that the Land League men were likely to be arrested, she recommended a women’s league in Ireland to take over the work in their absence. Lady Gregory: Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (15 March 1852 – 22 May 1932), was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her Beatrice Elvery: Glossary x conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime. Lane, Hugh: (9 November 1875 – 7 May 1915) was an dealer, collector, and gallery director. He is best known for establishing Dublin’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (the first known public gallery of modern art in the world) and for his contribution to the visual arts in Ireland, including the Lane Bequest. Lawrence, D.H.: David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. His collected works, among other things, represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Leinster House: originally the ducal palace of the Dukes of Leinster. Since 1922, it is a complex of buildings, of which the former ducal palace is the core, which house Oireachtas Éireann, its members, and staff. The most recognizable part of the complex, and the ‘public face’ of Leinster House, continues to be the former ducal palace at the core of the complex. Letts, W.M.: Winifred Mabel Letts (1882–1972) was an English-born writer who spent most of her life in Ireland. She was known for her novels, plays, and poetry. She began her career as a playwright, writing two one-act plays for the Abbey Theatre: The Eyes of the Blind (1906) and The Challenge (1909). She then started writing novels and children’s books. In 1916, by which time she was working as a nurse, she published Hallowe’en and Other Poems of the War. Her poem “The Deserter” (written in 1916), describing the feelings and fate of a man terrified by the war, is often used in collections of World War I poetry. Liberty Hall: Irish: Halla na Saoirse is the headquarters of the Services, Industrial, Professional, and Technical Union (SIPTU). It was formerly the tallest storied building in the state, at 195 feet high until it was superseded by the County Hall outside Cork city, which was itself superseded by the Elysian in Cork. Liberty Hall is now the third-tallest building in Dublin, after Montevetro and the Millennium Tower in Grand Canal Dock. MacBride, : Irish: Maud Nic Ghoinn Bean Mac Giolla Bhríghde (21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an English-born Irish revolutionary, suffragist and actor, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with the poet William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo- Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars. She also actively agitated for Home Rule. Mangan, James Clarence: (1 May 1803, Dublin – 20 June 1849), was an Irish poet. Mangan began submitting verses to Dublin publications, the first in 1818. In 1830, he began producing translations – generally free interpretations rather than strict transliterations – from German, a language he had taught himself. Of interest are his translations of Goethe. From 1834, his contributions began appearing in the Dublin University Magazine. In 1840, he began producing translations from Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Irish. He was also known for literary hoaxes; some of his “translations” are in fact works of his own, like Twenty Golden Years Ago, attributed to a certain Selber. Beatrice Elvery: Glossary xi

Mansfield, Katherine: Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction, who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. At 19, Mansfield left New Zealand and settled in the United Kingdom, where she became a friend of modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. In 1917, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which led to her death at the age of 34. Martyn, Edward: (30 January 1859 – 5 December 1923) was an Irish playwright and early republican political and cultural activist, as the first president of Sinn Féin from 1905 to 1908. Moffatt, Curtis: (October 11, 1887 – 1949), better known as Curtis Moffat, was a London-based American abstract photographer, painter and modernist interior designer. He married the actor and poet Iris Tree, and the couple moved to London after the war, where Moffat took up abstract photography. His home became a popular salon for artists, intellectuals, and gourmands. Moore, George: (24 February 1852 – 21 January 1933) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day. Moran, D.P.: David Patrick Moran (22 March 1869 – 31 January 1936), was an Irish journalist, activist and cultural-political theorist, known as the principal advocate of a specifically Gaelic Catholic Irish nationalism during the early 20th century. Associated with the wider Celtic Revival, he promoted his ideas primarily through his journal, The Leader, and compilations of his articles such as the book The Philosophy of Irish Ireland. Murray, John Middleton: (6 August 1889 – 12 March 1957) was an English writer. He was prolific, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. A prominent critic, Murry is best remembered for his association with Katherine Mansfield, whom he married in 1918 as her second husband, for his friendship with D. H. Lawrence, and for his friendship (and brief affair) with Frieda Lawrence. Orpen, William: Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) was an Irish artist who worked mainly in London. William Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful, painter of portraits for the well-to-do in Edwardian society. During World War I, he was the most prolific of the official artists, sent by Britain to the Western Front. His connections to the senior ranks of the British Army allowed him to stay in France longer than any of the other official artists and although he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, KBE, in the 1918 King’s birthday honors list and elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, his determination to serve as a war artist cost him both his health and social standing. After his early death a number of critics, and other artists, were outwardly critical of his accomplishments and for many years his paintings were rarely exhibited, a situation that began to change in the 1980s. Beatrice Elvery: Glossary xii

Parnell, Charles Stewart: political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was one of the most important figures in 19th century Great Britain and Ireland, and was described by Prime Minister William Gladstone as the most remarkable person he had ever met. Parnellism: The policy or principles of those who followed Parnell and his philosophy. Pearse, Patrick: Irish: Pádraig Anraí Mac Piarais (10 November 1879 – 3 May 1916) was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist and political activist who was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. Following his execution along with fifteen other leaders, Pearse came to be seen by many as the embodiment of the rebellion. Plunkett, Sir Horace: (24 October 1854 – 26 March 1932), was an Anglo-Irish agricultural reformer, pioneer of agricultural cooperatives, Unionist MP, Irish Senator and author. An adherent of Home Rule, in 1914 he founded the Irish Dominion League, hoping to keep Ireland united, and in 1922, he became a member of Seanad Éireann, the upper chamber in the Parliament of the new Irish Free State. Purser, Sarah: (22 March 1848 – 7 August 1943) was an Irish artist, working mostly as a portraitist. She was also associated with the stained glass movement, founding a stained glass workshop, An Tr Gloine, in 1903. Some of her stained glass work was commissioned from as far as New York, including a window at Christ Church, Pelham. Redmond, John: (1 September 1856 – 6 March 1918) an Irish nationalist, barrister, MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900 to 1918. He was a moderate, constitutional and conciliatory politician who attained the twin dominant objectives of his political life, party unity and finally in September 1914 achieving the promise of Irish Home Rule under an Act which granted an interim form of self-government to Ireland. However, implementation of the Act was suspended by the intervention of World War I, and ultimately made untenable. Russell, George: (10 April 1867 – 17 July 1935) who wrote with the pseudonym Æ (sometimes written AE or A.E.), was an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, artistic painter, and Irish nationalist. He was also a mysticism writer and a personage of a group of devotees of in Dublin for many years. Scott, Kathleen: Kathleen Scott, Baroness Kennet (27 March 1878 – 25 July 1947) was a British sculptor. She was the wife of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott and the mother of Sir Peter Scott, the painter and ornithologist. By her second marriage, she became Baroness Kennet. Scott, Robert Falcon Captain Robert Falcon Scott (6 June 1868 – 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13. On the first expedition, he set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S and discovered the Polar Plateau, on which the South Pole is located. During the second venture, Scott led a party of five, which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that they had been Beatrice Elvery: Glossary xiii preceded by Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition. On their return journey, Scott’s party discovered plant fossils, proving Antarctica was once forested and joined to other continents. At a distance of 150 miles from their base camp and 11 miles from the next depot, Scott and his companions died from a combination of exhaustion, starvation, and extreme cold. Shaw, George Bernard: (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co- founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. He was also an essayist, novelist, and short story writer. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems with a vein of comedy, which makes their stark themes more palatable. Issues, which engaged Shaw’s attention included education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. Sheppard, Oliver: (1865 – 14 September 1941) was an Irish sculptor, most famous for his 1911 bronze statue of the mythical Cuchullain dying in battle. From 1902 to 1937, Sheppard taught sculpture at the DMSA for a mere £250 per year. This, however, required that he only had to lecture on three mornings a week, allowing him plenty of time for work on commissioned projects. As a prominent sculptor, Sheppard was a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, and the Royal Dublin Society, and was made a governor of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1925 to 1941. Skeffington, Hannah Sheehy: (24 May 1877 – 20 April 1946) was a suffragist and Irish nationalist. Along with her husband and Margaret Cousins and , she founded the Irish Women’s Franchise League in 1908 with the aim of obtaining women’s voting rights. She was later a founding member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union. Slade School of Fine Art: the art school of University College London (UCL) and based in London. It is world-renowned and is consistently ranked as the UK’s top art and design educational institution. The school is organized as a department of UCL’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Suspensory Act: an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which suspended the coming into force of two other Acts: the Welsh Church Act 1914 (for the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales), and the Government of Ireland Act 1914 (Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland). The Suspensory Act received the royal assent on the same day as the two Acts it suspended, on 18 September 1914. Synge, J.M.: Edmund John Millington Synge (16 April 1871 – 24 March 1909) was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, travel writer and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre. He is best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre. Tara Brooch: a Celtic brooch of about 700 CE generally considered the most impressive of over 50 elaborate Irish brooches to have been discovered. It was found in 1850 and rapidly recognized Beatrice Elvery: Glossary xiv as one of the most important works of early Christian Irish Insular art; it is now displayed in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. Tory Party: The Tories were members of two political parties, which existed, sequentially, in the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Great Britain and later the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from the 17th to the early 19th centuries. The party has since evolved into the Conservative Party. Tree, Iris: (27 January 1897 – 13 April 1968) was an English poet, actor and artists’ model. She had studied at the Slade School of Art. She contributed verse to the 1917 Sitwell anthology Wheels; her published collections were Poems (1920) and The Traveller and other Poems (1927). Yeats, Jack: John “Jack” Butler Yeats (29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) was an Irish artist and Olympic medalist. W. B. Yeats was his brother. His early style was that of an illustrator; he began to work regularly in oils only in 1906. His early pictures are simple lyrical depictions of landscapes and figures, predominantly from the west of Ireland—especially of his boyhood home of Sligo. Yeats, W.B.: William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Irishman so honoured. Timeline xv

Timeline of Events 1847-1924

1847 – The Great Famine, where as many as 2.5 million 1851 – J.W. Elvery’s opens for business in Dublin Center Irish perish from hunger 1881 – Beatrice Elvery is born, the second daughter of 1850 – Archaeologists unearth the 8th c. Tara Brooch in

William & Beatrice Elvery County Meath 1886 – James Elvery dies and leaves business to Beatrice’s 1879 – Charles Stewart Parnell founds the Irish Land

father, William League to protect Irish tenant farmers 1894 – Elvery earns a scholarship to the Dublin 1880s – The Home Rule Movement begins and lasts

Metropolitan School of Art through 1922 1904 – Elvery crafts The Mother, a 16” plaster relief at the 1884 – The British Reform Act triples Great Britain’s

DMSA Voting Constituency 1904 – Elvery sculpts Glendalough, inspired by a summer 1884 – The Gaelic Athletic Association is formed trip to the lake with friends 1906 – Elvery sculpts Mother and Baby, an 8” patinated 1884 – The Gaelic Revival surfaces through Thomas

plaster relief Croke’s Irish Language Movement 1907 – Elvery creates her first window for her childhood 1895 – Michael Cleary is charged with the murder of his

church, Tullow Parish wife, Bridget 1907 – Elvery exhibits The Bath at the Gaelic League’s 1899 – Somerville and Ross publish Some Experiences of

annual salon in Dublin an Irish R.M. 1907 – Elvery illustrates for Patrick Pearse’s Íosogán agus 1900 – D.P. Moran encourages the Buy-Irish Movement

sgéalta eile through his paper, The Leader 1907 – Elvery paints her iconic Éire, which is then gifted 1902 – Abbey Theatre debuts Cathleen Ní Houlihan to revolutionary Patrick Pearse 1908 – Elvery travels to London on a scholarship to the 1905 – D.P. Moran publishes “The Philosophy of Irish-

Slade Academy of Art Ireland” 1909 – Elvery paints Íosogán to be hung at St. Enda’s 1908 – Elizabeth Yeats founds the Cuala Press 1910 – Elvery draws Virgin Ironing for Cuala Press 1908 – Patrick Pearse founds St. Enda’s 1911 – Elvery creates The Nativity as a Christmas Card for 1913 – Patrick Pearse joins the Irish Republican

Cuala Press Brotherhood 1912 – Elvery marries Charles Gordon Campbell, barrister 1913 – Patrick Pearse publishes “Murder Machine” as part

and future Lord of the Bodenstown Series 1913 – Elvery draws Prayer for a Little Child for Cuala 1914 – Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated, and World

Press War I begins 1913 – Elvery and Gordon’s first son, Patrick, is born in 1914 – The Home Rule Bill passes in British Parliament Dublin 1913 – Elvery completes illustrations for Violet Russell’s 1914 – The Suspensory Act postpones the Home Rule Bill Heroes of the Dawn 1914 – Elvery completes illustrations for Katherine 1915 – James Joyce’s Dubliners is published–nine years

Purdon’s Candle and Crib after its authorship 1914 – Elvery’s daughter Bridgit is born 1916 – Easter Rising 1917 – Irregulars raid Elvery’s father’s home in Dublin 1918 – World War I ends 1920 – Elvery crafts a memorial stained glass window for 1919-1921 – The Irish War of Independence wages on Tullow Parish 1922 – Anti-Treatyites storm Dublin’s Four Courts 1922 – Anti-Treatyites raid Elvery’s home and set it on fire building 1923 – Elvery draws a study of St. Joan for George 1922 – British Parliament sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty with

Bernard Shaw’s play Representatives for Ireland 1924 – Elvery gives birth to her third child, Michael. 1923 – pens play, St. Joan

Introduction:

An Artist, Her Nation, and a Revolution

What is it about the Kelly velvet hillsides and the hoary avocado sea, The vertical cliffs where the Gulf Stream commences its southern bend, Slashing like a sculptor gone mad or a rancorous God who’s angry, Heaving galaxies of lichen shrouded stones for potato farmers to tend, Where the Famine and the Troubles such haunting aspects lend, Music and verse ring with such eloquence in their whimsical way, Let all, who can hear, rejoice as singers’ intonations mend, Gaelic souls from Sligo and Trinity Green to Cork and Dingle Bay, Where fiddle, bodhran, tin whistle, and even God, indulge to play, Ould sod to Beckett, Wilde and Yeats, Heaney and James Joyce, In this verdant, welcoming land, ‘tis the poet who rules the day. Where else can one hear a republic croon in so magnificent a voice? Primal hearts of Celtic chieftains pulse, setting inspiration free, In genial confines of chic caprice, we’re stirred by synchronicity.

~ David B. Lentz 2014

Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 2

Introduction

At the heart of St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin’s center, tucked away in a corner of one of

the many courtyard gardens, stands a bust atop a stele. Unassuming among the dozens of other

memorials, between the foliage and the ponds, busy city-goers rush by throughout the day barely

taking notice of this silent marble ghost. The bust, the face of poet , sits

above a high relief marble of an enchanting female face. The face, depicted as Mangan’s Dark

Rosaleen (Fig. 1), a modern interpretation of thirteenth-century poem “Roisín Dua,” stares

through the viewer with piercing eyes, the image of the Irish Harp embedded in her stone, yet

obvious, ginger locks. A stanza from Mangan’s poem references the centuries’ long struggle of

Ireland: “‘Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone/ My Dark Rosaleen! / My own Rosaleen! / ‘Tis

you shall have the golden throne/ ‘Tis you shall reign, and reign alone/ My Dark Rosaleen!”1

This face, however, actually belongs to none other than turn-of-the-twentieth century

Anglo-Irish Protestant artist Beatrice Elvery, whose works were

even more inspiring than her beauty, and whose life was even

more intriguing than Mangan’s romantic ode to Ireland’s legacy.

Educator and revolutionary Patrick Pearse wrote about the relief,

“That face is an expression of the soul of Ireland if ever the soul

of Ireland had been expressed in art.”2 Indeed, Beatrice Elvery’s

life as a whole expressed the soul of Ireland and its journey into

modernity. The works of Beatrice Elvery Campbell Lady Figure 1 Oliver Sheppard, “Roisin Dua,” c. 1908, from the James Clarence Mangan Memorial, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. Photo property of author. Glenavy reveal many clues for the historian about

1 James Clarence Mangan, “Dark Rosaleen,” in Irish Literature: A Reader, ed. Maureen O’Rourke and James MacKillop Murphy (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 114. 2 Quoted in Brian Cliff and Nicholas Grene, Synge and Edwardian Ireland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 68. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 3 twentieth century Irish society. Living and working amidst the birth of Ireland’s struggle for independence, Elvery reflects the history of a people searching for an identity, a new nation expressing itself through the arts, a budding nation working towards independence, and some of its women finding their place in the public sphere of the modern world. Beatrice Elvery’s story is the story of a young nation and her people.

Beatrice Elvery was a successful Irish artist during the height of Ireland’s struggle for

Home Rule. Working as early as 1897, Elvery’s work with engraving, sculpture, painting, and stained glass appeared throughout Ireland in churches, children’s books, art galleries, literary journals, playhouses, and most notably in the halls of educator, activist, and revolutionary

Patrick Pearse’s famous St. Enda’s school for boys in Dublin. Elvery’s image also became an icon as muse for great Irish artists such as William Orpen and John Hughes, as inspiration for characters portrayed in the influential Abbey Theatre, and as the face on the seal of The Royal

Institute of the Architects of Ireland, incorporated in 1909 (Fig. 2). A study on the life of

Beatrice Elvery tells a story about the men, women, and children of a nation amid metamorphosis. An examination of her work reveals a unique representation of gender, nationalism, motherhood, boyhood, religious symbolism, and revolution.

Working during the Celtic Renaissance, when Irish artists, writers, and musicians tirelessly created visual symbols to represent Irish Nationalism, revive Irish culture, and remythologize Irish history, Elvery stands out among Figure 2 R.C. Orpen, seal design for RIAI, c. 1908 dozens of other artists for her portrayal of the ideal

Irelander through mass-produced, commoditized, art that permeated the Irish community Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 4 between 1895 and 1915. Continuing to work into the 1950s, Elvery experienced and reflected the ever-changing attitudes of an Ireland coming into its own. Beatrice Elvery’s work alone deserves particular examination because her middle-class perspective did not approach the nationalist question from above or below and thus provides a unique voice. In addition, because Elvery’s work appeared in children’s books, popular literary magazines, on Christmas cards, in church windows, and public halls, she reached a mass audience of all classes and all ages, both

Protestant and Catholic. Elvery’s life also shows how some women during a period with rigid expectations manipulated those expectations and existed within and without both public and private spheres.

Elvery’s life illustrates how the art world interacted with Ireland’s path to independence and acts as an example of female agency during a time when women struggled for their own independence. Beatrice Elvery’s middle-class status kept her out of elite circles, but it also meant that she was a mere acquaintance of the Catholic working class. This liminal position gave

Elvery a unique understanding of the world around her, and thus provides historians with an inimitable appreciation of the era. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the Irish Female Symbol against Ireland’s ideology of “the virtuous woman,” which stressed domesticity, motherhood, and Catholic devotion, can be illustrated and examined through many of Elvery’s works. In addition to the female, Elvery’s portrayal of male adolescence depicts a unique interpretation of

Christ intertwined with the national image. When examined comparatively, Elvery’s paintings, sculptures, illustrations, and stained glass in connection with Irish Nationalism alongside various negative images of Irish-Catholics during the fight for Home Rule show the complexities and contradictions of national identity. Elvery’s experience as a mother, a woman, an activist, and an artist both affected and was affected by Ireland’s own shifting identity. Elvery’s representation of Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 5 the world around her and her reaction to her environment work together to form a concrete study of Ireland’s efforts toward independence. This is especially significant because Elvery resided in both England and Ireland throughout the first half of the twentieth century and viewed the conflict over Home Rule from both sides. The perspective of one middle-class individual acts as a broad reflection of the Irish middle-class experience. Furthermore, utilizing the visual arts as historical documents adds to the deeper understanding of historical inquiry. Through the visual arts, historians can gain insight into the daily lives of the people who shaped the past, how those people expressed their anxieties, and how the arts worked as a subtle vehicle for change during tumultuous times. For example, Auguste Rodin’s Burghers of Calais exemplifies France’s national pride after centuries of struggle with the rest of Europe; Frida Kahlo’s various works symbolized the Mexican people’s frustrations with American capitalism, big industry, and global imperialism. In kind, Beatrice Elvery’s work illustrates Ireland’s desire for independence from

Great Britain, not just politically but economically, culturally, and socially.

Historiography

Although Elvery was one of a handful of working female artists in Ireland, and more successful than many, very little scholarship exists on her life. A great deal of her work still exists, she published an autobiography, and her life is well documented, but few scholars have explored Elvery’s role in Edwardian and Post-Edwardian Ireland.3 How did this bohemian, Irish-

Protestant of Spanish descent, later marrying into a title, manage to achieve commercial success, actively participate in Ireland’s efforts towards independence, and leave her mark everywhere from illustrated children’s primers, to church sanctuaries, to art school archives, to the events of

3 Historians typically label the period between 1910 and 1918 the First World War Era, the years between 1918 and 1935 the Inter-war Era, then the period after 1935 through 1945 the World War II Era. Because Ireland, however, mostly existed outside of the two World Wars, these labels seem unfitting. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 6

Irish Nationalist tensions between 1905 and 1922? Before

one examines the primary sources, one must study the

little that historians have so far had to say about Beatrice

Elvery.

Irish historians and art history scholars do not

have much to say about Beatrice Elvery. Authors such as

Brian Cliff and Nicholas Grene’s biography of poet J.M.

Synge find it only important to mention that Elvery’s

sister Dorothy painted a young Samuel Beckett (Fig. 3) as Figure 3 Dorothy Kay, Child at Prayer, 1918, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection a toddler before anyone knew what an icon he would become. (They fail to mention that Elvery sculpted the crucifix shown in the painting.)4 Historian

Ann Matthews mentions her as companion to actor and activist Maud Gonne MacBride, dramatists like Lady Gregory, or artists such as Sarah Purser and William Orpen.5 Lucy

Costigan’s Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke (2010) labels Elvery as an apprentice even though she created at least dozens of masterful works independently and alongside other artists.6 Nicola Gordon Bowe has written the most about this fascinating figure by way of a short article in The Irish Arts Review (1995). Gordon Bowe writes about Elvery,

Her fundamentally academic approach, matched by an unaffected devoid of sentimentality, her seemingly effortless integration of composition, decoration, and design, and her consummate ease of execution were qualities that had marked her work since its first critical acclaim at the turn of the century.7

4 Brian Cliff and Nicholas Grene, Synge and Edwardian Ireland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 36. 5 Ann Matthews, Renegades: Irish Republican Women, 1900-1922 (Cork: Mercier Press, 2010), 56. 6 Lucy Costigan and Michael Cullen, Strangest Genius: The Stained Glass of Harry Clarke (Dublin: History Press, 2010), 12. 7 Nicola Gordon Bowe, "The Art of Beatrice Elvery, Lady Glenavy (1883-1970)," Irish Arts Review 11 (1995): 169. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 7

The 1995 article has become the definitive scholarship on Elvery, cited in nearly every reference to Elvery, from Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia of Irish Architects.

Gordon Bowe’s collaborative effort with Elizabeth Cumming, The Arts and Crafts

Movement in Dublin & Edinburgh (1998), covers a number of Irish and Scottish artists at the turn of the twentieth century. Gordon Bowe gives Elvery a small chapter where she catalogues roughly fifteen of her works with small descriptions of each piece. Although Gordon Bowe does not provide any formal analysis in the text, the chapter does provide valuable information about

Elvery’s work as well as several works by other artists to whom Elvery was a muse.8 The chapter on Elvery contains detailed descriptions and images of her sculptures, stained glass panels, book illustrations, and paintings. Although Gordon Bowe relies heavily on Elvery’s own memoirs as primary historical source material, her insights on Elvery’s work add to the scholarship.

Written several years earlier, Gordon Bowe’s Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass: The

Works of Harry Clarke and the Artists of An Tur Gloine (1988) examines the nine principal artists at Sarah Purser’s stained glass studio, An Tur Gloine or Tower of Glass, in which Gordon

Bowe claims to have given Elvery “equal billing.”9 Gordon Bowe gives credit to Celtic

Revivalist Edward Martyn and painter Sarah Purser for the creation of a craft not yet present in all of Irish culture. In order to serve the purpose of de-Anglicization, Martyn collaborated with

Purser and Elvery’s alma mater, the (DMSA) Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, to provide ecclesiastical art for churches, convents, and cathedrals throughout Ireland. The studio became so successful that they completed works seen in churches and public monuments all over the world, from Boston, Massachusetts, to Singapore. Gordon Bowe, along with co-authors David

8 Gordon Bowe discusses both the Mangan Memorial and RIAI Seal as mentioned in the introduction, as well as William Orpen’s portrait of Elvery, which will be discussed later. 9 Nicola Gordon Bowe, Interview by author, Dublin, Ireland, December 6, 2014. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 8

Caron and Michael Wynne, detail how An Tr Gloine reinvented the ancient art using Celtic imagery, glass painting, and chemical etching to create what Peter Cormack calls a “self- consciously national idiom.”10 Unfortunately, Gordon Bowe is so far the only scholar to give

Elvery the attention she so deserves. While other scholars recognize her existence, they fail to see her as anything more than a companion or witness to other artists. Although little scholarship exists directly about Elvery, a great deal exists about the women who surrounded her. For example, Ann Matthews’ Renegades: Irish Republican Women 1900-1922 (2010) examines the lives and work of the women behind Ireland’s struggle for independence. Although other historians have written about Ireland’s Home Rule, most have chosen to focus on the “worthies or the select few women who received most of the publicity during the period, such as actor

Maud Gonne MacBride and revolutionary nationalist Countess de Markievicz.

Matthews outlines her main theme of the book in her introduction: “The role of the women who were active in politics in Ireland during the early part of the twentieth century is extremely important, and it is vital that their story is looked at from a politically inclusive perspective.”11 This broad statement, however, does not fully encompass what Matthews aims to do in the monograph, which is to argue that the role of women in the struggle for independence was much more common than historians have let on, but also complex, contradictory, inconsistent, and, most importantly, vital to the outcome of Ireland’s status as a Free State in

1922. Matthew’s scholarship, where she mentions Elvery’s name alongside Markievicz and

10 Peter Cormack, “Gazetteer of Irish Stained Glass: The Works of Harry Clarke and the Artists of An Tur Gloine,” Irish Arts Review Yearbook (1990-1991): 249. 11 Matthews, Renegades, 12. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 9

MacBride, adds to the thin scholarship about Elvery by putting Elvery’s world in context and providing depth to the question of gender and nationalism.12

Although not formal scholarship, autobiographies and memoirs add to the understanding of Elvery’s life and work. Primary sources include Elvery’s memoir, Today we will only Gossip

(1964), her sister Dorothy Kay’s The Elvery Family: A Memory (1991), and her son Patrick

Campbell’s My Life and Easy Times (1968). A great deal of debate exists among historians about the reliability of memoirs in historical scholarship, especially when studying the fallibility of memory. Although the debate covers all of history, historians of the Holocaust have given special attention to the matter. Esther Farbstein writes how scholars argue that memoirs “Reflect a sepia portrait as opposed to the acuity of the original, authentic experience, a withering of the powers of memory, and residues of more recent experience.”13 Farbstein argues, however, that,

“the multiplicity of facets and strata manifested . . . bring us closer to the universal history of the time.”14 Although memoir is not necessarily independently credible, when studying its unwitting testimony and comparing it alongside other historical sources, one draws out details not available through traditional documents. In fact, the inaccuracies, exaggerations, and omissions can provide just as much insight into an event as facts, figures, and raw data. It is in this capacity that the Elvery family memoirs hold historical value.

Penned in her eighties, Elvery’s memoir is a collection of stories from her childhood through her life as an ascended socialite traveling between Ireland and England through armed conflicts, world wars, and epidemics. Elvery tells stories of her early years, her experiences at

12 Although little exists on Elvery, a treasure trove of information has developed in recent years about Irish Nationalists. For further reading, see Eimarr O’Conner’s Irish Women Artists, 1800-2009: Familiar but Unknown (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010); Margaret Ward’s In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995); and Maud Gonne: Ireland’s Joan of Arc (New York: Harper Collins, 1990). 13 Esther Farbstein, “Diaries and Memoirs as a Historical Source - The Diary and Memoir of a Rabbi at the ‘Konin House of Bondage,’” Shoah Resource Center (1998), 1. 14 Ibid., 38. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 10 school, her love life, and the many adventures with a circle of friends whose names include D.H.

Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, Monk Gibbon, Maud Gonne MacBride, Jack Yeats, and the writer S.S. Koteliansky, who she lovingly refers to as Kot. Elvery’s memoir is particularly valuable because she is not so much interested in giving her opinion on matters or telling “her side of the story” but simply sharing anecdotes and experiences. When she does offer her views or share her perspective surrounding a major historical event, however, her subtlety and nuances add sincerity and poignancy to the writing. Lastly, when read against formal scholarship, her family memoirs add depth and credibility to the overall landscape of Beatrice Elvery’s world.

Elvery’s sister, Dorothy Kay, also a successful artist, penned The Elvery Family: A

Memory, published in 1991, twenty-seven years after Kay’s death. Published in Kay’s resident city of Capetown, South Africa, where she lived with her diplomat husband, the memoir is similar to Elvery’s, but adds a different perspective on the family, which creates a level of objectivity between the two works. A great deal of the book centers around her own life in South

Africa as an artist and wife of a diplomat, but she spends several pages writing about her parents and siblings. The book also provides transcripts of letters written by her sister—a rare find15— as well as various cartoons Elvery made for her through their correspondence. Of particular value is a letter written in 1922 by Elvery about the raid on her family’s home by Anti-Treatyites. Elvery also writes about the event in her own memoir, and comparing the two accounts, written forty years apart adds to the richness of the experience. A final memoir, adding yet another layer to the story, comes from Elvery’s eldest son, satirist Patrick Campbell.

My Life and Easy Times, by Patrick Campbell and published in 1967, opens on the day of his father’s death, who he refers to not as daddy or even father, but Lord. Dedicated to his

15 Per Elvery’s request, most correspondence between friends and family were destroyed upon their death. This strange ritual will be discussed further in a later chapter. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 11 mother, the short biography recounts what is was like to grow up in a household with an artist mother and a very formal banker father. Although most of the book focuses on his father,

Campbell’s depiction of his mother provides the reader with a unique perspective on a woman who is otherwise only described by her friends and lovers. A successful journalist and television writer, Campbell uses his humor and wit to make My Life and Easy Times a welcome facet to the complex story of Beatrice Elvery. Campbell blends family history with Irish politics and the experience of an upper-class family in Dublin into a concise telling of the Elvery-Campbell legacy. The Elvery family, however, does not complete the story. As this endeavor undertakes an interdisciplinary approach, literature also adds to the scope of primary research.

Literary fiction written contemporary to Elvery’s life, such as James Joyce’s Dubliners or

Somerville and Ross’ Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. provide insight into the various perspectives and mentalité of Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century. Joyce’s collection of short stories explores the lives of members of the Dublin urban class—a group with which

Elvery would have had daily interactions. Somerville and Ross’ work provides a glimpse into certain Anglo-Irish prejudices of the Irish rural classes. Although written as lighthearted comedy,

Irish R.M. sheds light on the more serious problem of class conflict during Ireland’s struggle for autonomy from Great Britain. Through the examination of contemporary fiction, historians gain knowledge on the collective zeitgeist of an era. The final piece in the puzzle of Beatrice Elvery’s story, and quite possibly the most important, is her work itself.

The close examination of visual arts as historical documents adds depth and validity to the argument of Elvery’s role in nationalist Ireland. Although incorporating the visual arts into a historical study adds an interdisciplinary approach to the project, this method also underscores the rich complex role that the visual arts play in major events throughout the course of history. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 12

This thesis examines several of Elvery’s works, including her paintings, sculptures, stained glass, book illustrations, and casual drawings. The following chapters also briefly touch on other works of art created by those around Elvery. Material culture has long played a significant role in world events; this is nowhere more evident than in the various works of Ireland’s Arts and Crafts

Movement, a period of art that flourished after 1880 as a way to encourage traditional craftsmanship and folk design while exemplifying the culture of a given people—in Elvery’s case, the people of Ireland. In fact, in order to understand Elvery fully and her effect on Irish society, one requires a greater understanding of the shifting world around her.

Historical Context

Emerging out of late-eighteenth-century Europe with the need to unify small religious or monarchal regions into unified countries, the idea of nationalism exploded in the nineteenth century and created the proliferation of what Benedict Anderson called Imagined Communities.

What emerged consisted of mythmaking, the standardization of language, state-led education, religious hegemony, and a nationalized thematizing of the arts. Images of the personified nation,

Britannia, Germania, Marianne, and Italia flourished through the nation-making process alongside music, literature, and the visual arts. Jack Censer and Lynn Hunt comment that during the time of the French Revolution alone, there were thousands of paintings, prints, woodblocks, and engravings, which were then added to by “. . . trophies, playing cards, cockades, calendars, maps, costumes, uniforms, crockery, snuffboxes, and letterheads.”16 While much of this imagery came by way of the state (or those responsible for creating the state), nationalist imagery in

Ireland came about more than a century later and not from the top, but the middle. Through the work of artists, writers, and activists, literature and art furthered the Irish Nationalist movement

16 Jack Censer and Lynn Hunt, "Imaging the French Revolution: Depictions of the French Revolutionary Crowd," American Historical Review110 (5) (February 2005): 40. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 13 towards independence from Great Britain. This movement then led to a newly constructed identity to match the desire for a newly formed nation.

Writing in 1998, historian Charles Townshend asserts, “Around the turn of the

[twentieth] century, the trajectory of Irish nationalism shifted in a decisive way. A new focus on cultural identity radically altered the meaning of Irishness itself.”17 Rather than justifying an independent Ireland through bloodlines or racial heredity, the Celtic Revival aimed to unify

Ireland through its mythic past and rich Irish traditions. Townshend further states that, “The remarkable fusion of moral, aesthetic, and physical resistance that went to generate the Irish revival was succinctly formulated by the Archbishop of Cashel, Thomas Croke, in December

1884.”18 Croke, along with Douglas Hyde and others, helped foster “The Irish language movement—a turning away from the acculturated colonial British language, which Croke argued was a contamination to be eradicated.”19 Having a restored Irish language suggested that Ireland possessed an original self-sustaining culture. In addition, journalist and founder of The Leader

D.P. Moran led the “Buy Irish” movement beginning in 1900, which called for a boycott of all

British goods.20 According to Douglas Hyde, who later became president of Ireland,

“Independence would flow from, rather than secure, Irish identity.”21 Elvery benefitted greatly from the Buy Irish movement, which provided her with the opportunity to receive various commissions of stained glass, illustrations for children’s books, and greeting cards. Along with the revival came Ireland’s attempt to achieve autonomy from Great Britain, and the first major efforts toward Ireland’s Home Rule came with the work in the 1870s and 1880s of famed leader

17 Charles Townshend, Ireland: The 20th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 38. 18 Ibid., 39. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 44. 21 Ibid., 39. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 14

Charles Stewart Parnell.22 Historian Joseph Lee discusses the significance of the Home Rule

Party in 1989’s The Modernisation of Irish Society.

According to Lee, Parnell’s Home Rule Party became “the first modern political party in

Irish History.”23 By 1885, Irish M.P.s, who had seats in the British Parliament, consisted of

Catholics, farmers, and shopkeepers alongside the traditional landed gentry. With the 1884

Reform Act, the Home Rule Party more than tripled their voting constituency. Even still, the

Tory Party managed to defeat Home Rule bills through the 1890s. Furthermore, an ugly divorce scandal ruined Parnell’s reputation, and his politics suffered as a casualty. As with many other historians, Lee makes clear that the subsequent demise and then death of Parnell was the only reason Ireland had to wait three more decades for Home Rule. Beatrice Elvery was born into this world.

Raised by Anglo-Irish parents, Elvery came from a family of staunch loyalists. Her father was born in Ireland, but his family came from Spain by way of England, and as Elvery writes,

“found it difficult to conceive of anyone being ‘anti-British.’”24 Although she makes no mention, it is likely that J.W. Elvery approved of neither Parnell nor the Home Rule Party. Across the Irish

Sea, British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour’s efforts to appease Ireland through distraction indirectly contributed to the creation of an underserved Irish urban class. Joseph Lee writes,

“Convinced that Irish nationalism was ‘born in the peasant’s cot, where men forgive if the belly gain,’ he concentrated on improving economic conditions as an antidote to the Home Rule virus.”25 A failed redistribution of tenants, sponsored industrialization, and poorly executed

22 See Roy Foster’s Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and His Family (Sussex: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1976; NJ: Humanities Press 1979). 23 Joseph Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society: 1848-1918 (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1989), 106. 24 Beatrice Elvery, Today we will only Gossip (London: Constable & Company, 1964), 27. 25 Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society, 123. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 15 agricultural innovation all created an urban class worse off than before. Although Ireland’s education reform brought universities and literacy to Ireland, Lee explains that Balfour’s paternalism, alongside scholar Douglas Hyde’s active role in de-Anglicizing Ireland, created a greater resentment towards British rule and a greater desire for Irish Independence. While Elvery certainly contributed to the revival of Irish culture, her Protestant background and suburban upbringing shielded her from the plight of the urban and rural working class. Although Elvery certainly engaged with the Catholic working class through her family’s household staff, the artisans working at the stained glass studio, and the models working at the art academy, she knew little of their daily hardship. Nevertheless, changing attitudes and a desire for an independent identity allowed Irish women to benefit from new opportunities, as Ann Matthews explains.

According to Matthews, a loophole through the Census Bureau created the tradition of

Irish women working for the nationalist cause. She states that beginning in the early nineteenth century, census takers counted women living at home who did not engage in domestic work, as having no career, and thus marked the occupation box blank. Matthews continues,

By the early twentieth century the term ‘at home’ had expanded to become an all- encompassing description, which ranged from the servant girl between jobs, to those from the higher social classes who were literally at home and dependent on their families. It also included the daughters of small shopkeepers and small farmers who worked for the family.26

From this ‘at home’ collective came groups of women who created art and literature for the masses at the height of Ireland’s struggle for Home Rule. One such woman was none other than

Beatrice Elvery, who attended Sarah Purser’s at-home group for more than thirty years. Other women went even further by working as political activists, rally speakers, and even freedom

26 Matthews, Renegades, 22. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 16 fighters. Matthews states, “It appears that the new politics of the embryonic Irish nation were truly national and apparently inclusive, and these women with republican politics were now on the cusp of a great adventure as their involvement in the new body politic became normalized.”27

In a lecture given to the Students National Literary Society in 1909, Countess de Markievicz called the women of Ireland to action:

Regard yourselves as Irish, believe in yourselves as Irish, as units of a nation distinct from England, your Conqueror, and as determined to maintain your distinctiveness and gain your deliverance. Arm yourselves with weapons to fight your nation’s cause. Arm your souls with noble and free ideas. Arm your minds with the histories and memories of your country and her martyrs, her language and a knowledge of her arts, and her industries.28

Elvery did not arm herself literally or figuratively as Markievicz advised. In fact, Elvery never learned Irish, but she did take part in the Irish movement through her support for Home Rule and her nationalist art.

This thesis explores Elvery’s life and art in a time of heightened Irish nationalism during a period where art, in its many forms, was used to promote and reflect that nationalism. That

Beatrice Elvery, an Irish-Protestant of English and Spanish descent, raised by a shopman and a liberal-minded mother, was part of this movement is remarkable. What is more remarkable is that she has not received much scholarly attention. Well-known and documented artists, writers, actors, and philosophers, including Maud Gonne MacBride, George Bernard Shaw, and D.H.

Lawrence, surrounded Elvery. To understand this period of Ireland’s history is to understand this great artist and her work, who was unwittingly an important element in this revolutionary era, and who touched on the various strands of the Irish nationalist movement. The following

27 Matthews, Renegades, 203-204. 28 Countess de Markievicz, from In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, ed. Margaret Ward (Dublin: Attic Press, 1995), 32. Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 17 chapters illustrate how Elvery’s art explored the boundaries of Irish nationalism and how her life pushed the boundaries of womanly duty.

Chapter one focuses on the Ireland that Elvery was born into, with its changing politics, it growing urban class, and the explosion of cultural arts. Because no definitive biography exists on

Elvery, it is necessary to combine elements of chronological narrative into a scholarly examination of her work and its effects on Irish independence. Thus, this first chapter explores the years before Elvery’s birth through 1894. While none of her art is discussed, the chapter introduces the themes that run throughout the thesis. In addition to the main theme of Irish nationalism and the arts, Elvery’s life and work represents a study on twentieth-century class differences, gender norms, motherhood, and the role of religion in Irish society.

Chapter two begins when Elvery attends the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, the environment where Elvery not only became a trained artist but also became exposed to the circle of friends who influenced her understanding of the world around her. Chapter Two introduces the An Tr Gloine studio, the publishing house Cuala Press, and Elvery’s prolific use of motherhood in her paintings and sculpture. The chapter will explores other prevailing attitudes of the time through popular fiction contemporary to Elvery’s work. Lastly, the reader is introduced to Elvery’s earliest works, ranging from sculpture to stained glass.

Chapter Three covers the longest period of Elvery’s life while examining the largest number of her works, including illustrations for several books published to aid the Irish cultural movement. Spanning 1908 through 1918, chapter two follows Elvery to London, Paris, and back to Ireland. It is during these ten years that Elvery plays an active role in the Irish Renaissance with dozens of works, all glorifying Ireland as an independent state. It is also during this time Beatrice Elvery: Introduction 18 that Elvery finds a suitor, marries, and becomes a mother. Lastly, the chapter examines Elvery’s experience as a witness to World War I in England and a revolution in Ireland.

Chapter Four steps outside the chronological narrative to explore four of Elvery’s most significant works in connection with revolutionary Patrick Pearse’s all boys school, St. Enda’s.

The Irish-speaking Catholic school, which played an active role in Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, was home to Elvery’s most iconic works of art. These four works exemplify the spirit of a Free

Ireland, and this chapter requires a break from the traditional timeline. Exploring the years between 1907 and 1917, in connection with Patrick Pearse, outside of Elvery’s other experiences is necessary in order to illustrate properly the significance of these four works.

The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of significant events after both World War I and 1916, which show how Elvery’s approach to her world was just as unique as her art.

Although Elvery completed works of art through the 1950s, this thesis ends with her 1920 stained glass window in her childhood church, Tullow Parish. While there is still much more to say about Elvery, and the afterword touches briefly on this with recommendations for further study, the crux of Elvery’s nationalist message existed between 1898 and 1915, which is the period upon which this thesis focuses. Beatrice Elvery’s life and work is but a small facet of the larger movement towards Irish Independence. The lack of scholarship, however, combined with the originality of Elvery’s work and the independent spirit of Elvery’s personality, make this study a fruitful endeavor.

Chapter 1: The Birth of an Artist: 1881-1898

“There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.”

~William Butler Yeats

Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 20

Beatrice Elvery’s first years witnessed dramatic changes in Ireland. The budding artist, however, spent the first part of her long life enjoying friends, family, art, and culture. Elvery attended art school, received award after award, and experienced adventures with her circle of artists. These things existed in the forefront of Elvery’s young mind—as they would any adolescent, regardless of world events. In the periphery, however, Elvery’s world was changing.

Ireland was looking to become a nation, freed from the yoke of Great Britain, activists like

Patrick Pearse, who was executed after the failed 1916 Rebellion, looked to re-educate Irish citizens, and nationalist leaders worked to infuse an Irish culture into the .

Meanwhile, Elvery’s various works indirectly contributed to all of these changes; all the while, this young girl was coming of age not long before her nation was coming into its own.

In 1881, Ireland as a nation did not yet exist. Still subjects of the British Crown, the Irish had some liberties, such as their own seats in British Parliament and their own banking system, but they still ultimately submitted to a British paternalistic system in which most people in power were Anglo-Irish Protestant. Several hundred years of oppression towards an Irish-Catholic population and devastating famine still plagued the memories of Ireland’s people. Resentment, frustration, and the idea of liberty fueled the movement for Home Rule. During the height of

Parnellism, the Home Rule movement, and the growing modernization of Ireland’s capital city, a rubber merchant and his wife welcomed their second of seven children into a small suburb of

Dublin. Born to James Elvery and Rebecca Moss, Beatrice Elvery entered a world that was at the precipice of revolution.

To understand the Ireland in which Elvery grew up, Joseph Lee’s The Modernisation of

Irish Society: 1848-1918 (1973) provides a window much like Weber’s Peasants into

Frenchman does for France or even Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class does for Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 21

England.1 Lee’s monograph reveals a multi-layered society. While it covers a much shorter period and a much smaller population, Lee does show how politics, technology, religion, and urbanization changed the face of a people from a diverse population of individuals to a nation of

Irelanders—a society of Irish men and women. Lee begins with the devastating consequences of the Irish famine. He writes, “At least 800,000 people, about 10 percent of the population, died from hunger and disease between 1845 and 1851 . . . Six main factors influenced post-famine demographic development: the changing rural class structure, rising age at marriage, declining marriage and birth rates, a static death rate and emigration.”2 Widespread death led to not only a change in culture but also an opportunity for social stratification; survivors of the famine suddenly had more opportunity, and their emigrant relatives flooded money back into the country. It also led to opportunity for foreign investors to open businesses in a fast-growing

Dublin.

Among these investors was Beatrice Elvery’s grandfather, James Elvery, who moved his family from England sometime between 1841 and 1851. Originally silk merchants, the partly

Spanish family opened a rubber factory in Dublin center. Their shop, also known as The

Elephant House, due to its large elephant statue above the doorway, was well known as early as

1851 for its raincoats, umbrellas, and rubber boots. In fact, much of its advertising still today reports to have been open “Since 1847.” This date is significant because Dublin’s Thom’s

Directory shows no record of the business until after 1850, which makes it curious that James

Elvery would use a date so connected to one of the blackest years in Ireland’s history.

Nevertheless, the Elvery family found prosperity in their new home, as the shop still stands

1 Weber’s and Thompson’s monographs are considered by scholars to be the definitive works on the rise of nationalist thought and nation-making process for France and England respectively. 2 Joseph Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society: 1848-1918 (Dublin: Gill & MacMillan, 1973), 1. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 22 today. Not all Irish were as fortunate as the Elverys, however, and by 1880, there were renewed efforts by various groups within Ireland to break away from the British Crown.

When the idea of independence from England flourished in the 1880s, the need for an

Irish identity came with it, and some believed that this Irish identity also required a Catholic identity. According to Lee, “In no European society, including England, did the transition from loosely organized, largely local groups to the tight central control of a national organization occur so rapidly or effectively.”3 The idea set forth that a free Ireland was synonymous with a

Catholic Ireland created empowerment for Catholics, but resentment, prejudice, and aggression from the Protestant population. Charles Townshend argues, “Recognition of the Catholic identity of the vast majority of Irish people was the most fundamental, if potentially problematic, dimension of the national case.”4 Elvery’s family, being staunch Protestants, saw little motivation to support Home Rule, even though their merchant class status placed them outside of the traditional Anglo-Irish aristocracy. In fact, Irish academic Stephanie Rains, author of

Commodity Culture and Social Class in Dublin, 1850-1916,5 contends that James Elvery would have been a member of the highly secretive Dublin Traders Association, which worked to undermine the foreign-owned, large-scale department stores that threatened small businesses like

J.W. Elverys.6 Perhaps in James Elvery’s case, however, tradition and loyalty won out over the opportunity for financial stability.

While much of Ireland looked toward a Catholic Irish identity, many of its champions for

Home Rule were not Catholic—some were not even Irish. These champions, however,

3 Lee, The Modernisation of Irish Society, 106. 4 Townshend, Ireland, 32. 5 Stephanie Rains, Commodity Culture and Social Class in Dublin, 1850-1916 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010). 6 Stephanie Rains, Interview with author, Maynooth University, December 3, 2014. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 23 subsequently and directly contributed to what is known as the Irish Renaissance or Gaelic

Revival—a veritable explosion of the arts throughout the country, specifically in Dublin. Charles

Townshend asserts “The ebullience of the 1890s was heightened by a remarkable literary movement, ‘a kind of gold rush towards a true national culture’. A sense of epic historical change informed the work of a striking array of writers.”7 These writers included poets, playwrights, and actors such as W.B. Yeats, Augusta (Lady) Gregory, John Millington Synge, and Maud Gonne MacBride—all artists whom the Irish-born Elvery called friends. These individuals, however, inspired resentment from England and hostility from Catholic Ireland.

Townshend writes, “Unfortunately the increasingly embattled leaders of the literary revival failed to dispel such hostility; all three of the Abbey’s8 dominant trio (Yeats, Gregory, and

Synge) were Anglo-Irish Protestants, who looked – and in private sounded – not a little condescending to the Catholics.”9 Nevertheless, arts and language were not the only way to make a nation, and in 1884, Catholic Archbishop of Cashel, Thomas Croke, found sports to be another means to shape Ireland’s identity. According to Townshend,

Croke wrote of ‘the ugly and irritating fact that we are daily importing from England not only her manufactured goods . . . but together with her fashions, her accents, her vicious literature, her music, her dances, and her mannerisms, her games also and her pastimes, to the utter discredit of our own grand national sports.’ England’s ‘fantastic field sports,’ the averred, were ‘not racy of the soil but rather alien to it.’ His conclusion was blunt: if Ireland were to go on like this for another 20 years, ‘we had better abjure our nationality.’ He raised this alarm as he was giving his blessing to the newly established Gaelic Athletic Association, founded in Thurles, Co. Tipperary, with the apparently innocuous aims of drafting ‘new rules to aid the revival of ancient pastimes’ and devising schemes of recreation for the bulk of the people, especially the poor.’ Only its demand that Irish sport should be organized ‘by Irishmen, not Englishmen’ hinted

7 Townshend, Ireland, 46. 8 The Abbey Theatre, see Glossary. 9 Townshend, Ireland, 48. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 24

at the more pugnacious line it would soon follow in promoting games like hurling and Gaelic football.10 The creation of the GAA allowed Irish citizens to play and compete in games that honored their history, not that of a foreign nation. The movement was so successful that it became embedded in the movement towards independence, and more than a century later, the

GAA still thrives today. Like the language and arts movement, though, Irish sports created another outlet for exclusion. Indeed, Townshend observes that “The process of polarization and exclusion was also increasingly evident in the methods of the Gaelic Athletic Association, which expelled anyone who played ‘English games’.”11 For Beatrice Elvery, a mere child when the

GAA began, the idea of Irish-only sports was more significant to her understanding of the Home

Rule movement than others as her father owned prominent sporting goods store J.W. Elverys, which by the turn of the century was a fully functioning outfitter for all athletes.

Elvery’s father, William was a firm

supporter of the British Crown and openly

supported British games. As seen in photos from

their Cork location on 78 Patrick Street (Fig. 4),

Elvery’s sold equipment for all sports both

Gaelic and British. Although Elvery writes in her

memoir that her mother did not wish her children

to take over the family business, according to her

Figure 4 J.W. Elvery's 78 Patrick St. Cork, Image Courtesy son, Patrick Campbell, two of his uncles ran of National Museum of Ireland Retrieved May 1, 2015 from http://thecricketbatthatdiedforireland.com/2013/01/27/elver ys-cricket-bat-sackville-street-1916/ Elvery’s through to the 1960s and were thus

10 Townshend, Ireland, 39. 11 Ibid., 43. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 25 responsible for the move to support the GAA. In fact, Elvery’s is still its official outfitter.12

While Beatrice Elvery did not play sports or participate in the GAA, she surely would have witnessed the deep connection between sports and politics. As historian Alvin Jackson explains, the GAA was in fact intimately connected to politics.

Jackson notes that “The birth and early development of the Association coincided with the hey-day of Parnellism, and the connection was scarcely coincidental: the GAA clearly fed off the national self-confidence that Parnell had helped to cultivate and benefited from the politicization that Parnellism brought in its wake.”13 The organization brought people aligned to the same cause together in a way that fueled their passion and pride for Ireland as well as their physical prowess. To play a Gaelic sport meant that one was already fit physically, competitively minded, and adrenaline fueled. Naturally, as Jackson, points out, “The GAA . . . provided a network and spring-board for militant republicans (five of those executed after the Easter Rising had strong connections with the Association, as did many fighters in the Anglo-Irish war, including Cathal Brugha and Michael Collins).”14

The GAA also worked to promote the idea of an Irish-Ireland, in which Beatrice Elvery became involved, particularly through her work with Patrick Pearse. According to Elaine Sisson,

“Irish-Irelanders saw themselves in opposition to the more suspiciously anglicized aspects of

Irish revivalism such as literary clubs and theatres, whose members, such as Yeats and Synge, continued to write in English.”15 The concept of an Irish-Ireland, coined by D.P. Moran in 1905, required four traits: using the Irish language, membership in the Roman-, a non-

12 See “Elvery’s Sports.” Moneen Bradagh Industrial Estate. Retrieved May 1, 2015, from http://www.elverys.ie/ department/gaa/0000000007. 13 Alvin Jackson, Ireland 1798-1998 (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 180. 14 Ibid., 181. 15 Elaine Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots: St. Enda's and the Cult of Boyhood (Cork: Cork University Press, 2004), 10. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 26 materialist lifestyle, and Gaelic-only games. His 1905 essay “The Philosophy of Irish Ireland,” compiled from a series of articles published in The Leader between 1893 and 1900, called for a complete turning away from all things British.16 The idea of Irish-Ireland played a vital role in revolutionary Patrick Pearse’s worldview and quite possibly his ultimate demise, as will be shown later.

Historian Thomas Bartlett offers a different interpretation of the Gaelic Revival, arguing that it actually came about from a Protestant fear of the growing Catholic class. He writes,

The literary revival spearheaded by Yeats and his circle has sometimes been seen as a reaction to the fall of Parnell, as an attempt by culture to fill the void left by politics. Yeats himself favoured this interpretation, and while there is something in it, it should not be pushed too far. The origins of the revival can be traced generally to the growing fear of Protestant Ireland since the time of the Land War, if not O’Connell, that it would be swamped by the apparently inexorable rise of Catholic masses, ill-educated and philistine; hence the retreat to the more congenial world of pagan Ireland where aristocrats, or poets, were always in charge, and where magic and mystery were the order of the day. More precisely, the first stirrings of the revival can be sourced to the period before the Chief’s fall.17

Although Bartlett’s argument is speculative and a minority view among other scholars, the fact that the Gaelic League and the Irish Language movement existed before the fall of Parnell in

1891 suggests that there is some truth to the claim. An examination of the arts, however, shows that many Protestant members of the Revival worked alongside the Irish-Irelanders. Elvery herself created many works for not just Pearse but various Catholic organizations and publishers.

The Abbey Theatre among others produced Catholic-themed plays. Furthermore, poetry of the time glorified Irish spirituality, Protestant, Catholic, and Pagan alike. Whether the Revival came about through a need for an Irish identity or Protestant fear, unlike other nationalist movements, historian Ann Matthews argues that women played a vital role in Ireland’s struggle for

16 D.P. Moran, The Philosophy of Irish Ireland (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006). 17 Thomas Bartlett, Ireland: A History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 350. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 27 independence. This is significant because Elvery herself played a role in the Irish-Ireland movement through her art, despite her Anglo-Protestant background.

Matthews puts Elvery’s nationalist contribution in context when she refers to the Ladies

Land League (LLL) of the 1880s, which took over when leaders of the Irish Land League18 were arrested by the British Government for illegal organization.19 The Ladies Land League eventually pushed to develop an educational branch of the League, which aimed to teach Irish culture, language, and ideologies to both rural and urban children. Matthews explains how, with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the falling away of the Victorian era allowed both men and women to work together without risking social taboo or stigma, which created what Matthews calls “a social revolution” within the Gaelic League.20 The author unpacks the layers of the women’s movement by showing the class inconsistencies within the various leagues and organizations. For instance, through Sarah Purser’s studio, An Tr Gloine, there existed a group of unmarried Protestant women, Elvery included, who became artists to support themselves until they married. Matthews writes, “While the women of this group had their religious allegiance in common, a distinct social division existed which was obvious to those who belonged within.”21

The women of this movement consisted of those from the Ascendancy to those from working class-families. While they were all members of the Church of Ireland,22 they would not have comingled under ordinary circumstances. Beatrice Elvery would have found herself in the

18 Created in 1879 by Charles Stewart Parnell to represent the rights of Irish tenant farmers against their Anglo-Irish landlords. See Alvin Jackson, Ireland 1798-1998 (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) 19 At the time, any groups or clubs had to take an oath vowing allegiance to the British Crown. As a nationalist organization, the ILL refused to do so. Upon imprisonment of the men, the women took over the organization, which included representing disgruntled tenants, continuing the publication of their newsletter, "United Ireland," and providing relief to evicted families. See Matthews, Renegades, 15. 20 Matthews, Renegades, 17. 21 Ibid., 24. 22 Anglican Church in Ireland. See Glossary.

Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 28 middle strata of this subculture. Elvery in fact makes many references to the various characters both socially and economically above and below her throughout her time in Purser’s company, as will be discussed later.

Although Purser’s “At Home” circle illustrates how some women of Elvery’s time attained certain freedoms in a still very patriarchal society, most of Ireland’s women still suffered hardship. According to Thomas Bartlett, “There had never been any sort of golden age for Irish woman, but there are good grounds for claiming that the sixty years after the Famine saw a deterioration in their situation.”23 Women’s employment fell by nearly 400,000 jobs between 1881 and 1911, while male employment changed little; between 1861 and 1911, there was a 30% increase in female domestic workers; girls outnumbered boys in the workhouse and orphanages. Lastly, “female beggars out-numbered males by three to one.”24 Although Beatrice

Elvery’s life existed outside the daily chaos of the inner city, Elvery learned at a very young age about the strict class differences of Anglo-Protestant Dublin.

Elvery’s status as the daughter of a shopman set her apart from her peers; although she was Protestant and her mother was British, Elvery’s family was middle-class—too commercial for the Ascendancy,25 yet too well-off for the Catholic working class. She writes in her memoir about living in the upper-class suburb of Carrickmines, “I remember coming out of Sunday school hoping to make friends with the other children. A little girl said to me, ‘We are not allowed to play with you because your father has a shop.’ I was very impressed by this and felt it was rather distinguished for us to be set apart this way.”26 According to Irish Probate records,

23 Bartlett, Ireland, 353. 24 Ibid. 25 Members of the titled class, not quite nobility, but holding longstanding social status. 26 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 13. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 29

J.W. Elvery (Beatrice’s grandfather) died in 1886, leaving his entire estate, worth just over

£18,000, to his widow—over £1,000,000 today.27 When William, Beatrice’s father, died in 1934, his assets totaled just over £6,500—roughly £300,000 today.28 His widow, Catherine Elvery, died in 1916 with just £1,340 in assets, which was handed down to Beatrice’s unmarried sister,

Katherine.29 By today’s standards, the Elvery family would be considered upper class; however, according to census records, Beatrice’s family staffed only two servants and housed a boarder.30

Although Elvery later married and eventually inherited a title through her husband, she and her large family grew up with just enough. She attended art school through a scholarship and eventually supported herself through her work. She did not marry until the age of thirty-two and lived in her parent’s home until her wedding day. Elvery’s artistic talents, however, seemed to be an inherited trait, as she came from a long line of skilled and respected artists.

Rebecca Moss, Elvery’s mother, was a British Quaker, a singer who came from a family of successful artists.31 Although little exists about how James and Rebecca met, census records show that the Elvery family arrived in Ireland between 1841 and 1851, J.W. Elvery’s rubber business appears in Thom’s Dublin Directory by 1851,32 and by 1901, the shop was a sporting goods store run by James. The 1851 census shows a seventeen-year-old James already working

27 “Death Records” (The National Archives of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland, 1886), 191. 28 Interactive inflation calculator available at http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic- inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html. Retrieved May 1, 2015. 29 “Death Records,” (The National Archives of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland, 1916), 196. 30 “Irish Census Records” (National Archives of Ireland. 1911) retrieved May 1, 2015, http://www.census.national archives.ie/reels/nai 000230282/. 31 See Carmel Quinlan’s Genteel Revolutionaries: Anna and Thomas Haslam and the Irish Women's Movement (Cork: Cork University Press, 2005). 32 Trevor Roycroft reports that the family arrived in Ireland in 1848, but archival records have yet to support this date. See “Belleek Earthenware Plaque Belleek Earthenware Plaque e Plaque – ‘Antwerp Belgium’ by Beatrice Elvery (Lady Glenavy),” UK Belleek Collectors’ Group Newsletter (October 2008), 29 (3 ) retrieved February 26 2015, http://www.belleek.org.uk/Research%20Page/Research%20Wares/Plaque%20Elvery%20- %20Oct%202008.pdf. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 30 for his father, and Elvery writes that he started working in the business at sixteen,33 but it is unclear when he officially took over the business. Nevertheless, the Elvery family was part of a growing merchant class who benefitted from Dublin’s economic urban boom in the decades following the famine of 1847.34 In fact, this rising middle class contributed to the modernization of Ireland and its eventual rise to independence, as will be illustrated later.

Beatrice Elvery spent her childhood living in the Dublin suburbs with her parents, six siblings, a governess, and a lodger named Frank Browning. According to the 1901 census, the family staffed two servants, but by 1911, had just one, which, according to Dr. Stephanie Rains, would be considered a gauche custom by Anglo-Irish high society.35 Elvery experienced childhood in the suburb of Carrickmines, thirty minutes southeast of Dublin city center, a rather affluent neighborhood today where the roads are lined with opulent estates locked away behind grand gates. According to the current Rector, the Reverend John Tanner, of Elvery’s childhood church, Tullow Parish, Carrickmines was always a relatively wealthy area even when Elvery grew up more than a century ago.36 While the Elverys did not share in the status of their neighbors, they were still much better off than a majority of their fellow Dubliners. Bartlett reports that in 1900, 37% families lived in one-room homes compared to 15% in London and

11% in Cork; life expectancy was 62.3 years in the rest of Ireland for women, but 51.5 years for men and 55.8 for women in 1900 Dublin; the infant mortality rate was a staggering 196 in

Dublin compared to 87 for the rest of Ireland.37 Furthermore, Elaine Sisson reports that in 1910,

33 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 16. 34 See Stephanie Rains’ “Here be Monsters: The Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853 and the Growth of Dublin Department Stores,” Irish Studies Review 16:4 (2008): 487-506. 35 “Irish Census Records” (National Archives of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland, 1901) retrieved May 1, 2015, http://www. census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai003737347/; Online. Stephanie Rains, Interview with author, Maynooth University, December 3, 2015. 36 John Tanner, Interview with author, Tullow Parish, Dublin, December 6, 2015. 37 Bartlett, Ireland, 357. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 31

20,000 families in Dublin lived in one room domiciles; wages averaged between five shillings and 3 pounds per week; rape and murder were five times high than anywhere else in the country.38 Writing during the time that Elvery was attending art school, prolific Irish author

James Joyce portrayed this seedier side of the Irish in Dubliners.

Also working and creating in Dublin at the same time as Elvery, iconic writer James

Joyce constructed a wholly different interpretation of the Irish urban class, British rule, and the growing urbanization of Dublin—a city he left permanently in 1904. Completed in 1905, but not published until nine years later, James Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of short stories about the everyday people living and working in Ireland’s capital at the turn of the twentieth century. Read as a coming of age tale, Joyce’s tale introduces various characters, men, and women of all classes throughout different stages in their lives. Unlike Elvery’s elevation of the rural classes or

Yeats romanticisation of Irish folklore, Joyce illustrates a bitterness and resentment towards

Ireland.

Joyce’s various tales such as Araby, about a boy who is enamored by the commodification of his city, or After the Race, where everyone is too swept up in the glamour of automobiles to worry about the subjugated state of their country. Terence Brown writes about

Dubliners, “It is a work that . . . compels attention by the power of its unique vision of the world, its controlling sense of the truths of human experience as its author discerned them in a defeated, colonial city.”39 Joyce’s characters, consisting of drunks, hobos, pedophiles, prostitutes, and thieves interwoven with childhood innocence, adolescent awe, and romantic love, paint a portrait of Dublin much more stark and real than the Ireland of the Celtic Revival. In fact, Joyce disapproved of the revival, labeling it opportunistic, lacking in artistic integrity, but simply a

38 Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 17. 39 Terence Brown, Introduction to Dubliners by James Joyce (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), xlv. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 32 means to literary success.40 Joyce’s Dubliners speaks to the divisions and conflict that historians such as Ann Matthews and Roy Foster speak of in their histories of Ireland in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, Elvery remembers her childhood with fondness and joy.

Elvery seemed to approach most things with a lightheartedness, including religion.

Although her father was a devoted Protestant, Beatrice saw little value in religiosity. She writes how she and her siblings would hold “‘Pagan Rites’ at the cromlech in the Druids Glen, and when [they] found a dead bird [they] burnt it as a sacrifice.”41 At thirteen, Elvery attended a children’s retreat where a young missionary asked all the children to accept Christ. Out of everyone, Elvery alone chose not to raise her hand. She writes, “I think that my feelings were those of indignation at the unwarranted intrusion into my private life.”42 Shortly after, she stopped attending church, despite her father’s pleas. Elvery’s lack of Christian piety is ironic as a great many of her works throughout her life depict religious imagery. While one may argue that

Elvery created what her patrons requested, a collection of bookplates held at the National Library of Ireland shows Elvery’s personal bookplate (Fig. 5) with an image of an angel inspiring the writer of Psalms. Some of her personal letters also mention a vague reverence for God. In fact, her own memoirs recall several trips to Sunday service and a rather emotional moment when she fears that her dear friend Kot may not believe in God at all.

Although the Elverys were a family with few resources, Beatrice’s mother placed a great deal of Figure 5 Beatrice Elvery, Bookplate, (n.d.) BW Illustration mounted on sheet, National Library of Ireland

40 Brown, Introduction, xxviii. 41 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 17. 42 Ibid., 21. Beatrice Elvery: The Birth of an Artist 33 importance on education. Rebecca wanted her children to be more than merchants, and Beatrice developed her talent as an artist early in life. At the age of thirteen, Elvery earned a scholarship to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, where she continued to earn her tuition through her work, which received awards and accolades year after year. As early as her seventeenth year,

Elvery began to stand out at the DMSA as an exceptional talent, captivating beauty, and exuberant personality. From a very early age, Beatrice Elvery began to leave her mark on a newly shaping nation.

Chapter 2: An Artist Blooms (1898-1910)

And there is nothing left to do But to kiss once again, and part, Nay, there is nothing we should rue, I have my beauty,--you your Art, Nay, do not start, One world was not enough for two Like me and you.

~ Oscar Wilde

Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 35

Between 1898 and 1910, Beatrice Elvery established her career as a successful and respected artist. Her work reflected the changing landscape of an Ireland that worked to solidify its identity through the creation of an Irish material culture. Elvery’s sculpture glorifying motherhood foreshadowed her use of the Virgin Mother as an ideal Irish mother. Her work with various publishing houses and national exhibits illustrates how Elvery’s art permeated a mass

Irish audience, suggesting a direct effect on Ireland’s nationalist goals. As Terence Brown explains, a desire for a free Ireland led to the rediscovery and unearthing of ancient Celtic artifacts, which found new uses in mainstream iconography. He writes, “Ireland, such work signified in bookplates, medals, jewelry, Christmas cards, Celtic lettering on shop fronts, letterheads, postage stamps, and tombstones, was once the center of great artistic achievement, was dignified by the peculiar genius of her people, and could become so again.”1 Elvery’s work shows this resurrection of the Gaelic past with Celtic knots intertwining through her stained glass windows, the Irish Cross standing watch over the in Éire (1907), and the Gaelic sayings etched beneath her religious woodcarvings. Elvery took part in this movement with her stained glass works produced in Sarah Purser’s studio An Tr Gloine, which Brown mentions, alongside artists, Harry Clarke, Michael Healy, and Evie Hone.

Although Brown fails to mention the work of Elvery, he does elaborate on her peers, and one of the successful state-sponsored art programs in which Elvery became a part, “Many of the

Irish treasures which fired the imaginations of designers and artists in the early twentieth century had been works of Christian art, associated with worship and piety.”2 Beatrice Elvery’s time at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art introduced her to the whole world within a few classroom

1 Brown, Ireland, 77. 2 Ibid., 78. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 36 studios. It is here that she met lifelong friends, fell in and out of love, mastered her talent, became a professional artist, developed a passion for her country, and eventually made connections that led to marriage and family. Alan Denson’s documentary biography on artist

John Hughes includes records of Elvery winning awards, sometimes multiple awards, every year between 1898 and 1902.3 Elvery also made her connection with noted artist Sarah Purser here, which allowed her to earn a living through stained glass. Furthermore, her friendships with other artists connected her to the Abbey Theatre and eventually various publishing houses who commissioned her work. Earning a scholarship to DMSA at the early age of thirteen was a moment that would set Elvery’s life on a course that would directly interact with the events leading up to Ireland’s independence.

It was at the DMSA that Elvery met the first of her two lifelong mentors, William Orpen. Born in 1878,

Orpen became successful early in life. Like Elvery, he attended both the DMSA and the Slade, a prestigious art school in London. John Rothenstein argues that, “Orpen was financially one of the most successful, and eventually one of the most honoured, portrait painters working in

Britain in the twentieth century.”4 In fact, his 1909 Bridgit

(Fig. 6) shows a young Beatrice Elvery with her ginger Figure 6 Sir William Orpen, Bridgit - a picture of Miss Elvery, 1909, Oil on canvas, 43.25 x 33.25 in, Private Collection

3 Awarded Book Prizes by Countess Cadogan in 1898, 1899, and 1900; Awarded the Queen’s Prize in 1901; Awarded the King’s Medal in 1901; See Alan Denson, John Hughes: A Documentary Biography (Dublin: Alan Denson, 1969) 61-79. 4 John Rothenstein, “Sir William Orpen: Artist Biography,” Tate Britain (2015), retrieved March 172015, from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-william-orpen-1725. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 37

hair beneath Orpen’s hat, which she

borrowed for the painting. The work

illustrates Orpen’s talent and Elvery’s free

spirit. Known mostly for his portraits and

self-portraits, Orpen was a celebrated

teacher. He worked as a war artist for

Great Britain during World War I, and

received a knighthood in 1918. Although

he spent most of his life in Britain, Ireland Figure 7 John Hughes, Queen Victoria Memorial, 1908, Photographed at Leinster House before being moved in 1948 celebrates his life and work as her own.

Elvery’s second mentor John Hughes, was born in 1865, began teaching sculpture at

DMSA, and moved to Paris around the turn of the century to work on commissioned monuments for the British government. His most notable work was of Queen Victoria for Leinster House

(Fig. 7), Dublin’s Parliament building today. The work was removed and placed in storage after

Ireland’s independence from Britain.5 Other notable works include the monument of revolutionary, Charles Kickham in Tipperary, and a war memorial in Dublin Castle’s Conference

Center Garden.6 Both Orpen and Hughes are still celebrated in Ireland today as talented modern artists who provided the region with paintings and sculptures still found throughout the country as well as in the rest of Europe.

5 Many in Ireland felt resentment towards Queen Victoria for her role (or lack thereof) in the Irish Famine as well as her lack of support for Home Rule at the end of the nineteenth century; thus, there existed a national movement to remove all monuments of the English Queen throughout the country. In fact, the Cork University staff and faculty held a mock funeral service for their statue and buried her on campus. It was not until decades later that university leaders chose to unbury the hatchet by exhuming the entombed effigy and placing her on display—behind bulletproof glass, no less. See John A. Murphy, The College, A History of Queens/ University College Cork (Cork: Cork University Press), 233-234. 6 The monument consists of a dying soldier overlooked by Erin—Mother Ireland. See Denson’s John Hughes. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 38

Elvery’s memoir suggests an air of hero worship for both

Hughes and Orpen on her part, and letters from both figures show a reciprocal admiration for Elvery. Some letters even suggest that

Hughes and Elvery discussed marriage at one point, although it may have been in jest.7 Art historian Nicola Gordon Bowe is of the opinion that Elvery may have carried on love affairs with both

Orpen and Hughes, yet nothing definitive remains in her or their writings. Elvery recounts about Hughes, “Hughes was a lovely person to laugh with, and the relationship between him and myself was one of warm sympathetic friendship. It was also on my side one Figure 8 Beatrice Elvery, The Mother, 1903/4, Colored Plaster of complete devotion to a beloved master.”8 Elvery’s early Relief, 40 x 20 cm, Private Collection sculptures reflect a direct influence by Hughes while her strong use of tenebrism9 reflects

Orpen’s teaching. Both relationships, however, in whatever capacity, lasted until Orpen’s death in 1931 and Hughes’ death in 1949. In fact, Elvery paid for a commemorative plaque in 1969 to be hung outside Hughes’ last Dublin Home in his honor.10

Some of Elvery’s earliest works consisted of various sculptures, under the tutelage of her mentor, John Hughes. The work foreshadows her interest in nationalist themes; they drew critical attention, while at the same time drawing on a wider world. The Mother from 1903-4 (Fig. 8) is a colored plaster relief, roughly sixteen inches high of a, “. . . young Irish peasant Virgin with her baby snuggled up to her shoulder.”11 Edward Martyn wrote in the Gaelic League’s weekly

7 See Alan Denson’s John Hughes. 8 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 34. 9 A Baroque technique that required broad brushstrokes of heavy shading to display a divine light onto the canvas. 10 Denson, John Hughes, 110. 11 Bowe, The Arts and Crafts Movement, 126. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 39

publication, An Calideamh Soluis (The Sword of Light) in 1905, “Why cannot we

have statues in [our churches] by such sculptors as . . . Miss B. Elvery?”12 Her

Mother and Baby from 1906 (Fig. 9), plaster, patinated to resemble lead, is

similar to her earlier 1903 piece at eight inches tall. In Nicola Gordon Bowe’s

opinion, Elvery “evok[ed] early Renaissance precursors . . . [with an] unforced

rustic bearing and clothing of the late nineteenth century French realist school

of Dalou, emulated by the new school of English decorative sculptors.”13 Her

paintings and sculptures are still appreciated today; Mother and Baby

recently sold at auction for €350.14 Furthermore, her Mother and Child,

Figure 9 Beatrice Elvery, painted sometime after her marriage, but undated, recently sold for Mother and Baby, 1906, Patinated Plaster, 20.3 x 8.2 cm, Private Collection €5,700.15

Although these pieces reflected the efforts of the Irish-Ireland movement to elevate the

Irish peasantry and idealize nationalist motherhood, Elvery provides a broader interpretation of these early works. Her 1904 Glendalough (Fig. 10) shows a surrealist bust of a woman’s face with fluid bodies swimming in her flowing locks. When critics claimed the piece was an allegory to Mother Ireland, Elvery replied in a written correspondence,

It had nothing to do with . . . Politics. I, and a brother and sister and a couple of other young people once rode to Glendalough on our bicycles … We stayed the night in the Hotel there—at midnight we went out in a boat on the upper lake—it was still a very still summer night—I remember that we stopped rowing, and sat ‘to listen to the silence’—I also remember the extraordinary sense of something brooding over the whole place, holding it together. When we returned home the

12 As quoted Bowe, Arts and Crafts Movement, 126. 13 Ibid., 127. 14 Invaluable. “Lot 114: Lady Beatrice Glenavy (1883-1970) Mother Ireland Terracotta, 26cm (10¼''),” Invaluable.com, retrieved May 26 2015, http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/lady-beatrice-glenavy-1883-1970- mother-ireland-114-c-e1b442d928. 15 Invaluable. “Lot 30: Lady Beatrice Glenavy RHA (1883 - 1968) Mother and Child,” Invaluable.com, retrieved May 26 2015, http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/lady-beatrice-glenavy-rha-1883-1968-mother-an-30-c- e7d4aadd3e. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 40

next day, I tried to model this feeling in clay—the little figures are the seven churches. . . I was 21 years of age at the time, a pupil of John Hughes before he left the School of Art in that year, 1904.16

John Hughes marveled at Elvery’s uncanny skill in a letter to Sarah

Purser in 1901. He writes, “Miss Elvery did an extremely fine head of an old woman in six hours. She then went home and had measles same as last year. She is now at work again.”17 Motherhood continued to be a theme in Elvery’s work through 1915, and although some works were political, a great deal of her work reflected Elvery’s personal views and experiences. Her Figure 10 Beatrice Elvery, Glendalough, 1904, Painted Plaster, 12.7 x 14 cm, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin glorification of the female, however, acted as a perfect vehicle for furthering the idea of an independent Ireland.

The de-Anglicization Movement at the turn of the twentieth century opened up opportunities for artists like Elvery to receive commissions across many genres. Between 1905 and 1915, Elvery illustrated children’s books for several Irish publishers, made Christmas cards for The Cuala Press, completed paintings, and sculptures for various exhibits and private collectors, as well as designed and created stained glass windows for churches throughout

Ireland and even America. Her stained glass windows adorning the country’s churches are littered throughout Ireland’s countryside.18 In 1905, she completed with the help of Catherine O’Brien for County Laois’ Church of Ireland in Stradbally.19 The two-window installation features Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene at dawn with the Angel Gabriel in the

16 As quoted in Bowe’s Arts and Crafts Movement, 128. Original letter unavailable. 17 Denson, John Hughes, 141. 18 See Gordon Bowe’s Gazetteer, 31-79. 19 The only image available is copyrighted by the Church of Ireland and unavailable for use, but it can be viewed at http://www.gloine.ie/gloine/images/images/stradbally-170580-p006.jpg. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 41 background. The rising sun appears over the crosses of Calvary in the distance. While Jesus is hieratically superior to Mary Magdalene, her firm stance and uncovered face suggests that Mary does not fear Jesus, as some Christian traditions assume. Below the scene are the words, “I am the resurrection and the life,” which come from John 11:25—not the moment when Jesus appears to Mary after his death but when Jesus raises Mary’s brother Lazarus from the dead. The actual depicted scene does not occur until John 20:11, where Mary—a woman—is the first person to whom the Risen Christ chooses to reveal himself.

While the patron who commissioned the work more likely decided Elvery’s choice of content, it is significant here that a window depicting the Resurrection features a woman. In fact, it is significant that the story from John is used at all, since Mary Magdalene’s feast day was removed from the Common Book of Prayer in 1552, as Protestant churches did not approve of revering saints. Furthermore, both Calvin and Luther wrote against Mary Magdalene’s authority; thus, using the story in John 20 where Jesus chooses to reveal himself first to Mary and then make her one of his apostles would go against Anglican tradition. In fact, according to J. Frank

Henderson, “Increased devotion to Mary Magdalene among Catholics in the late sixteenth century and afterwards was likely to have been mostly a reaction to what the reformers were saying and doing about the saints in general and Mary Magdalene in particular.”20

Consequentially, by using the image of Mary Magdalene in connection with the resurrection story from John, Elvery represents a Catholic theme inside the walls of an Anglican church. One of her other early pieces, created for her childhood church Tullow Parish, did not necessarily speak to her themes of motherhood or nationalism but does act as a shining example of her talent as an artist.

20 J. Frank Henderson, “The Disappearance of the Feast of Mary Magdalene from the Anglican Liturgy,” Magistra. 19:1, (Summer 2013): 67. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 42

In 1907, she created the three-window installation of an

angel—modeled by Elvery’s younger sister (Fig. 13)

watching over The Good Samaritan (Fig. 12) next to The

Prodigal Son (Fig. 11). The piece illustrates two of Christ’s

Figure 12 Beatrice Elvery, Angel, 1907, Stained lessons side by side as if occurring simultaneously. The Glass, Tullow Parish, Carrickmines, Dublin rich blues and reds set before a lush countryside, peaceful livestock, and Romanesque architectural detail fill the space with movement, while the angel atop, holding scripture, set the peaceful and comforting tone of the piece. Gordon Bowe is correct in her assertion that “Her windows display her unerringly

dramatic and graphic treatment,

sonorous sense of rich colour and

instinctive feeling for enchanting,

specifically Irish detail.”21 Elvery

also managed to work on Figure 11Figure 11 Beatrice Elvery, windows for American churches, Prodigal Son, 1907, Stained Glass, Tullow Parish, Carrickmines, Dublin although the specific locations have yet to be uncovered. Gordon

Bowe’s Gazetteer lists several windows in North America, but

credits them to other artists. Both Elvery’s memoirs and those of

her sister, Dorothy Kay, however, mention Elvery doing work for Figure 13 Figure 11Figure 11 Beatrice Elvery, Good Samaritan, America.22 Elvery never traveled there herself, but it is likely that 1907, Stained Glass, Tullow Parish, Carrickmines, Dublin

21 Gordon Bowe, Arts and Crafts Movement, 131. 22 Dorothy Kay, The Elvery Family: A Memory (Cape Town: The Carrefour Press, 1991), 16; Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 87; Also, see Elvery’s caricature drawing in Kay’s The Elvery Family, 15. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 43 she at least took part in some of the project designs. Nevertheless, Elvery’s work in Ireland earned widespread attention through national exhibits, art school publications, book illustrations, and dozens of windows throughout Ireland, as discussed later.

The de-Anglicization movement, which aimed to flood Ireland with Irish-made goods, while at the same time boycotting British goods, allowed the simultaneous opportunity for women like Elvery to achieve upward mobility and a place outside the domestic sphere. Elvery notes in a letter to her sister Dorothy that while the work kept her busy, most patrons paid very little. Although the movement allowed for more opportunities, it reduced many artists to working-class wages. She remembered, “I was being paid at exactly the same rate as the boy who was whitewashing the kitchen, or the men who were fixing the new grates and I was getting half as much for my time as the men who came to lay linoleum and clean the windows.”23

Although she was paid little, Elvery still lived at home for most of this period, and the wages still managed to contribute positively to the family’s income. Her sister Dorothy writes in her memoirs that because of her sister, “Beatty,” the other Elvery siblings could afford college and even travel to luxurious cities like Paris.24 Elvery’s art school days also exposed her to new ideas. She writes about her father, “He was most distressed when I said I had met people who thought Ireland should have Home Rule. It was as if I was getting into bad company.”25 Elvery writes of An Tr Gloine owner, Sarah Purser,

Sarah Purser’s ‘At Home’ Day was the only remaining salon in the city, which retained the tradition of a society rapidly passing away—an Anglo-Irish salon with an international atmosphere. Her witty and caustic tongue was as sharp and pointed as Swift’s; indeed, she was in the tradition of Swift, and could not tolerate humbug or bear patiently with platitudes. . . . She was a Nationalist when most of

23 Quoted in Kay, The Elvery Family: A Memory, 1. 24 Kay writes, “The days spent in Paris were wonderful to me. . . I think Beatty must have paid my expenses, for we were not rich and my father worked against great odds to keep us all going.” The Elvery Family: A Memory, 45. 25 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 24. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 44

her friends were Unionists. She was a firm Parnellite and did not care whom she offended in defense of the leader.

Home Rule was not her father’s only fear, however. Later, when Beatrice Elvery received an opportunity to spend three weeks in South Kensington for an art fellowship, her father strangely enough warned her about the dangers of Catholicism.

Although Kensington was in England—an Anglican country—not in Ireland—a predominantly Catholic region—South Kensington is home to large French population, from a predominantly Catholic country. While most fathers worried about the safety and chastity of their daughters, William Elvery wanted to protect his children from the evils of Irish Nationalism and Papism. Elvery, of course, saw no danger in a Free Ireland. She surrounded herself with artists and playwrights such as the Yeats family, George Moore, Lady Gregory, and George

Russell—all Protestants. Elvery writes about the Celtic Revival, “Everyone seemed to be doing something for Ireland, and without shedding a drop of their own or anyone else’s blood.”26

As a way to increase awareness and support for Irish

culture, the Gaelic League created an annual event to highlight

Ireland’s great masters. Elvery presented various works several

years in a row at the Gaelic League’s Oireachtas salon in the

Dublin Concert Hall of the Rotunda—considered very much a

Nationalist affair.27 Her 1907 The Bath (Fig. 14) introduced a

theme that Elvery would carry throughout her work over the Figure 14 Beatrice Elvery, The Bath, 1907, Painted and Stained Glass Panel, 30 x 30 cm, Private Collection next several years. Painted and stained glass, less than twelve

26 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 28. 27 Held since 1897, The Oireachtas na Gaeilge (ɛrʲaxt̪ˠasˠ nə ˈɡeːlʲɟə), or Gaelic Festival, featured visual arts, theatre, and dancing all highlighting the rich traditions native to Ireland. Interestingly, the term Oireachtas, connected to nobility, has been the Irish title for Dublin Parliament since 1922. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 45 inches square, the panel shows Mary drying off the anointed savior, while a nearby angel plays in the used (but not in the least bit dirty) bathwater. Elvery places the Holy Family in an Irish home, wearing Irish clothes. Despite Romanesque architectural detail, the stonework walls,

Mary’s straw stool, and the wooden bathtub place the home in the Irish countryside rather than the city—where the panel is exhibited. The League commented on The Bath, “Miss Elvery’s delightful little sacred interiors—the home of Nazareth as it might be seen by the eyes of simple loving country folk in Ireland.”28 Placing a biblical narrative into a modern context is a common tradition among the great masters; most works aimed to connect the viewer with the holy figures whom the viewer was instructed to emulate.29

Popular—although not originating—during the Counter Reformation, religious paintings

existed to propel the masses into the arms of the Church.

In fact, the modern word, “propaganda,” originates from

the 1622 Papal creation of Catholic missionaries.

Formalized through the Council of Trent in 1563, the

Catholic Church decreed that all art must “Be direct and

compelling in its narrative presentation, that it was to

provide an accurate presentation of the biblical narrative

or saint’s life, rather than adding incidental and imaginary

30 Figure 15 Artemisia Gentileschi, 1609, Oil on moments, and that it was to encourage piety.” Artemisia canvas, 1.165m by 0.865m, Spada Gallery, Rome. Gentileschi’s (1609) Virgin and Child (Fig. 15) depicts a

28 Quoted in Gordon Bowe, The Arts and Crafts Movement, 128. 29 Caravaggio’s 1601 Supper at Emmaus shows Christ and his followers dressed as common Italians, which garnered negative attention from his critics who accused him of belittling the Son of God. See Genevieve Warwick’s Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion, Reception (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006), 243. 30 John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke. Art in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: Pearson, 2011), 514. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 46 seated Mary preparing to nurse, at her breast, a freshly bathed infant Jesus. The work, heavy with tenebrism, a Baroque-era chair, and seventeenth-century Roman dress, connects the viewer with the Virgin and child while also instructing the viewer about the merits of motherhood—most specifically breastfeeding, a task many women of the time left for the wet nurse.

Elvery’s work does not necessarily instruct in this manner, but reinforces the message that Irish mothers already do the work of saints, and Irish children already emulate the very being of Christ. Rather than prescriptive, Elvery’s mother figure is descriptive. Irish Republican motherhood differed from traditional nationalist ideals, as Ireland did not need women to have as many babies as possible for the strength of the nation. Ireland needed independence immediately; the nation had not the time for babies to grow up. Ireland, however, did need mothers to raise their children with the knowledge of Ireland’s mythical legacy, the strength and courage to stand against an empire, and faith in a Christian God who saw them as an independent nation. Elvery later refashioned her panels into illustrations that served the purpose as companions to poems and stories on mass-produced Christmas cards, and they also appeared inside the pages of inexpensive poetry books published by the Cuala Press.

The Cuala Press, founded in 1908 by Yeats’ sister Elizabeth, existed as an inexpensive and accessible publishing house to further the Celtic Revival movement. Before its last publication in 1946, the Press had published over seventy titles, including poetry, short stories, prints, and graphics. Elvery was just one contributor. Her Virgin Ironing (Fig. 16), in 1910 also printed as Christmas cards, accompanied Mary E. Coleridge’s poem “Mother of God.” The simple ink drawing, hand colored by Coleridge, shows a dutiful Mary ironing clothes and shushing raucous angels who risk disturbing the infant Christ in slumber. Although The Cuala

Press emulated a New Ireland with egalitarian ideals, this working female artist, not yet a wife or Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 47

mother, depicts the ideal mother as one who not only

brings forth saviors, but also quiets angels, all while

gleefully carrying out her household duties. While

some scholars may see this illustration as an example

of the early twentieth-century patriarchal call for

womanly virtue, Elvery herself saw motherhood as the

only true form of fulfillment. In her memoir, she recalls

her jealousy when her sister Dorothy gave birth to her

first child: Figure 16 Beatrice Elvery, Virgin Ironing, 1910, 24.1 x 20.9 cm, Cuala Press, National Library of Ireland While I was still at the Slade, my sister Dorothy wrote to me from South Africa to tell me that she was going to have a baby. . . I felt that she had passed by me and gone ahead of me. Though she was younger than I was, she had achieved something which was much more worthwhile than what I was doing . . . Having a baby seemed the only possible satisfaction and fulfillment.31

During a time when women, including those Elvery called friends, were fighting for the right to vote, the right to work, and the right to be heard, Elvery, a working and esteemed artist, at times it appeared, would have traded it all for soiled nappies and wrinkled sheets. While a great deal of her work concerned the home, her education and social circle exposed her to the great debates and philosophies of the day.

Elvery’s position as an artist placed her around people who shaped European society as early as 1890 and as late as 1950. She writes about a debate between G.K. Chesterton and

George Bernard Shaw at the Abbey Theatre:

I remember going to it and hearing Shaw talking at length . . . A man in the pit got up and asked why Mr. Shaw didn’t speak of something that really mattered, like

31 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 52. Beatrice Elvery: An Artist Blooms 48

the seven hundred years of English oppression of the Irish people. Shaw paused for a second, then arms folded, stepped forward to the edge of the stage; a long arm shot out, one finger extended admonishingly. He said, ‘Mark my words, God is not mocked. As surely as the ichthyosaurus disappeared from the face of the earth, so will man cease to exist if he is unable or unwilling to adapt himself to his surroundings.’ We were left to infer that people who talked endlessly about past oppression served no useful purpose in a changing world.”32

While Shaw was in support of Home Rule, appearing publically alongside Irish diplomat,

Roger Casement—later executed in 1916—and participating in public protests, he was adamantly against violent means.33 He wrote often in Sydney and Beatrice Webb’s paper, The

New Statement, about the catastrophic consequences a war with England would bring. Elvery continued to encounter Shaw throughout her life. In fact, she met with him in 1923 and completed sketches that he used as inspiration for his play St. Joan.

Elvery met and socialized with many prominent public personalities such as author

George Moore, ill-fated explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Kathleen Scott, artist Hugh Lane, grand-daughter of Charles Darwin, Gwen, poet Francis Carco, author Aldous Huxley, politician

Sir Horace Plunkett, revolutionary Roger Casement’s brother, Tom, playwright Denis Johnston, film actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, the first female Master of the professional hunting team,

Galway Blazers, Molly O’Rorke, as well as poet Iris Tree, and painter Curtis Moffatt. Although

Elvery herself may not have changed the world, she existed on a plane of social change, surrounded by many people who altered the course of history. In her small way, Beatrice Elvery was a pebble tossed into the stream of a changing Ireland.

32 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 30. 33 See Archibald Henderson’s George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works, a Critical Biography (Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2014); Frank Harris’ George Bernard Shaw: An Unauthorised Biography (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 2008); and Tracy C. Davis’ George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1994).

Chapter 3: An Irish Artist in London

“To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.”

~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 50

By 1908, Elvery had grown tired of stained glass and, with a monetary gift from her aunt, left for the Slade School Art Academy in London. Established in 1871, the University College of

London Slade School of Art was and still is one of Europe’s most prestigious fine arts academy.

Named after Barrister Felix Slade who provided endowments for art schools at Oxford,

Cambridge, and UCL, the university quickly became a center for great artists, produced dozens of the world’s top artists, including filmmakers, and still holds a vast collection of original works.1 Elvery’s experiences at the Slade influenced the woman she would become.

Furthermore, her lifestyle represents a unique portrait of a woman living in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lastly, Elvery’s work further reflects Irish nationalist sentiments surrounding her work and school life.

Although Elvery returned to Ireland throughout her life and even continued working with stained glass, in London, she experienced for the first time what it meant to be Irish. Despite her

Irish birth, Elvery’s Anglo-Protestant background made her English to her Irish-Catholic neighbors, but in England, her red hair, accent, and Irish birth made her completely Irish. Elvery spent several years in London, but always called Ireland home, returned many times, spent the majority of her years there, and was finally laid to rest there. In fact, during the period that she resided in London with her husband, she traveled back home to Dublin for the birth of her first two children, so they “should be born in Ireland.”2 She also recounts in her memoir the unique bond she shared with writer Katherine Mansfield, “It was rather as if we were both exiles and did not quite ‘belong’ in London, but we both loved being alive in this wonderful, beautiful, tortuous, and often torturing world.”3 Elvery also learned humility at the Slade. She writes in her

1 Patrick Foster, "The Good University Guide," The London Times (2009), retrieved May 1 2015, http:// www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/?AC_sub=Art+and+Design&x=12&y=1&sub=8. 2 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 72. 3 Ibid., 69. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 51 memoirs that renowned teacher Henry Tonks saw little talent in her life drawing and even questioned the validity of her reputation.4 Elvery soldiered on, however, continued to work, reunited with old friends like William Orpen, and reveled in the liveliness of London.

While studying at the Slade, Elvery was courted by a Cambridge student, Dominick

Spring-Rice, who was also from Ireland. It was through Dominick’s mother that she encountered the movement in England. Elvery writes, “I admired the courage and determination of these women and even got as far as trying to sell the paper Votes for Women to people standing in theatre queues, but without much success. My heart was not in it.”5 Although women’s suffrage organizations were well known in Ireland, Elvery’s circle stood outside of them. In fact,

Countess de Markievicz received ridicule from noted suffragist Hannah Sheehy Skeffington for spending too much effort on Home Rule rather than votes for women.6 Elvery still managed during this time to work actively for the

Cuala Press, however, continuing her theme of the ideal Irish mother.

In 1911, Elvery created The

Nativity (Fig. 17), which depicts a unique representation of Mary’s birth. Here, Mary kneels in the stable, already anointed by

God, as shown by her simple halo, waiting for the Christ child to arrive. Elvery

Figure 17 Beatrice Elvery, The Nativity, 1911, 15.9 x 17.1 cm, Cuala Press, National Library of Ireland

4 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 50. 5 Ibid., 52. 6 See Ann Matthews’ Renegades; Cliona Murphy’s The Women's Suffrage Movement and Irish Society in the Early Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); and Margaret Ward’s Hanna Sheehy Skeffington: A Life (Dublin: Attic Press, 1997). Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 52 depicts Jesus as an already young boy wrapped in a magical floating womb, sent directly from the heavens. The background features a landscape scene of the Irish countryside paired with the

North Star over Mount Sinai, tame livestock peacefully witnessing the miracle arrival, and the

Holy Spirit perched as a dove on a nearby windowsill. Although Mary is not visibly pregnant, the setting of the manger and the title of the scene make clear that Elvery is depicting the birth of

Jesus. This illustration accompanies a fourteenth-century poem, not about the Nativity but the

Annunciation:

I sing of a maiden That is [matchless] King of all Kings To her son she [chose]. . . He came [all] so still There his mother was As Dew in April That falleth on the grass . . . Mother and maiden Was never none but she Well may such a lady [God’s] mother be.7

That Mary is not pregnant but receives Christ onto her lap by pure magic suggests Irish folklore influence, where fairies and other mythical beasts dominated stories with spells, incantations, and mystical appearances. The poem itself is actually an English bard’s song and believed to originate in the thirteenth century.8 Here, the Cuala Press breaks custom and uses English-made literature rather than an Irish poem. The illustration, all the same, continues Elvery’s theme that

Mary, mother of Jesus, carries the same traits as the typical everyday Irish country maid. The

Virgin Mother, kneeling in an Irish country stable, wearing Irish peasant dress, greets her child with joy. Elvery’s depiction of the ideal mother is not unattainable or unrealistic but a depiction

7 Author Unknown, "A Carol," ill. Beatrice Elvery, The Cuala Press (December 1911), 19. 8 Laura Saetveit Miles, The Annunciation as Model of Meditation: Stillness, Speech and Transformation in Middle English Drama and Lyric in Marginalia, Vol. 2 – 2004–2005 Cambridge Yearbook (Cambridge, 2005). Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 53 of an everyday woman awaiting the arrival of her son. Elvery’s move to London finally grants her the opportunity to start a family of her own—at least after a tedious six-year courtship.

Three years after her entrance to the Slade, Elvery met Gordon Campbell, a barrister from the Irish Ascendancy class, and after a six-year engagement, she married at the age of thirty-two, late in life even for Ireland, where many women after the turn of the twentieth century married much later than women elsewhere in Europe. Between 1901 and 1911, the average marrying age for women in Ireland was twenty-six.9 While Elvery never expressly states why she married later, she does discuss difficulty in finding a suitor whose family would accept her family’s merchant class status. Furthermore, Elvery’s letters to her sister Dorothy hint that her employer at An Tr Gloine was equally reluctant to let Elvery run off to be married.

Sometime before 1912, Elvery sent a cartoon to her sister Dorothy depicting Sarah Purser urging Elvery to postpone her upcoming marriage to Gordon Campbell. Elvery captions, “Now just don’t you think of getting married till the summer. Let him come over and be nice to me at

Easter, and you go on with your work.”10 Although tradition commonly assumed that women work only until they married, Elvery worked throughout her life, and completed stained glass windows for Purser’s studio well into the 1920s. Nicola Gordon Bowe writes that throughout

Elvery’s life, she worked in stained glass, taught, modeled, painted, illustrated, and drew anatomical and archaeological renderings.11

Her aforementioned caricature of Lady Gregory also may suggest that her work, career, and education kept her too busy to consider the married life. Writing to fellow artist Oliver

Shepard about Elvery’s marriage to Campbell, John Hughes laments, “I am distressed to hear

9 Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland: 1900-2000 (Dublin: Profile Books, 2010), 498. 10 Dorothy Kay, The Elvery Family: A Memory (Cape Town: The Carrefour Press, 1991), 15. 11 Gordon Bowe, The Arts & Crafts Movement, 130. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 54 that she is finally going to be married . . .what surprises me most is that she has waited so long!

Perhaps nothing will come of it this time either . . . it’s a good thing she did not ask me for my hand in marriage. Fatal beauty such as mine could not be faithful. But I found her infinitely likable.”12 Elvery and Campbell had a child, Patrick, within their first year of marriage, Bridgit a year later, and Michael nearly a decade after. She does not discuss the large gap between children nor why they had so few compared to Elvery’s family of nine and Campbell’s family of twelve. It is evident, however, that Elvery continued to work successfully throughout her children’s upbringing, completing commissioned work, stained glass for Sarah Purser’s An Tr

Gloine, illustrations for the Yeats’ family journal, and the Cuala Press.

Elvery’s marriage to Campbell did cause a stir, however, among the titled classes, as

Campbell was the child of a Lord, and Elvery’s father still only a shopman. Elvery hints in her memoirs that their long engagement of six years was because Campbell’s family wished him to break off the union. In fact, both Elvery and her sister Dorothy recall Elvery’s earlier engagement to an unknown figure, when she was in her late teens. This suitor did fall sway to his upper class family and backed out of the marriage before it began. Elvery also notes, almost in jest, that before Campbell, she had many lovers. She writes, “My mother’s one idea was to get her daughters married, but my romances never came to anything. The young men I preferred always seemed to be married to someone else.”13 Although Campbell seemed to be a conservative match for Elvery, his interests matched Elvery’s quite well. She writes, “Gordon

Campbell had just discovered the existence of music, painting, and literature; things which were almost unheard of in the Fitzwilliam Square society in which he had grown up. To him, at the

12 Denson, John Hughes, 154. 13 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 45. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 55

time, writers and artists seemed very

exciting and interesting people.”14 In fact, it

was through Campbell that Elvery became

friends with short-story writer Katherine

Mansfield and renowned author D.H.

Lawrence.

After her marriage and the birth of

her first child, Elvery continued illustrations

Figure 18 Beatrice Elvery, Prayer for a Little Child, 1913, 20.3 x for the Cuala Press. Book illustrations made 22.9 cm, Cuala Press it easy for her to work from home and care for her children, rather than having to traipse to a messy studio. It also allowed her to work from London. Like her Virgin Mother series, also hand colored and accompanying a poem, this time by W.M. Letts, 1913’s Prayer for a Little Child

(Fig. 18) depicts a busy rural scene, symbolizing all the aspects of Irish country life, but also all of the dangers a young toddler faces growing up in the country. Of all the illustrations discussed,

Prayer for Little Child is the busiest, highlighting Elvery’s illustrative talent, but also providing several metaphors for the reader. The mother is again depicted as a simple country mother, praying beside her spinning wheel, while looking out of the window to her child. The child’s back is to the viewer, and the gender is unclear, although Nicola Gordon Bowe assumes the child is male, a possible connection to Christ.15 Because the child’s back is turned, however, it is possible that Elvery wished the piece to relate to all mothers and children, as the poem lists dangers to both sons and daughters.

14 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 55. 15 Gordon Bowe, The Arts and Crafts Movement, 130. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 56

Elvery again combines Christian ideals with Irish Pagan imagery through the image of the praying mother and the appearance of a faery16 beside the wandering child. Unlike pop- culture’s pixie-dust-throwing, buxom blonde, wish-granting fairies, Irish faeries were troublesome tricksters who stole children, impersonated common folk, and even committed murderous acts. Faery folklore remained a part of mainstream Irish culture through the twentieth- century, where some considered the creatures very much a reality. In fact, in 1895, Michael

Cleary was charged with the murder of his wife Bridget, when he burned her alive after believing her body was taken over by a faery.17 Michael maintained his innocence, even after he was convicted and sent to prison.

Letts’ poem begins its first two lines, “God keep my jewel this day from danger/ From tinker and pooka and black-hearted stranger,”18 which speak to both the Christian theme of children as jewels19 and Irish myths of everyday dangers. While tinker is a pejorative term for

Irish travelers, pooka or puca refers to the Gaelic tradition of evil goblin creatures who live in the mountain or hillside. The presence of the spinning wheel also reminds the viewer of arduousness and labor-filled day of a good Irish mother. In addition to her work with The Cuala Press, Elvery also illustrated children’s books for other publishing houses filled with epic tales of ancient

Gaelic heroes.

Heroes of the Dawn, published in 1913, was a collaboration with Violet Russell, wife of

George Russell (AE), that featured refashioned Gaelic myths for young Irish audiences. Russell’s dedication to her children on the book’s opening page reads, “When you were small . . . I told

16 While the accepted spelling is typically “fairy,” the author uses the spelling “faery” throughout to honor the Anglo-Irish understanding of the word (the Irish or Gaelic word for fairy is sí). 17 See Angela Bourke's The Burning of Bridget Cleary (New York: Penguin Books, 1999). 18 W.M. Letts, "Prayer for a Little Child," ill. Beatrice Elvery, The Cuala Press (n.d.). 19 Isaiah 49:18: "Lift up your eyes all around and see; [your children] gather, they come to you. As I live, says the Lord, you shall put all of them on like a [jewel], and like a bride you shall bind them on." from The New Oxford Annotated , ed. Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1047-1048. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 57 you these stories of ancient days, when magic and mystery . . . were part of everyone’s life . . . I would have you see in them a record of some qualities . . . an absolute truthfulness and courtesy in thought and speech and action; a nobility and chivalry of mind.”20 Elvery’s black-and-white illustrations supplement the stories with Celtic imagery spun from the epic tales of Fionn mac

Cumall and his fellow warriors, who were as familiar to Irish children as King Arthur and the

Knights of the Round Table were to British children. Ernest Augustus Boyd writes that Heroes

“bring[s] the bardic hero within the vision of boyhood. . . [and is one of the] most charming collections of children’s stories published in Ireland.”21 What Boyd misses, however—much like most literary scholarship of the twentieth century—is that Heroes of the Dawn appeals to an audience of both boys and girls. For example, Elvery’s illustration The Faery Harper (Fig. 19) depicts the transformation of Little Nut of Melody, a pint- sized harpist from a magical land where a people called the

Bright Ones live.

Elvery shows the moment that Little Nut grows from a knee-high faery into an androgynous giant with long- flowing locks, wearing Roman style drapery with pinwheel, spiral, and knot-like shapes along the bottom. The caption reads, “The little man had become transformed into a very beautiful and gigantic figure.”22 Little Nut represents both masculine and feminine beauty, while his harp, an iconic Figure 19 Beatrice Elvery, The Faery Harper, BW Illustration in Violet Russell's symbol for Ireland, rests prominently in his arms. Heroes of Heroes of the Dawn (1913), 37

20 Violet Russell, Heroes of the Dawn (Dublin: Maunsel & Co, 1917), front matter. 21 Ernest Augustus Boyd, Ireland’s Literary Renaissance (London: Grant Richards, 1922), 422. 22 Russell, Heroes of the Dawn, 43. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 58 the Dawn, along with many other ancient tales, became a vital part of Irish children’s’ lives growing up in the first half of the twentieth century. In fact, Gordon Bowe describes the tales as

“By far the clearest, strongest, and most expressively graphic, representations of the heroic tales published in Ireland during the Celtic Revival, intended to appeal to children and adults alike.”23

Elvery’s illustrations delighted the hearts of adults too, however, through the Christmas tale,

Candle and Crib.

Published by Maunsel & Co. in 1914, children’s author Katherine Purdon penned Candle and Crib, an Irish Christmas tale. The publishing house had a direct connection to Elvery, as co- founder Joseph Maunsel Hone was cousin to fellow stained glass artist and Tower of Glass member Evie Hone. Maunsel also published a book on W.B. Yeats in 1915.24 The publishing house is more famous, however, for refusing to publish James Joyce’s Dubliners for fear of a libel suit.25 One of fifteen publishers connected to the book, Maunsel & Co. held onto the now- famous tome for more than five years before Joyce, in frustration, started his own publishing house and attempted to self-published the book. This effort was also in vain; it was another year before London publisher Grant Richards finally agreed to take the risk—a full nine years after

Joyce penned the collection of iconic short stories.26 Elvery’s innocent and benign illustrations of the perfect Irish family alongside Purdon’s charming tale held far less controversy, however.

Candle and Crib features a young, working-class Irish family: Art, Delia, and their newborn son. Although the family lives in the city, Art longs for the countryside and takes a job away from home to feed his hunger for the rural lifestyle. Delia experiences grief and loneliness,

23 Gordon Bowe, The Arts and Crafts Movement, 131. 24 Boylan, Henry. A Dictionary of Irish Biography, 3rd Edition (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1998), 184. 25 Dubliners, although fiction, featured characters who were remarkably similar to known Irish figures; Joyce portrayed said characters in less than a flattering light. 26 John McCourt, James Joyce: A Passionate Exile (New York: Macmillan, 1999), 63. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 59

but Art’s job pays better than most jobs in the city, and the

family reaps the benefits by acquiring minor luxuries, never

before experienced. To show off his healthy new family adorned

with the spoils of his well-paying job, Art decides to send his

wife and child to Ardenoo, his family’s hometown, a small

country village far off from the city. Like the Virgin Mary and

the Christ Child, Delia and her newborn find themselves waylaid

in a barn where they must spend the night among the livestock. Figure 20 Beatrice Elvery, He Kissed them Both, Color Illustration from Purdon's Candle and Crib (1914) The story, set in an Irish city, featuring a working class Irish family, against the backdrop of Christian allegory promotes the Gaelic message that the hardworking, loyal, and faithful Irish family is akin to that of God’s chosen family: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

Candle and Crib combines the strong Christian message of humility and perseverance with the nationalist message that God watches over the Irish, especially in hardship. Elvery’s full-color illustrations solidify this message. He Kissed them Both (Fig. 20) captures a moment, after the family has unwrapped their newly acquired luxuries, when Delia voices reservations about making such a long journey in the middle of winter, and is silenced by a gentle kiss from her husband. Not only is Delia worried about the weather, but also feels comfortable in her urban sanctuary and anxious about meeting Art’s unfamiliar family for the first time. Delia honors her husband’s wishes, however, and leaves the argument unfinished with nothing but a silent gesture from her husband. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 60

The story, reinforced by Elvery’s illustrations, solidifies the Irish working-class relationship with their duty to God and family while also depicting the ideal woman as a humble dutiful wife. Unlike Elvery’s Virgin Mother series, the Candle and Crib illustrations follow more closely the tradition of nationalist ideals, which prescribe the urban and rural mother to dutifully care for her children, listen to her husband, and most importantly buy local. The Mother with her Child Lying Very Still (Fig. 21), Figure 21 Beatrice Elvery, Mother and however, further solidifies motherhood’s connection to the Child Lying very Still, Color Illustration, from Purdon's Candle and Blessed Virgin, who happily spent the first night of her anointed Crib (1914) child’s life in a manger beside domestic beasts.

While the Christmas candle symbolizes the North Star, and the slumbering ass symbolizes the Virgin’s only transport on the night of Christ’s arrival, the manger itself doubly represents the purity and sanctity of the untouched Irish countryside. A strong aspect of the Irish

Nationalist movement was the idea that rural Ireland represented pure soil, completely feminine in nature and connected to the ideal female. Sighle Bhreathnache-Lynch explains that the rural countryside as a whole represented a masculine Ireland who conquered the feminine soil. She asserts, “The representation of that land as female, therefore, was to assert male domination at a political level.”27 Although Elvery spent her life living in or near a city, her depictions of motherhood always directly relate to the countryside. Her artistic reverence of Irish peasantry did not always translate to Elvery’s everyday life, however.

27 Sighle Bhreathnache-Lynch, "Landscape, Space, and Gender: Their Role in the Construction of Female Identity in Newly-Independent Ireland," Canadian Woman Studies17:3 (2004): 27. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 61

Elvery’s marriage to Campbell raised her class status from the daughter of a shopman to the wife of a future Lord.28 Although she grew up with Catholic servants, worked with Catholic craftsmen at An Tur Gloine, and spent several years alongside Patrick Pearse, her life as the wife of a barrister detached her even further from the working class. She writes in her memoir about the incompetent dimwittedness of her servants, she complains about their drinking habits, and she expresses impatience for her nanny’s homesickness.29 Ann Matthews discusses the class divisions between Anglo-Irish women of the upper classes and working-class Catholic women as early as the 1890s. For example, while women such as Markievicz were happy to feed the poor,

Mathews makes clear that most nationalist women did not intend to interact with them, much less include them in national efforts. The social divide between Catholic and Protestant existed and was deeply embedded in Irish culture, so much so that, in fact, two authors made a healthy living making a mockery of the working class and rural Irish.

Using the names E. OE Somerville and Martin Ross, two women, Edith Somerville and

Violet Martin, wrote fourteen books together, one being Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.

(1899). Somerville eventually became an ardent nationalist and did work for the suffrage movement.30 The Irish R.M. series portrays how the Anglo-Irish viewed their Catholic counterparts, especially those in the rural west. The main character, Mr. Sinclair Yeates, accepts a position as a resident magistrate in the rural town of Skebawn on the southwest coast of

Ireland. The reader finds out immediately how Yeates, an Anglo-Irish Protestant from the East— likely Dublin—sees the people of Skebawn. Somerville and Ross write, “The man who accepts a

28 Gordon Campbell inherited his father’s title upon his father’s death in 1931—nearly twenty years after his marriage to Elvery. 29 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 170-172. 30 Lewis, Gifford, Somerville and Ross: The World of the Irish RM (London: Penguin, 1987). 322. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 62 resident magistracy in the south-west of Ireland voluntarily retires into the prehistoric age.”31 Mr.

Yeates’ journey takes the reader through a series of misadventures with his neighbors, rural

Catholics who lack literary skills, grace, manners, or even cleanliness. Even the wealthy or established members of the community live in near squalidly conditions, take pride in shady deals, and have zero resistance to the powers of whiskey. Yeates’ companions are racist, greedy, sloppy, clumsy, and violent. Every stereotype that the Irish carry, Somerville and Ross reflect if not invent. If this is how the literary world saw Catholic Ireland in 1899, it is little wonder that

Home Rule was such a difficult feat. While Elvery’s understanding of Irish Catholics may have been skewed, after her marriage to Campbell, her understanding of other, more cosmopolitan ideas opened wide.

Through Campbell, Elvery discovered a world of ideas—all within the walls of their

London flat at No. 9 Selwood Terrace. A once modest neighborhood, Selwood Terrace is now a trendy corner of the Kensington suburb where the lively pub Anglesea Arms advertises to have once been frequented by Charles Dickens and D.H. Lawrence.32 In fact, one can rent Elvery’s former home, which is now advertised as D.H. Lawrence’s former dwelling and the location of his wedding to his wife, Frieda.33 At Selwood Terrace, Elvery learned of Mansfield’s scandalous divorce and the even more scandalous abortion of an illegitimate child.34 She also met

Lawrence’s wife, Frieda who had left her husband and children behind. Up through World War

II, in the event of any divorce, custody automatically went to the father; thus, Frieda’s love affair meant great sacrifices on her part. According to Joan B. Kelly, mothers did not receive custody

31 E. EO Somerville and Martin Ross, Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1899), 5. 32 Time Out, “Anglesea Arms,” Timeout.com (July 14, 2011) retrieved May 1 2015, http://www.timeout.com /london/bars-pubs/anglesea-arms. 33 The Telegraph: “For rent: DH Lawrence's London home,” telegraph.co.uk (2015) retrieved May 12015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/pictures/9392350/For-rent-DH-Lawrences-London-home.html. 34 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 56. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 63 in divorce cases until the 1920s, and it was not until the 1940s that it became the norm. Kelly also notes that the 1839 “Tender Years” Doctrine awarded children under seven to their mother, but only if the mother had not committed adultery.35 Frieda’s children were over the age of seven, and her relationship with Lawrence deemed her by society worthy of the shameful scarlet letter. To add to the cast of colorful characters, Elvery also met S.S. Koteliansky, or Kot, a

Ukrainian Jew who moved to London at the age of seventeen. Kot was a writer who earned most of his living translating famous Russian works into English.36 Elvery’s marriage to this quiet barrister seemed to prove more exciting than any of her years in the company of Yeats, Pearse, or Markievicz. In fact, Elvery writes in her memoirs, quite casually, about an experience between her husband and that would be scandalous even by today’s standards.

Dated February 1915, but not actually mailed until 1952, Elvery includes correspondence between Murry and her husband about a camping trip they shared so many years before. Murry writes,

It seems to me now that I asked too much of you—but then, I wonder, can I ask too much—I of you. Not the I that I was or the you I imagined. There was some stupid mistake—some romantic imagination of my own, it may have been. Whatever it was, it was a good thing, for now I can see that I must have loved you as one man seldom loves another. . . It will be an effort for me to keep away from you . . . Beside my love for you grew quietly and in secret . . . We might have pulled off some great thing together; but you were divided . . . I can hear Lawrence say that it would only have been possible between a man and a woman. I don’t think so. It was possible for us, had you been other than you are.37

Although Elvery has no record of Gordon’s reply, she does write that Gordon tried to return the letter to him. Murry writes in a second letter, this time dated 1952, “No man ever came near to

35 Joan B.Kelly, “The Determination of Child Custody” Children and Divorce 4:1 (Spring 1994): 121-142. 36 See Galya Dement: A Russian Jew of Bloomsbury: the life and times of Samuel Koteliansky (Montréal : McGill- Queen's University Press, 2011). 37 John Middleton Murry, as quoted in Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 65-66. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 64 taking the place you had in my heart.”38 Although few historians label Murry as bisexual,

Sydney Janet Kaplan theorizes that Murry at least experienced homosexual tendencies, not just towards Campbell but also towards Lawrence. She explores these letters in detail, theorizing that while Murry may have never acted upon his emotions, he certainly experienced intimate feelings for his fellow men.39 Elvery, by contrast, approached the event with her usual lightheartedness.

She writes, “The whole relationship was enveloped in a sort of innocence which at the present time [1963] might be difficult to understand.”40 She concludes the narrative, “While our two young men were away, Katherine and I sat at the fire darning our husbands’ socks and talking of our homes and childhood.”41 Elvery’s telling of this experience alone illustrates the complexities and eccentricities of early twentieth-century life in both Ireland and England. Although this correspondence lay hidden for more than three decades, Elvery saw no controversy with casually inserting it into a memoir about art and family. Perhaps this speaks to her optimistic naiveté, or perhaps it shows how truly independent and strong minded she really was.

Because Elvery spent most of her time in London between 1910 and 1916, she did not experience the unrest in Ireland firsthand. She did experience, however, the turmoil of World

War I. Although Ireland was not subject to conscription in World War I, many Irish men and women of all classes still chose to fight on behalf of Britain. In fact, according to Charles

Townshend, over 200,000 Irish volunteered for service in the Great War.42 Elvery’s own brothers volunteered as well. In fact, her oldest brother—who later took charge of the family shop— narrowly escaped death as a prisoner of war. In addition, Gordon Campbell’s brother lost his life

38 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 67. 39 Sydney Janet Kaplan, Circulating Genius: John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield, and D. H. Lawrence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 225. 40 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 63. 41 Ibid., 68. 42 Townshend, Ireland, 69. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 65 in World War I. Thomas Bartlett observes that of the 200,000 Irishmen who served from 1914-

1918, 30,000 died, and nearly 10,000 enlisted in the last three months of the war.43 Even after

Great Britain’s oppressive treatment of the Irish people along with four years of death and destruction throughout Europe, Ireland’s soldiers still answered the call to arms.

In contrast, but not out of character, Elvery approached the war as she did most things in life—with quiet and passing reflection. She writes about the assassination of Archduke

Ferdinand, “I had known that world affairs were somehow at a boiling-point, but it was all so complicated, so very far away and so difficult to understand. . . besides, I was now completely wrapped up in the happiness of having two children.”44 She later mentions the war as more of a nuisance or distraction from the pleasantries of her life in England with her family and friends.

Elvery’s life as a new mother also took her out of the studio, and while her children were young, she completed fewer commissions, although she still drew for the Cuala Press occasionally.

Elvery’s life experiences and unique approach to her chaotic surroundings tells a similar story of independent thought and individuality within a society that often imposed rigid guidelines— especially for women.

While Ireland struggled for independence, Elvery’s dear friend Kot experienced a revolution of his own. About the Russian Revolution, Elvery recalls,

I think none of us knew or understood Kot’s feelings about Russia at the time. In 1917 there had been the ‘bloodless revolution’. The Czar had abdicated, and the Provisional Government had taken over, with Kerensky at its head . . . [Kot was] so happy for Russia; it was as if all [his] dreams had come true. . . There came the second revolution, when the Bolshevik Party took over . . . Kot’s mother and brothers and sisters and other members of his family were still in the Ukraine. There was murder, fighting and starvation. Kot did not speak of it.45

43 Bartlett, Ireland, 385-386. 44 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 77. 45 Ibid., 103-104. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 66

Although Elvery grouped two very separate incidents together, S.S. Kotelianky’s loss must have been devastating. Not only did Ukraine suffer from the mass dekulakization movement between

1922 and 1932, but also the 1933 Ukrainian Holodomor, or great famine, claimed at least 2.5 million lives—all under the regime of the totalitarian Soviet Union. While Elvery’s family may have heard stories of the Irish Famine, and she would later have to live with the traumatic aftermath of 1916, Koteliansky endured two revolutions, an attempted genocide, and a deadly famine, all while helplessly standing witness from the other side of a closed border. After 1917, it would have been impossible for Kot to return to Ukraine; thus, unlike Elvery, Kot was not even able to mourn his losses in person. Elvery’s relationship with Kot alone is remarkable. The fact that a married Protestant from the upper class would befriend a Jewish Eastern European with no social status, much less a single man, would have appeared scandalous in English high society. Elvery, however, never mentions any hardship nor backlash from the community. In fact, most of Elvery’s memories of World War I seem almost as if she were on holiday rather than in the middle of a war zone.

In 1917, Elvery was in London for the Zeppelin crash. She recalls, “I felt almost unconscious with excitement and was on a plane of living where human suffering no longer existed.”46 Her London home was far from the crash, but from her doorstep, she could see the flames from the site. Although the event signified a turning point in the war and infused the allies with optimism, Elvery’s lighthearted reaction at such violence seems out of place. Elvery expresses a similar reaction at the sight of German bombers. After the Zeppelin raids, in the summer of 1917, German bombers began to fill the skies of London. Elvery recalls one afternoon in July:

46 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 107. Beatrice Elvery: An Irish Artist 67

We ran out into the road to get a better view and were greeted by a most wonderful sight. In the distance, apparently coming up Norfolk Road, at a great height, were twenty-five German bombers, all glittering in the sunshine and flying in close formation . . . I remember no anti-aircraft guns, and the planes at that time were not dropping bombs; they just seemed to be making a tour of London. I recently found an old photograph taken in the back garden of our house that afternoon . . . We all look so happy, as if such things as war and bombs simply did not exist.47

Rather than taking cover, donning gas masks, and praying for mercy, Elvery and her friends instead enjoyed a picnic in their backyard while Germany threatened total annihilation.

It is necessary at this point to travel back in time and back across the Irish Sea to Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. The years between 1905 and 1909 were a pivotal time for Elvery, as she contributed four major pieces to Patrick Pearse’s St. Enda’s, an Irish-Catholic boy’s boarding school situated on the outskirts of Dublin. Although Elvery’s time in London shaped her personal life and enriched her social life, the years she spent working with Pearse not only influenced her later work, but also may very well have influenced one of Ireland’s darkest moments in history, the Easter Rising 1916.

47 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 105.

Chapter 4: The Artist and the Schoolmaster

I do not grudge them; Lord, I do not grudge My two strong sons that I have seen go out To break their strength and die, they and a few, In bloody protest for a glorious thing. They shall be spoken of among their people, The generations shall remember them, And call them blessed; But I will speak their names to my own heart In the long nights; The little names that were familiar once Round my dead hearth. Lord, thou art hard on mothers: We suffer in their coming and their going; And tho’ I grudge them not, I weary, weary Of the long sorrow — And yet I have my joy: My sons were faithful, and they fought. ~ Patrick Pearse Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 69

Elvery herself saw Home Rule as inevitable, but after decades of Parliamentary, social, journalistic, and cultural activism, Irish Independence still seemed out of reach to many nationalists. Some of Ireland’s failures were directly connected to the way England viewed its people. Charles Townshend’s Ireland: The 20th Century argues that Ireland’s inability to achieve the same forward mobility as other regions during the turn of the twentieth century relates directly to England’s view of the island. He writes, “At root, the performance of the Union as a political structure was marked by permanent tension between national unity of the United

Kingdom and the actual treatment of Ireland as a special entity, with a curious status somewhere between a sub-state and a colony.”1 According to Townshend, Ireland had too few independent resources to simply sever ties with the UK, and England treated Ireland too subserviently to ever deserve an oath of loyalty.

Despite its imperfections, Irish nationalist leaders worked to create a national identity in order to solidify their goal towards national independence. This identity could be found not only in the arts, but also in the Irish language and the Catholic faith. While Elvery was not Catholic, her work, filled with religious themes, was perfect for the halls of Patrick Pearse’s Irish-Catholic

School, St. Enda’s. While just a few paintings and a children’s book may seem benign when studying the overall picture of events leading up to 1916 (as the Catholic church well knew during the century of the Counter-Reformation), strong visual images with iconic, passion- inspiring themes can do a lot to inspire one’s blind loyalty. This was a lesson that Elvery did not learn until it was too late.

1 Townshend, Ireland, 4. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 70

On April 2, 1902, Dublin’s Abbey Theatre debuted W.B. Yeats and

Isabella Gregory’s one-act play, Cathleen Ní Houlihan. The play, set during

the 1798 Irish Rebellion, depicts Ní Houlihan as a Free Ireland, personified in Figure 23 the form of an old, dying woman who transforms into a young beauty after her children sacrifice their lives for her survival. Activist, actor, and public figure Maud Gonne MacBride portrayed both the old and young Ní Houlihan. It was Gonne who inspired Elvery to create her most famous and possibly most influential painting, Èire in 1907

(Fig. 25).2 Maud Gonne purchased the painting and donated it to Patrick

Pearse, who hung it in the halls at St. Enda’s school for boys. This gift jumpstarted an artistic relationship that lasted several years, influenced countless pupils, and eventually led to a violent death. Figure 22 Although the play was not at all religious, Elvery’s depiction very much is. Crimson haired Ní Houlihan sits enthroned, with an Emerald cloak, very clearly pinned in place by the eighth-century Tara Brooch (Fig. 22), discovered at a County Meath beach in 1850. The cloak and brooch create goddess-like imagery, while the Celtic cross, along with saints, martyrs, and patriots looming behind her, incorporates Irish-Catholicism (Fig. 23). The child on her knee may

represent, as Nicola Gordon Bowe posits, a “Young Ireland”3 but also

resembles the infant Jesus sitting upon his mother’s knee (Fig.24). Ní

Houlihan’s cloak also surrounds the naked people of Ireland who look to her Figure 24 for protection and comfort. Although this painting departs from her light-hearted and bright illustrations, Elvery conveys the same message, intertwining motherhood with a Free Ireland.

2 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 91. 3 Nicola Gordon Bowe, "The Art of Beatrice Elvery, Lady Glenavy (1883-1970)," Irish Arts Review (1995), 171. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 71

Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 72

Figure 25 Beatrice Elvery, Éire, 1907, oil on canvas, 91 x 71 cm, Coll. Lady Davis-Goff Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 73

She also skillfully combines the image of Virgin and Goddess, Irelander and Christ, to create a seamless intimacy between the sacred and profane.

The painting stands out as one of her most “hauntingly powerful” works.4 NYU’s Grey

Art Gallery called it “A landmark achievement, merging European influences with Ireland’s

Celtic past to create a call to arms.”5 Elvery went on to complete more work for Patrick Pearse, including a children’s story the same year that she completed Éire. The collection of work Elvery completed for Pearse, however, left a lasting impression on some of those involved in what was to come in 1916, including a seemingly harmless children’s book that eventually led to the

creation of an iconic painting.

Íosogán, agus sgéalta eile, or The Loving Child Jesus and

Other Stories, written by Pearse and published in 1907, features a

series of tales about a man who after a life of misdeeds is redeemed

on his deathbed through his love of children and the forgiveness of

Jesus, who appears in the story as a boy. Elvery’s illustrations within

the book are unsigned and accompany stories written in Irish—a

language Elvery did not speak, read, or write.6 Produced by the

Gaelic League, Íosogán aimed to shape young Irish boys into God-

Figure 26 Beatrice Elvery, Color fearing, Irish-speaking, Catholic men whose love of Christ could Illustration for Patrick Pearse's Íosogán, agus sgéalta eile (1907) overcome any wrongdoings. In one illustration, Elvery combines working-class imagery of the Irish home, a cherubic representation of Christ, and the Gaelic design motif of a floral frame (Fig. 26). Elvery writes in her memoir that Pearse often translated

4 Gordon Bowe, “The Art of Beatrice Elvery,” 171. 5 NYU, Grey Art Gallery Catalogue (April 1999), Section 3. 6 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 90. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 74 the passages for her so she could more realistically depict the story.7 Nicola Gordon Bowe notes about the book, “The symbolic image of knowing, boyish innocence was embraced in pictorial and dramatic form as exemplifying tradition, spirituality, and vision by Pearse at his school.”8 While illustrating the book,

Elvery painted a watercolor version of the Boy Christ

(Fig.27), which inspired Pearse two years later to commission a life-size portrait in the same theme for the halls of his school, St. Enda’s. Figure 27 Beatrice Elvery, An Íosogán, 1907, Watercolor, 50.8 x 43.2 cm Elvery painted An Íosogán in 1909 (Fig. 28) as a fully realized icon from Pearse’s children’s tale. Inscribed in Irish from the Gospel of Luke, “The Boy Grew and waxed strong,

Full of Wisdom; and the Grace of God was in him,”9 Her small watercolor painted in 1907 had this same inscription, but in English. Elvery’s painted version of Child Jesus stands 43 x 55 inches tall—literally larger than life for the students of St. Enda’s. This boy image of the anointed Christ stands arms stretched open in unconditional acceptance, firmly between two trees of abundance, amidst an Irish landscape of flora and fauna. The position of Christ and two trees with arms outstretched hints at the Trinity simultaneously with the Crucifixion. The fruit trees remind the boys of their inherited original sin when Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge, though he could have been perfectly satiated with the Tree of Life. The Boy Christ stands amidst sin and sacrifice, appearing in age between childhood and adulthood.

7 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 91. 8 Gordon Bowe, The Arts and Crafts Movement, 127. 9 Ibid. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 75

Figure 28 Beatrice Elvery, An Íosogán, 1909, oil on canvas, 139.7 x 109.2 cm, Patrick Pearse Museum, Dublin Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 76

The painting hangs over the large mantled fireplace in the foyer of St. Enda’s. It is the first image the students see when they walk through the doors and the last image they see when they leave.

Íosogán looms over them as a constant reminder of what has been given and what still must be done. Sisson explains, “The mapping of the pagan onto the Christian, which is visualized most effectively in Elvery’s painting of Íosogán, offers the boy as a symbol of a new Celtic culture which is informed by the pagan world of courage and war and the Christian world of humility and self-sacrifice.”10 The combination of Christian imagery with Celtic earthly symbols solidifies the powerful message to the students attending Pearse’s school: They are the future of Ireland, their future requires courage, and God watches over their struggle. As Eugene O’Brien argues,

Pearse’s work through literature and education has a deep connection with the Irish nationalist movement.

O’Brien asserts that “The attempt is made to circumlocute the actualities of history and instead creates a monological view of Irishness as Celtic, Gaelic, and Catholic. These elements, along with the mythologizing of the land, combine to form a centre towards which all writings must be directed.”11 Through his school, his writings, his teachings, and in part through Elvery’s imagery, Pearse created a fully functioning nationalist machine, shaping young Irish boys into soldiers for the cause. The figure of Child Christ is in fact inspired by a medieval Irish hymn, once again connecting the new Ireland with its ancient legacy. Gordon Bowe explains, “The name of ‘Íosogán’ is given as the ‘loving diminutive’ of ‘Jesukin’, derived from ‘the name of the

Child Jesus in the exquisite hymn attributed to St. Ita, b. 470, d. 580 AD.”12 The poem and its translation are as follows:

10 Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 63. 11 Eugene O’Brien, The Question of Irish Identity in the Writing of W. B. Yeats and James Joyce (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), 29. 12 Gordon Bowe, The Arts and Crafts Movement, 129. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 77

Gaelic lyrics English translation

Ísucán Jesukin alar lium im dísiurtán; Lives my little cell within; cía beith cléirech co lín sét, What were wealth of cleric high, is bréc uile acht Ísucán. All is lie but Jesukin.

Altram alar lium im thig, Nursing nurtured, as 'tis right, ní altram nach derathaig -- Harbours here no servile spright, - Ísu co feraib nime, Jesu of the skies, who are frim chride cech n- Next my heart through every night. enadaig.

Ísucán c mo bithmaith: Jesu, more than angel aid, ernaid, ocus ní maithmech. Fostering not formed to fade, In Rí con-ic na uili Nursed by me in desert wild, cen a guidi bid aithrech. Jesu, Child of Judah's Maid.

Ísu asal ainglide, Unto heaven's High King contest noco cléirech dergnaide, Sing a chorus, maidens blest! alar lium im dísirtán, He is o'er us, though within Ísu mac na Ebraide. Jesukin is on our breast.

Maic na ruirech, maic na Little Jesus ríg, im thír cía do-ísatán, It is little Jesus who is nursed by me in my little hermitage. Though a cleric have great wealth, it is all deceitful save ní aidib saílim sochor: Jesukin. The nursing done by me in my house is no nursing of a base is tochu lium Ísucán. churl.

Canaid cir, a ingena, Jesus with heaven's inhabitants is against my heart every night. d' fir dliges bar císucán; Little youthful Jesus is my lasting good: he never fails to give. atá 'na phurt tasucán …Though little Jesus be in my bosom (im ucht), cía beith im ucht Ísucán. he is in his mansion above.13

13 Author Unknown, “Jesus and Saint Íte” (n.d.), University College Cork Online, retrieved May 1 2015, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/G400011/text001.html. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 78

In a sad sense of irony, many of the boys who walked those halls and looked upon

Íosogán day after day eventually grew into young men, and some sacrificed their lives during the

Easter Rising and the Anglo-Irish War. Elaine Sisson explains, “St Enda’s is a perfect example of how . . . fragile and emerging forms of national revival were condensed, taught and then redisplayed to a wide nationalist community who understood the school as a microcosm of what a nation state could be.”14 Of course, Pearse was much more methodical than just a few well- placed works of art. As Sisson explains, St. Enda’s was a carefully planned institution designed to make nationalist soldiers out of good Catholic pupils. This was not Pearse’s only goal, however. Pearse believed that at the heart of Irish oppression was the industrialized English educations system—a system he criticizes in his 1913 essay, “Murder Machine.”

Published as a pamphlet as part of the Bodenstown series, Pearse argued that the English education system in Ireland destroyed the souls and dignity of Irish citizens:

One of the most terrible things about the English education system in Ireland is its ruthlessness. I know no image for that ruthlessness in the natural order. The ruthlessness of a wild beast has in it a certain mercy—it slays. It has in it a certain grandeur of animal force. But this ruthlessness is literally without pity and without passion. It is cold and mechanical, like the ruthlessness of an immensely powerful engine. A machine vast, complicated, with a multitude of far-reaching arms, with many ponderous presses, carrying out mysterious and long-drawn processes of shaping and moulding, is the true image of the Irish education system. It grinds night and day; it obeys immutable and predetermined laws; it is as devoid of understanding, of sympathy, of imagination, as is any other piece of machinery that performs an appointed task. Into it is fed all the raw human material in Ireland; it seizes upon it inexorably and rends and compresses and re- moulds; and what it cannot refashion after the regulation pattern it ejects with all likeness of its former self crushed from it, a bruised and shapeless thing, thereafter accounted waste.15

14 Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 4. 15 Patrick Pearse, “Murder Machine,” Bodenstown Series as compiled by The Irish Review (1913), 11-12. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 79

Sisson asserts that St Enda’s “operated as an instructional training ground in national identity and masculinity.”16 She also explains that although Pearse founded the school in 1908, the Gaelic

League’s administrative and financial support brought Pearse’s vision to reality.17 Not only did

Pearse create a Catholic, Irish-speaking, Irish school, but he incorporated into the school’s message the idea of

. . . A prototype of the distinctly modern Irish male subject by mapping many of the perceived ‘feminized’ attributes of Celticism onto a masculine ideal of pagan Gaelic civilization. Seeking indigenous male role models for his boys, Pearse rifled through the antiquities of bardic history and the annals of the early Celtic church to find models of manhood that were both pagan and Christian, warrior and scholar. Pearse’s great imaginative achievement at St. Enda’s was to produce an Irish boy who was educated to believe himself to be the natural inheritor of the bardic and Christian traditions in Ireland.18

St. Enda’s still made education a priority, however, offering subjects such as European languages, botany, zoology, geology, typewriting, bookkeeping, and shorthand.19 Elvery’s paintings not only offered St. Enda’s a visual reference of Pearse’s vision, but a daily reminder of who young Irish boys should aim to be. While this outcome may have been Pearse’s intention,

Elvery did not share in his militant aspirations. Of course, Pearse may not have intended the violence either—until the Parliamentary events in 1914 and the worldwide events of the Great

War.

In 1914, Parnell’s ultimate successor and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party John

Redmond had the satisfaction along with Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, at last of the passing of the Home Rule Act. The Act, however, was suspended when Britain entered World War I, and although Ireland was exempt from conscription, Redmond encouraged the Irish to volunteer to

16 Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 5. 17 Ibid., 27. 18 Ibid., 24. 19 Ibid., 37. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 80 fight for the Crown convinced that such a gesture would guarantee the fruition of Home Rule.

Elvery recounts in her memoir, “John Redmond had made what seemed a wise and generous gesture, and I felt the matter could rest until after the war.”20 Tim Pat Coogan offers another theory of why the bill was suspended. He writes about1914, “The Home Rule Bill had been placed on the statute book and given the royal assent, but at the same time (18 September) a

Suspensory Act was passed postponing the operation of the Home Rule Act. Asquith told the

House that the Bill would ‘not come into operation until Parliament should have the fullest opportunity, by an Amending Bill, of altering, modifying, or qualifying its provisions in such a way as to secure at any rate the general consent both of Ireland and the United Kingdom.”21

Elvery quietly disapproved of violent means and saw no reason why people like Pearse or

Markievicz were compelled to turn to such desperate acts, although she did sympathize with their passion for a Free Ireland. She writes, “It was difficult for a young, susceptible person not to be swept away in a flood of patriotism, but to be really involved in this movement it was necessary to have a great hate of England and everything English—I could never work myself up to that part of it.”22 Ann Matthews, however, illustrates how the women’s movement in Ireland aimed to raise the quality of life for all women, which encouraged woman to take part in the struggle for independence. Although Elvery did not take an active role in these events, it is important to understand how some of the women around her—including some of her personal acquaintances—reacted to the efforts towards independence.

Many of Elvery’s peers chose to forego traditional female roles and participate in the struggle. According to Matthews, during the Easter Rising of 1916, 140 women actively

20 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 89. 21 Tim Pat Coogan, Ireland in the 20th Century (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 40-41. 22 Ibid., 90-91. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 81 participated in the fighting, 79 of whom were arrested along with 3,430 men.23 Furthermore, after the 1918 election, Sinn Féin won 73 of the 105 Irish seats in the British Parliament, partly due to the enfranchisement of women voters (although it should be mentioned that they refused to go to London and formed the Dáil, an illegal parliament in Dublin; thus, the Irish War of

Independence began).24 Matthews writes, “The women within the republican movement now face into the future in a triumphant and optimistic mood because they believed they would have a well-deserved and equitable role in the creation of a new Irish Republic.”25 While Beatrice

Elvery did not support violent means, she did believe in the ideal of an independent Ireland, and through her work, directly contributed to its message, including that of the independent Irish woman. Although her work revered motherhood, it also reflected the complex roles of women throughout Ireland and their ability to take part in social change.

Matthews argues that not only did most organizations fighting for independence openly include female membership, but also the proclamation, which came out of the failed Rising of

1916, included the voting rights of women.26 According to the Irish Women Workers Union,

“the acquisition by middle-class women of the vote would transform the lives of all women, regardless of class.”27 Bartlett contends with Matthews,

Already in 1896, some hundred thousand Irish women had been enfranchised and made eligible to stand for election as Poor Law guardians. In 1898, the Local government (Ireland) Act established the same franchise as the earlier Poor Law Legislation. Irish women were still excluded (until 1911) from membership of county and county borough councils, and the vote in parliamentary elections was

23 Matthews, Renegades. 24 The Registration of the People Act, passed in 1918, gave all women over the age of thirty the right to vote in every election. 25 Ann Matthews, Renegades, 237. 26 “Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people” ("The Provisional Government to the Citizens of Dublin" proclamation. National Library of Ireland poster collection 1916). 27 Matthews, Renegades, 86. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 82

still some way off; but there could be no denying that, at the turn of the new century, Irish women were undergoing a powerful consciousness-raising experience and that they were entering the public arena to an unprecedented extent.28

In April 1914, the Irish Women’s Council, or Cumann na mBan, collaborated with the Irish

National Volunteers as a working military organization. Matthews explains how Irish women throughout the country trafficked arms and even learned how to use them. Markievicz went so far as to have a military uniform custom made, which she wore and even posed for photographs

in with a weapon by her side (Fig. 29). Furthermore, during the

height of resistance efforts, it was women who couriered

information through the ranks of the IRA and Sinn Féin, who were

unable to travel without risk of being arrested or shot.29 Elvery did

not participate in these activities. While people she knew like

Constance de Markievicz and Patrick Pearse actively participated in

the call to arms, Elvery was busy as an artist, then a wife in 1912,

and a mother beginning in 1913. Her time in London took her away

from the chaos of revolution, so much so that she experienced shock

Figure 29 at the actions in 1916. Elvery did not expect the events of the Easter

Rising. In fact, according to some historians, not even the revolutionaries expected the disaster of

Easter Week.

Thomas Bartlett speculates, “Had the war ended at Christmas 1914, or even in 1915, as many had forecast, there would probably have been no rising, for while Pearse and his colleagues would display a gift for conspiracy, they would show little talent for military

28 Bartlett, Ireland, 356. 29 Ibid., 124. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 83 planning.”30 Unfortunately, not only for Ireland, but for the millions killed in World War I, the

Great War lasted four long years, and by 1916, Pearse and his compatriots believed they could wait no more. Bartlett argues that

The rebel leaders—a mixture of poets, playwrights, socialists, educationalists, mystics and professional revolutionaries (with some a blend of all these)—were clear on only one thing: come what may, they had to have a rising before the war ended. To have failed to do so would have been the ultimate disgrace, a grotesque and unforgivable betrayal of preceding generations, who had not enjoyed so favourable a moment since the French revolutionary wars.31

For Pearse’s generation, a violent revolution was necessary for all of Ireland to redeem its dignity after centuries of oppression and emasculation from Great Britain. Just as the English

Education system was a murder machine, so the British Crown was a neuter mill. The Irish

Republican Brotherhood had to achieve independence through all means necessary, even if it meant destroying their own country and murdering their fellow citizens.

By Easter Sunday, 1,500 men in addition to a few hundred of the Irish Citizen Army, and roughly 100 women took part in the Rising. Bartlett explains that the women, “Mostly members of Cumann na mBan, also served in a support role—as doctors, nurses, as messengers and as secretaries… In general, women were kept out of the combat; alone of all military commanders of the Easter Rising, only Eamon de Valera, in charge at Boaland’s mill, refused to have any

[women] about the place in any role whatsoever.”32 By the time Pearse surrendered on April 29, there were 450 dead, mostly civilians, and over three-thousand injured. Bartlett writes,

“O’Connell Street and other areas were mercilessly shelled and reduced to ruins. Over three hundred buildings were damaged, Liberty Hall was completely destroyed, and the insurance bill

30 Bartlett, Ireland, 363. 31 Ibid., 365. 32 Ibid., 388. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 84 for the week’s destruction would run to over £3million.”33 With the rest of the world at war and resentment from the ignored gestures of the Home Rule Bill, Great Britain chose to make an example of the rebels—an event of which Elvery makes no mention.

Richard English writes, “But the aftermath of the rebellion—with sixteen leading figures being executed—was to produce an emotional high temperature and a deepening sympathy for the rebels.”34 While many did not approve of the violence during Easter Rising, the Irish certainly did not approve of the Crown’s legalistic treatment of the rebels. As English states,

Pearse and the fifteen other rebel leaders became saints the moment of their execution.35

Alongside Pearse, Sisson reports that “over thirty St. Enda’s boys” participated in Easter Rising, and out of the sixteen men executed, five taught at the school. According to Sisson, however, several pupils of St. Enda’s entered the IRB before Pearse.36 In fact, outside of Pearse’s supervision, chemistry teacher Peter Slattery (who continued to teach at St. Enda’s well into the

1920s) oversaw the creation of homemade bombs in St. Enda’s basement with the help of several pupils/IRB recruits.37 Two St. Enda’s boys died because of the uprising: Eunan McGinley— sixteen at the time of his induction—died in the Civil War, and Gerald Keogh was killed outside

Trinity College by a loyalist sniper while running a message to rebels during the Rising.38

While Beatrice Elvery supported Home Rule and admired revolutionaries such as Patrick

Pearse, for her, the Easter Rising was the wrong way to achieve independence. With a romanticized view of Ireland through her circle of friends, yet her shielded understanding of

Ireland’s struggling working class, Elvery saw Home Rule as a simplistic and easily achievable

33 Bartlett, Ireland, 391. 34 Richard English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (London: MacMillan, 2006), 261. 35 Ibid., 262. 36 Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 155. 37 Ibid., 156. 38 Ibid. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 85 goal. Elvery’s family, however, did experience the backlash of the Irish-Irelander movement— away from British sports, particularly. The Elvery’s storefront became a target during the Easter

Rising of 1916, when a young man shot through the windows of the store’s original location on

Sackville Street in Dublin’s center. Known as “The Cricket Bat that Died for Ireland,” one piece of equipment lies housed in the National Museum of Ireland’s Easter Week Collection with the original bullet lodged in its center.39

Although Elvery completed at least four known works for his school and spent years in artistic collaboration with him, she mentions not her opinion of his activities in the Easter Rising nor his execution by the British government. Elvery’s oldest son shares the same name as Pearse, which is quite likely a coincidence; yet, it remains an enigma how Elvery actually considered the young Irish martyr. She does recall her reaction to the one student of St. Enda’s interpretation of her 1907 Éire: “Sometime later, I met one of the boys from the school and he told me that this picture had inspired him ‘to die for Ireland’! I was shocked at the thought that my rather banal and sentimental picture might, like Helen’s face, launch ships and burn towers!”40 After 1910,

Elvery experienced marriage, motherhood, commercial success, and an upper class lifestyle in

London—away from the hectic upswing towards revolution in her mother Ireland. In fact, Elvery experienced the effects first hand much more from World War I than she did the Easter Rising or the Anglo-Irish War. Nevertheless, Elvery’s understanding of the violence in Ireland must have affected her; she stopped creating art for several years, she never again worked for the Gaelic

League, and when she did go back to her work, as discussed in the Afterword, it was changed utterly.

39 "The Cricket Bat that Died for Ireland," National Museum of Ireland, accessed September 5 2014, http://the cricketbatthatdiedforireland.com/. 40 Elvery, Today We will only Gossip, 91. Beatrice Elvery: The Artist and the Schoolmaster 86

As it was for many Irish, Easter 1916 was a turning point for Elvery. Suddenly, friends and patrons had become guerilla fighters, while familiar buildings and landmarks were damaged or lay in ruins. The two places she called home, England and Ireland, were now mortal enemies.

She writes, “We were in Dublin, after the Easter Week Rising, and drove round looking at the ruins and hearing all the stories. I went to see Sarah Purser, who was bitter and resentful. She said, ‘We have been put back a hundred years.’”41 Elvery also quotes former Irish Republican

Brotherhood member P.S. O’Hegarty, who described the Easter Rising as a turning away from morality and a turning toward “a general moral weakening and a general degradation, a general cynicism and disbelief in either virtue or decency, in goodness or uprightness or honesty.’”42

Whereas before there was talk of independence through plays, poetry, art, and music, the effort for Home Rule now spoke the language of violence and death. Elvery’s romanticized view of the world shattered inside of an instant, and not even her art would ever be the same.

41 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 89. 42 As quoted in Ibid., 90.

Conclusion: An Artist not Quite Forgotten

Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? That is Heaven’s part, our part To murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child When sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild. What is it but nightfall? No, no, not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse – MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

~ William Butler Yeats

Beatrice Elvery: Conclusion 88

Although Elvery continued to work after 1916, her work took a dramatic shift away from themes of nationalism, motherhood, and Christ to romantic surreal images of fantasy, still life, and landscape. Her palate changed from dark tenebristic emeralds and plums to soft mauves and passive lines.1 Elvery’s work also took a backseat to her life as a mother, world traveler, and socialite. Although Elvery painted well into the

1950s and even completed a beautiful memorial window for a childhood friend in 1920 at Tullow

Parish (Fig. 30), her work paled in comparison to the scores of paintings, sculptures, illustrations, and windows that she completed between 1898 and

1914. Tullow Parish’s memorial, however, exemplifies Elvery’s advanced skills as a stained glass artist. Although she wrote that she disliked the medium, the 1920 window shows her unique color choices, her whimsical use of landscape and symbolism, along with her eye for detail and ornamentation. Her depiction of Christ is similar to her Resurrection at Stradbally but much more refined, while the guardian angel guiding the three Figure 30Figure 30 Beatrice Elvery, War Memorial, 1920, fallen soldiers home actually stands hieratically Stained Glass, Tullow Parish, Dublin superior to Christ, continuing Elvery’s theme of celebrating the female. Lastly, the image of the young angel by Christ’s side bears a striking resemblance to her Boy Christ created for Patrick

1 See Appendix for examples of Elvery’s later works. Beatrice Elvery: Conclusion 89

Pearse more than a decade earlier. This ornate and rich installation acts as the crowning achievement on her twenty-year career surrounding Irish nationalism. While1916 left Elvery in a state of shock, she never stopped supporting a Free Ireland. As the Afterword will show, Elvery continued to sympathize with resistance efforts during the Irish Civil War and even after the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. While she spent many of her later years traveling throughout Europe, she always returned home to Ireland.

Beatrice Elvery was born into an Ireland in the midst of change. Just as Elvery was becoming a woman, her country also came into its own. Both the artist and the nation grew up side by side with all of the discoveries, heartache, and excitement that adolescence brings. Like

Ireland, Elvery approached the world with an independent spirit. Although Elvery faced gender norms, strict class differences, and prejudices throughout her life, like Ireland, she made her own rules and lived according to her standards. Elvery’s work, likewise, invented wholly independent and unique representations of nation, mother, and child, which directly influenced those working towards Irish independence.

Although the female image has long been a common form of iconography for nationalist sentiment, Elvery redefined this image. Sisson discusses the typical use of the female:

“Contemporary iconographies of the female, whether nationalist or imperial, were dependent on the prevailing notions of felinity to illustrate a psychic rather than a political state of mind.”2

Elvery, however, stays loyal to the feminine, but with her glorification of the Irish mother and celebration of the goddess figure, representations of Mother Ireland appear powerful, realistic, and attainable. Elvery’s work with Patrick Pearse furthers her new interpretation of classic iconography with an adolescent Christ.

2 Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots, 13. Beatrice Elvery: Conclusion 90

Elvery’s Boy Christ, imagined for Pearse through his children’s book, small watercolor, and monumental schoolhouse painting, offers “. . . an inspiring model of manliness for young men: Christ is modest yet passionate, humble yet enraged by injustice; born into a close family yet determined to follow his own path.”3 Iosogan is not an infant savior nor an anointed king as

Jesus is so often portrayed, but an adolescent, created in the students’ own image. Furthermore,

Elvery boldly combined Christian and Pagan themes into her work in a celebration of Ireland’s rich and complex spiritual past. While Elvery may not have wished her work to inspire violence, her love of country combined with her exceptional talent left an impression on everyone who viewed her work, whether it was nationalist, religious, or simply awe.

Although the scope of this thesis concludes with Elvery’s work leading up to 1916 and her experiences through World War I, there is still so much more to her story. For example, the

Church of Ireland has catalogued eleven of Elvery’s windows completed in the various

Protestant churches throughout the country, but not all of them. Furthermore, no archival or fieldwork has been completed on the eighteen different pieces that Elvery did for the Irish

Catholic Church. In addition, an auction house recently attributed a watercolor study of Agony in the Garden by Elvery, but the only windows with such names are attributed to artist, Ernest

Child. Further archival research on this study is worthwhile. Lastly, archival research with An

Tr Gloine’s records might possibly uncover Elvery’s enigmatic American commissions about which both she and her sister wrote. Elvery’s other works deserve scholarly attention as well.

As stated earlier, Elvery’s later work is far different in form and function from the work discussed here. This work, however, is just as significant and deserves special attention. An individual study on Elvery’s romantic and surreal periods would shed light on popular art created

3 Ibid., 47. Beatrice Elvery: Conclusion 91 in Ireland between 1920 and 1950. Of particular interest is her 1932 Intruder, a genre-style fantasy piece that garnered negative attention from Great Britain’s Punch Magazine, which accused Elvery of promoting adultery. Coming ten years after a bitter loss, this representation illustrates Great Britain’s continued efforts to sully the reputation of a now-independent state.

Elvery’s flippant response to the article reinforces her free-spirited persona. Elvery’s life itself after 1918 also provides an opportunity for further study.

After World War I ended, Elvery had a third child, was the victim of home invasions, inherited a title through marriage, became a teacher, and experiences countless loss. Her unconventional lifestyle and charming eccentricities provide a unique perspective on the shifting roles of upper-class women in post-independent Ireland. As the Afterword shows, the Irish Free

State and later the Irish Republic constructed an Irish culture that set strict rules for women and families. Yet Elvery continued to travel alone, carry on relationships with single men, and speak her mind whenever she felt compelled. Elvery’s carefree behavior illustrates the idiosyncrasies of Irish social norms in the 1920s and 30s. Any or all of these aspects of Elvery’s life deserve additional examination.

The image of the Irish Woman from 1880 through today is complex, contradictory, and multi-faceted; some aspects may represent female oppression and a push for domesticity, while others show the strength, power, and influence of these women during a time when Ireland needed to find its own independent identity. As with the rest of Ireland, there is far more to the story than appears on the surface, and despite how society labeled her, Elvery saw herself as a proud Irish citizen who loved all things Irish. Elvery surrounded herself with artists, writers, actors, and philosophers. She lionized the likes of Maud Gonne MacBride, George Bernard

Shaw, and D.H. Lawrence. Elvery even named her children Michael, Patrick, and Brigid—three Beatrice Elvery: Conclusion 92 traditionally Irish names. Alan Denson describes the artist: “Beatrice Elvery’s vivid appearance and enlivening personality are obviously derived from her ancestors—a variety of ever-green!

But her artistic talent is unique and underivative.”4

Near the end of Elvery’s memoir, she notes, “There is something about Ireland which makes it a lovely place to live.”5 She recalls that in the year 1957,

Charles Stewart Parnell’s sister Annie, who had been at the Dublin School of Art with my mother . . . wrote a poem which Joe Hone said was the greatest Irish patriotic poem ever written: ‘Shall mine eyes behold thy glory, O my country? / Shall mine eyes behold they glory? / Or shall the darkness close around them, ere/ The sun-blaze break at last upon they story? / Ah! The harpings and the salvoes and the shoutings of the exiled sons returning!/ I shall hear, tho’ dead and mouldered, and the grave-damp shold not chill my bosom’s burning.’ It might be almost comic, were it not so tragic, that after over thirty-five years of Home Rule and Independence, there is no sound of ‘the salvoes and the shoutings of the exiled sons returning’. On the contrary, the sons are still going away in increasing numbers.6

According to Mary Daly, roughly 16% of Ireland’s entire population left the country for better opportunities during the 1950s—the only European nation to see a decline in population at this time.7 More than sixty years later, however, in 2015, tens of thousands of Irish expatriates traveled home to vote in the national election for a new kind of revolution—marriage equality.

Less than a century after independence, Ireland became the first nation to legalize same-sex marriage through popular vote, without violence, bloodshed, or Parliamentary permission. Forty- five years after Beatrice Elvery closed her eyes on Ireland for good, the sons finally came home—at least for a time—and perhaps the reason why would suit Elvery’s rebel heart just fine.

4 Alan Denson, John Hughes, 310. 5 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 137. 6 Ibid., 138. 7 Mary Daly, Slow and Independent Ireland, 1920-1973 (Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 2006), 58.

Afterword:

The New Irish Woman: Beatrice Breaks the Rules

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our

future.”

~ George Bernard Shaw

Afterword 94

After World War I ended in Europe, Ireland experienced a brutal civil war. The IRB was split in two, Great Britain still clung to its desire to keep Ireland under control of the Crown, and a provisional Irish government between 1919 and 1921 worked to establish a legitimate institution. Shortly after moving back to Ireland, Elvery recalls the night in 1919 when the IRB came searching for weapons:

In Ireland, the ‘Troubles’ were still going on. Houses of families whose sons were known to be in the British Army were being raided for arms and military equipment. Malcolm and Ronald were home on leave and, one night, while we were staying at my father’s house, we heard a knock on the hall-door. In a second the room was full of masked men with revolvers, saying, ‘Hold up your hands’ and ‘Don’t move or you will be shot’. We had been playing some card game; we went on playing. . . In those days we had only candlelight in our bedrooms, and the man looked very terrifying, with a black handkerchief round his face, a hat pulled well down and a revolver. I said, ‘You are frightening the child. Take that thing off your face, come into the light and show Paddy your gun.’ The young man did as I asked and said gently, ‘Sure we wouldn’t hurt you, Paddy.’. . . They said ‘Good night” and we said ‘Good night’, and they warned us not to leave the house for two hours or we would be shot. The whole business had an air of almost conic unreality about it . . . We had other raids, in broad daylight, when they came for medical books and first-aid equipment belonging to Philip’s R.A.M.C. kit. We always parted the best of friends, and they never took anything that was not connected with their job of making Ireland ‘free.’1

Ironically, the rebels raided the home in search of a revolver in possession of Elvery’s sister

Marjorie’s New Zealand fiancé, as informed to them by the Elvery maid, but in the commotion, they left the revolver sitting on Marjorie’s bed. Elvery makes no mention of whether the maid stayed on. She does recall, however, her anger at British resentment towards Ireland after many had volunteered for the war effort in England.

Although Elvery moved back to Ireland permanently after 1918, her husband, Gordon, worked in London through the end of World War I. To keep busy and to try to support the soldiers, Elvery volunteered at a war depot in England. She writes,

1 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 105-106. Afterword 95

At that time things were going badly for the Allies in France. There had been much talk in the House of Commons about conscription for Ireland, which was being opposed by the Irish Members. The talk in the Depot got very bitter: ‘The cowards, they let us fight for them.’ They harked back to 1916: ‘The stab in the back.’ I stood it for a while in silence, then I felt my heart beginning to beat like mad and a roaring in my ears. I felt my face turning crimson. I stood up and made the only speech I ever made in my life. I said, ‘The Irish people are only doing what you English would do if you had been conquered by Germany.’ I went on to say that in the cottage where I lived, I and my husband and our two maids represented four Irish families. Out of these four families there were ten brothers in the services and none of them was a conscript. I described the casualties among them, the killed, the wounded and the decorated. The ladies sat spellbound.2

Elvery dates this incident to approximately 1918—before the armistice. Yet she is writing in the 1960s. What is significant here is that in a radio address dated 1945, Eamon DeValera, then Irish Prime Minister, responds to Churchill’s criticism about Ireland’s neutrality in World

War II. The address goes as follows:

Suppose Germany had won the war, had invaded and occupied England, and that after a long lapse of time and many bitter struggles, she was finally brought to acquiesce in admitting England’s right to freedom, and let England go, but not the whole of England, all but, let us say, the six southern counties. These six southern counties, those, let us suppose, commanding the entrance to the narrow seas, Germany had singled out and insisted on holding herself with a view to weakening England as a whole, and maintaining the securing of her own communications through the Straits of Dover. Let us suppose further, that after all this had happened, Germany was engaged in a great war in which she could show that she was on the side of freedom of a number of small nations, would Mr. Churchill as an Englishman who believed that his own nation had as good a right to freedom as any other, not freedom for a part merely, but freedom for the whole—would he, whilst Germany still maintained the partition of his country and occupied six counties of it, would he lead this partitioned England to join with Germany in a crusade? I do not think Mr. Churchill would. Would he think the people of partitioned England an object of shame if they stood neutral in such circumstances?3

2 Ibid., 108-109. 3 E. De Valera, “Eamon De Valera’s Response to Winston Churchill” (May 16, 1945), Property of RTE, retrieved May 20 2015, http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/681-history-of-rte/684-rte-1940s/289798-eamon-de-valeras- response-to-winston-churchill/. Afterword 96

While De Valera’s hypothetical question is much more detailed than Elvery’s and the given scenario is reflective of events leading up to World War II, the resemblance is uncanny.

Elvery’s husband, Gordon, did in fact work for De Valera’s cabinet after 1932. In fact, De Valera sent dignitaries on his behalf to pay respects at Campbell’s funeral.4 Perhaps Elvery remembered this powerful speech and infused the details into her own experience. Alternatively, perhaps, one evening, over a dry scotch, Campbell lovingly told the President of his wife’s valiant speech, and perhaps—just perhaps Elvery inspired De Valera.

Unfortunately, while England experienced some years of peace between 1918 and 1939,

Ireland still saw brutal violence between 1919 and 1923. Tim Pat Coogan writes, “Throughout

1920, the British and the Irish fought a brutal war which embittered Anglo-Irish relations. . .

‘Bloody Sunday’, ‘Black and Tans’, ‘murder gangs’, ‘assassination’, ‘reprisal’ were the words and deeds which earned 1920 the description ‘The Year of Terror’ in Irish history.”5 Coogan recounts Bloody Sunday in November 1920, when Michael Collins’ men “shot 19 soldiers, who included the leaders of the British counter-insurgency effort, at eight different addresses in

Dublin. The men were roused from their sleep, shot in front of their wives and mistresses, or put standing against a wall for execution.”6 Although far from Elvery’s suburban home outside of

Dublin, in Northern Ireland, British auxiliary soldiers expelled 23,000 Catholics from their homes.7 While many thought the Anglo-Irish Treaty would finally bring peace, as Richard

English illustrates, there was still more violence to come.

Richard English concludes that “The Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in December 1921 was the outcome of the War for Independence, and it gave more than many Irish nationalists had

4 Patrick Campbell, My Life and Easy Times (London: Sphere Books, 1967). 6. 5 Coogan, Ireland in the 20th Century, 82. 6 Ibid., 84. 7 Ibid., 111. Afterword 97 expected to see in the immediate future.”8 Unfortunately, for some, Ireland was not free until all of Ireland was free, and for them, just like Irish seats in the British Parliament, the tabled Home

Rule Bill, or provisional autonomy in 1918, the Treaty was not good enough. Coogan writes,

“While the provisional government was attempting to set up a new state, and a new army and police force, the anti-Treaty IRA was raiding for arms, money and transport…Pro-Treaty newspaper editors were threatened with death, and in some cases their printing presses smashed.”9 According to Richard English, leaders Harry Boland and Michael Collins were murdered by their Irish brothers; other leaders were executed; writers were assassinated.10

Although much of Ireland experienced little to no violence, the conflict saw hundreds killed and

40,000 British soldiers deployed into Ireland.11 Ireland continued to persevere, however, and still manage to create a working government from little to no resources.

English is of the opinion that “The violence of the IRA during the War of Independence,

1919 to 1921, might have stolen the headlines . . . but the behind-the-scenes work of the provisional Sinn Fein government was of genuine revolutionary potential. Ireland, or at least twenty-six counties of it, was quietly slipping away from mother England.”12 Even still, after

1922, Anti-Treatyites wreaked havoc in the city of Dublin. Although many supported the Treaty, including the Irish Catholic Church, the Catholic upper class, and the farming class, some extremists were not willing to let Northern Ireland quietly slip away. English writes,

The war began with an act worthy of the Jacobins of the Year II, or of the Taliban of the year 2001 or, more pertinently, of the German demolition of the Louvain university library in 1914: the destruction of the Public Record Office, within the Four Courts buildings, along with its archive of historical manuscripts relating to the history of Ireland from medieval to modern times. This could hardly be

8 English, Free Ireland, 307. 9 Coogan, Ireland in the 20th Century, 113. 10 English, Free Ireland, 311. 11 Ibid., 402. 12 Ibid., 406. Afterword 98

described as an accidental explosion: the stockpiling of petrol, paraffin and munitions in the building by anti-Treaty forces was a clear statement of an intent to obliterate Irish official memory, and thus permit the creation of a new history beginning at year zero.13

The destruction of the Four Courts buildings is still felt today—especially for historians mourning the loss of valuable historical data. The same people who destroyed fifty years of archives were the same people who suffered the consequences. Rather than wiping out the history of England’s oppression, they simply erased the history of their own ancestors. In addition to the burning of the Four Courts, Anti-Treatyites targeted members of the Irish aristocracy—a class of which Elvery now found herself a part.

Elvery remembers her family’s return to Ireland:

After the war we decided to go back to live in Dublin. . . If I thought we were coming back to peace and plenty in Ireland I made a great mistake. There may have been plenty but there was no peace. The Black and Tan War was going on, with shooting, curfews, ambushes, murders in the street in broad daylight and every kind of horror. By the time we had found a house there was a truce, and later on the Treaty with England was signed which was good enough for the Irish leader Michael Collins, however, was not good enough for some other patriots. We were soon back where we started, with even worse shooting and murdering. The British had gone and we now had a civil war to face up to.14

English asserts that “A feature of the latter stages of the conflict was the widespread burning of the country residences of Protestant gentry; the blackened skeletons of the ‘Big

Houses’ were to stand for decades as silent witnesses to the excesses of the Irish Civil War.”15

Nicola Gordon Bowe writes about Elvery’s experience in the raids and describes the events as devastating: “Her married home was totally razed in the 1922 Civil War.”16 Gordon Bowe also claims that the raids led to a “diminished income” for her family, and later states that, “She and

13 Ibid., 408. 14 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 112-113. 15 Ibid., 419. 16 Gordon Bowe, Arts and Crafts Movement, 131. Afterword 99 her husband lost their home and belongings during the Irish Civil War . . ..”17 This description of complete catastrophic loss, however, does not fit Elvery’s understanding of the event. Elvery recalls when her family became a target:

We moved to Clonard, on the outskirts of Dublin in 1922 . . . We had only been there some months when we were burnt out by the Irregulars who were fighting the Cosgrave Government. Gordon was working for the Government . . . so his name was on the murder list. . . At last it came—on a wild, stormy night just before Christmas 1922. . . The hall was filled with masked men with revolvers . . . The leader came forward very politely and said, “We have orders to burn this house,’ and added, ‘We think real bad of doing it. We’ll do as little damage as we can. We’ll use paraffin. We won’t use petrol.’ I said, ‘There are children here— there must not be any shooting.’ They said, ‘No, we won’t do any shooting.’ I was almost beginning to enjoy myself. . .The idea of having to do the Christmas shopping all over again was too much. I told the guard about the toys and he said, ‘Where are they, mum? We’ll help you.’ . . . I went around to the garden at the back of the house and stood in the wind and the rain in an ecstasy of relief—no one had been shot or burnt. As I watched the flames in the bedroom windows, I had a most wonderful moment feeling that everything that I owned was being destroyed. No more possessions—I experienced an extraordinary sense of freedom. By the time the fire was got under control we found that it had really done comparatively little damage.18

Although Gordon had to sleep in a different location each night under protection of an armed guard, and the rest of the family had to stay in a friend’s one-room cottage for a month,

Elvery described the whole experience as a “happy” one. It bears repeating here that Elvery recorded this memory more than forty years after the event, and could thus be making light of actual events. The Irish National Archives returns no results for the Campbell home among hundreds of records detailing monetary claims sought from the Irish government as restitution for similar raids. Furthermore, a letter from Elvery to her sister Dorothy just after the raid justifies Elvery’s later writings. Elvery explains to her sister that, at first, she was convinced the men had come to assassinate her husband, but almost immediately, she found that they did not

17 Ibid., 132. 18 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 113-115. Afterword 100 intend to do such an act. The men quite apologetically explained to Elvery and her husband that they had orders to burn down the house. Elvery writes, “They said they could not help it, they had orders they dared not disobey, and kept urging us to get the children, and anything we wanted to save, and all go down to the kitchen, and wait there till they had lit the house, and then we could leave it and get the fire brigade!”19 She closes by saying that her memory of the evening is an enjoyable one with “very nice boys,” for whom she held no resentment whatsoever. A second letter to Dorothy Kay may explain where Gordon Bowe gets her idea that

Elvery’s family suffered. Elvery writes,

Ruin is staring us in the face . . . We can see now what fools we were, being so honest over our compensation claim; only putting down things that were really burnt and putting the smallest price on them; sure smoke and water has destroyed nearly everything. Even the government official, who came to inspect the place, and our claim, said we hadn’t claimed half enough.

Although this passage does suggest that their home suffered a good deal of damage, Elvery’s lighthearted humor about the event both to her sister and in her memoir does not support the idea that they were destitute. If anything, Elvery was waxing poetic. Furthermore, if the Campbell family did in fact suffer a financial hardship, Elvery’s understanding of the experience seemed to resemble more of an adventure than turmoil. While the Irish National Archives does not show a record of the Campbell family home’s loss, the Archives do show a record of the Elvery family shop suffering damage.

In 1922, Anti-Treatyites seized an undisclosed amount of property from J.W. Elvery’s

Cork location—in the hands of Beatrice’s brothers by this time. Archival records show that the shop received restitution for an undisclosed amount from the Department of Finance in June

1923 for “Seizure of clothing and goods at [JW Elvery and Company Limited, 78 Patrick Street,

19 Beatrice Elvery, as quoted in Dorothy Kay’s The Elvery Family: A Memory, 86. Afterword 101

Cork City] by Irregular forces between 18 July 1922 and 9 August 1922.”20 Although Elvery’s

Anglo-Protestant status and her husband’s position on the Pro-Treaty side made both of their families a target, Elvery continued to see her adversaries as her fellow compatriots who were working towards a united Ireland. Although historical scholarship details horrendous acts of violence by both sides from 1916 through 1922, Elvery remembers the time with excitement— retelling the tales like a great explorer returning from an expedition.

The next two decades exist as a sort of coming of age for Ireland. The newly formed nation creates a partnership with the Catholic Church, the Irish government builds a

Parliamentary system loosely based on its former oppressor, and social norms begin to be shaped by a new institution nearly obsessed with morality, propriety, and vice. For the most part, violence and bloodshed takes a back seat to virtue, chastity, and purity. For Beatrice Elvery, however, life becomes a series of short adventures throughout Europe with her circle of friends, her children, and occasionally her husband. Bartlett explains the various social restrictions placed on women in Ireland after 1922: “In 1925 divorce was banned in the Irish Free State, artificial contraception was outlawed—there was never any question of permitting abortion—and throughout the 1920s there was an unrelenting onslaught on ‘evil literature’, culminating in the

Censorship of Publications Act of 1929.”21 Along with censorship and reproductive laws, the government targeted women, criminalizing what was otherwise lawful behavior. Bartlett details,

Women generally were objects of suspicion, and there was much alarming comment on them as temptresses, lurking in the popular dance halls or as all-too- willing companions, keen to go for jaunts in the motor cars that were now becoming common. Single mothers, in particular, found the Irish Free State a cold place, and their children too faced a bleak future educated, or, all too often, incarcerated in a number of religious, though scarcely Christian, institutions. Many of them would emerge from this experience as damaged adults, given to drink and depression and fit only to shuffle on to the ferry to England. It goes

20 Compensation Claims, Irish National Archives (1922), Department of Finance, 2/27/167. 21 Bartlett, Ireland, 428. Afterword 102

without saying that there was no country in Europe, or in the English-speaking world, where the single mother was viewed indulgently, or where her child was cherished. At the same time it seems that both were treated particularly harshly in the Irish Free State, because both threatened those pillars of Irish society, the family unit, property, and its safe transmission, and a (largely fictional) self-image of chastity.22

Art historian and lecturer at University College Dublin Sighle Bhreathnache-Lynch makes a scathing critique of post-independence Ireland’s institutional construct of the female image through various paintings and official currency. The author claims that after 1922, Ireland created a masculine national image, in turn perpetuating an “ideal Irish woman” as rural, uneducated, chaste, domestic, and confined. She then argues, “By fixing the position and role of women, as well as defining the very nature of womanhood, the new state could maintain a patriarchy already firmly in place during centuries of British rule.”23 Bhreathnache-Lynch maintains that this shift in female imagery occurred because of independence as a reaction to

Ireland’s need to maintain a reputation of strength and .

After nearly sixty years of Celtic revival where Irish nationalists pushed a Gaelic mythology full of both male and female imagery of strength and heroism, the newly formed Irish

Free State needed to solidify their national identity and, according to Bhreathnache-Lynch, this involved a defeminization and remasculinization of the country as a whole. She explains, “The conquered, now free, needed to assert their strength and prowess; thus the Celt . . . metamorphosized into the manly Gael and the land . . . was the western seaboard.”24 The author claims that Western rural Ireland became an identity for all of Ireland with its unkempt

22 Ibid., 430. 23 Sighle Bhreathnache-Lynch. "Landscape, Space, and Gender: Their Role in the Construction of Female Identity in Newly-Independent Ireland.” Canadian Woman Studies 17:3 (2004): 26. 24 Ibid. Afterword 103 wilderness, unforgiving climate, and unwavering peasant class. This image of the demure woman even appeared on the new nation’s paper bills.

The new Irish currency, as the author states, features the female image of Kathleen ní

Houlihan, but in peasant dress, submissively posed, and paired with the backdrop of a Western landscape (Fig. 31). This image is much different from the pre-independence images of ní

Houlihan, such as Beatrice Elvery’s Èire (1907), which shows a near goddess figure cloaked in emerald green set before a Celtic cross, surrounded by saints, and protecting the children of

Ireland with her fierce embrace.

Bhreathnache-Lynch claims, “The central meaning of a woman’s existence was through her family; her space confined solely to the domestic sphere.”25 She discusses various laws put in place as early as 1925, that excluded women from the civil service, serving as jurors, obtaining a divorce, or gaining access to birth control. Bhreathnache-

Lynch’s larger argument states that Ireland’s

Figure 31 Sir John Lavery, "Lady Lavery" (1928) 20 X patriarchal notion of the submissive female 24 in. Reproduced with permission from The Central Bank of Ireland “masked the injustices towards women by depriving them of an active public role, and allowing them a voice in determining the future of their own country.”26

Irish purity laws and social norms like those mentioned by Bartlett and Bhreathnache-

Lynch did not necessarily directly affect Elvery, as she was protected by her upper-class status

25 Breathnache-Lynch, “Landscape, Space, and Gender,” 28. 26 Ibid., 29. Afterword 104 and free from the expectations of the Catholic Church. She would, however, need at least to appear to be virtuous—especially since her husband was a public figure. Nevertheless, social expectations could not prevent Elvery from spending the next three decades in the company of men, exchanging letters, visiting in their private residences, and even meeting alone in Paris.

Although little evidence exists to suggest romantic involvement between Elvery and others, the relationships would certainly have gone against Irish convention. One such relationship was with her former teacher John Hughes.

In 1933, after Elvery’s son Michael began boarding school, Elvery traveled to Paris for study. She recalls, “I had not seen John Hughes for many years when he came to my hotel. . . We met every afternoon and sat outside cafes and walked in the Luxembourg Gardens. . . It was a great happiness . . . we were so much in sympathy.”27 John Hughes wrote to Sarah Purser between 1927 and 1934 asking her to “Remember him to Carrickmines,’ his nickname for

Elvery—calling himself Drumcondra, the respective names of their childhood homes. He regularly apologized for not writing to her even though she wrote to him often.28 Elvery’s memoir states that they lost touch again after his sister died: “He wrote to me saying, ‘Don’t try to comfort me.’ He left Paris . . . and I never heard from him again.”29 Denson’s documentary biography provides more detail.

John Hughes wrote to Sarah Purser in 1934 about Elvery’s trip to Paris, “Fancy Lady

Godiva flying to Paris, and not circling in her aeroplane over my house waving kisses to her master out of the empyrean, whilst I would be on the roof dancing with joy waving a flag—green of course—to her! That’s all she cares for me in spite of her protestations of affection! Flighty

27 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 133-134. 28 Denson, John Hughes, 155-169. 29 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip,134. Afterword 105 that is what I call her. Please note little joke. You can tell her if you like.”30 In 1935, he wrote to

Purser stating that he thought of “someone whose initials are the same as Lloyd George (Quelle discretion!) on [account] of her last still unanswered letter over a year old.”31 Hughes’ last letter in 1941 is short and morose: “I should like to know that you are well…I am a wandering waif now. . . I wonder if I shall ever see Drumcondra again!” Denson notes that Purser asked Elvery to write to Hughes—which she did—but it was returned to her unread. Hughes died before it arrived.32

When compiling research for a study of John Hughes’ life work, lay historian Alan

Denson contacted Elvery requesting any letters from Hughes she still possessed, and received the disappointing response that she had burned all of his letters upon his death. In the 1950s, a decade after Hughes’ death, Elvery wrote to the Irish Parliament several times attempting to have the statues from his Queen Victoria memorial—or at least winged victory—placed back on display. She argued that Hughes’ work was too beautiful to be hidden away. Her pleas, unfortunately, went unanswered—that is until a group of British loyalists on the other side of the globe resurrected the monument.

In 1986, plans were underway in Sydney, Australia, to restore the Queen Victoria building in the nation’s capital. Although several artists were consulted, and many existing statues examined, the restoration committee was dissatisfied with everything they came across.

Through word of mouth, they heard that Hughes’ Queen Victoria was collecting dust in an old

30 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 170. 31 Denson, John Hughes, 171. 32 Ibid., 176. Afterword 106

storage silo somewhere in England and, based on old photographs, the committee knew it was a perfect match. Thus, in 1986, John Hughes’ Queen Victoria set sail across three oceans to its new home in Sydney, Australia, where it stands today (Fig.32).33 If only Elvery were alive to see her wishes fulfilled. Elvery lost many loved ones throughout the 1930s and 40s, including her other mentor, William Orpen, who died in 1931, and, tragically, the ultimate loss of her only daughter during World War II.

Elvery writes, “In 1943 Biddy had married a colleague in her Department. In 1944 they were both killed by a flying-bomb one night in their little house in a mews off

Prince’s Gate, South Kensington.”34 She barely describes her grief, but merely suggests it: “I find it difficult to make myself remember those later years of the

Second World War. In an effort to try to do something to help I kept on endlessly Figure 32 John Hughes, Queen Victoria, 1908, Bronze, 15 feet, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney knitting comforts for the troops, though for a while it was even questionable as to whether Irish neutrality could permit such a thing. I cannot even remember the war ending or whether there was any rejoicing. Life just went on.”35 The last chapters of Elvery’s memoir are not dedicated to her children, her art, or even her husband, but

33 D. Fallon, “Statues of Dublin: The unveiling (and removal) of Queen Victoria,” Dublin Life and Culture (2012), retrieved May 31 2015, http://comeheretome.com /2012/05/24/statues -of-dublin- the-unveiling-and-removal-of-queen-victoria/ 34 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip,173. 35 Ibid.,174. Afterword 107 to her friend Kot, a curmudgeon non-practicing Jew with no romantic interests to speak of, little tolerance for most people, but unending adoration for Beatrice Elvery.

While Elvery makes several references about her distaste for church, she also discusses her concern when Kot shared his feelings about God. She remembers that

He disliked organized religion: to him ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’ were different kinds of people. He also disliked all accepted interpretations of the word ‘God’. . . He seemed to explode all superstitions, annihilate all creeds and dogmas, in fact clear the air to such an extent that I felt I was no longer sitting at his kitchen table but was alone in some vast, empty, lonely space. . . He must have been conscious of my feelings for he suddenly turned around and said, ‘Mind you, Beatrice, in spite of all I say, I am God’s most humble servant.’ I was so surprised I nearly burst into tears.36

Finally, in 1955, what seemed to be Elvery’s last living friend left her side. Just as she did with the letters of Orpen and Hughes, Elvery planned a special ritual for Kot’s letters:

I asked Marjorie Wells to send my letters back to me. For about a week large cardboard boxes kept arriving every day, closely packed with my letters in their envelopes. I was horrified; I was overwhelmed; I tried to read them but could not bear it. . . I soaked them in turpentine and took them out to the garden and burnt them. It is extremely difficult to burn letters. They blaze up and you think they are finished, for all look black. With a long stick, you begin to poke and prod the black ashes, then masses of writing-paper untouched by fire keep appearing. . . By the end of the week I was exhausted, but still the letters came. . . As I worked at the burning of my letters I felt that Kot was with me. I said, ‘A nice job you have left me. I told you to burn my letters. Why did you keep them?’ He explained, ‘I did not think they were literature. I kept them because they were a sort of history of the time and might be useful to anyone writing about it.’ I told him to get another long stick from the heap of pea-stakes and help me to poke the bonfire. He did, and we worked happily together in peace. It was rather fun when both our sticks caught fire.37

36 Elvery, Today we will only Gossip, 183. 37Ibid., 195. Appendix 108

Appendix

Figure 35 The Unicorn, 40.64 X 50.8 cm, oil on board, 1950 Figure 38 The Bird Set Free, 24.13 X 31.12 cm, oil on canvas, undated

Figure 34 The Mermaid, 38.1 X 45.72 cm, oil on canvas, Figure 37 The Sailors Return, 38.1 X 45.72 cm, oil on canvas, undated undated

Figure 33 Rival Musicians, 51 x 61cm, oil on canvas, 1941 Figure 36 The Intruder, 71.1 x 96.5cm, oil on canvas, 1932 Appendix 109

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