She was the incarnation of the poetic heroines that W.B. Yeats used to dream about. He worshipped her from a distance and wrote poetry to her. Eileen Murphy remembers

MAUD GONNE

 

“It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair’’

 

When W.B. Yeats first made the acquaintance of Maud Gonne, it was not the political agitator whom he saw, but rather, the young debutante who was presented at Dublin’s Vice-Regal lodge in a gown of white, with a train of white lilies. He saw her as a wild and beautiful woman, tempestuous and stormy, yet fairy-like and delicate.

She was the incarnation of the poetic heroines he used to dream about. He worshipped her from a distance and wrote poetry to her.

Maud Gonne in reality was a very dedicated woman with great courage and strength of character.

She was actively interested in Irish politics and threw herself wholeheartedly into the efforts which were being made to free Ireland from British rule.
Here lay her main interest in life.
“The evictions which I saw in 1885 changed the whole course of my life and set its purpose; to free Ireland from the British Empire.
“The only virtue I can claim is never to have deviated from that single purpose, for I have let it central my thoughts, actions, and even my friendships.’’

Maud Gonne’s earlier life was spent in the aristocratic milieu of pre-treaty Dublin, but she was never satisfied with the status quo and always acted according to her own inclinations.

Yeats asked her to marry him several times but always she refused. She once told Lady Gregory that she had … “more important things to think about than marriage and so has he”.
His love for Maud Gonne inspired Yeats to introduce into his poetry such romantic adjectives as ‘pearl pale’, ‘love-lorn’ and ‘glimmering’.
He refers to her ‘cloud pale eyelids dream dimmed eyes’ and he always regarded her as more of a goddess than a human being.

She was very tall and beautiful and it was said of her that there was “… an element in her beauty that moved minds full of old Gaelic stories and poems … her beauty, backed by her great stature could instantly effect an assembly … for it was incredibly distinguished.’’

Yeats dreamed of leading a solitary life on an island with Maud Gonne, and he had the idea of establishing a castle of heroes there with he himself as king and Maud Gonne as queen. 

Yet they were two very different people and she realises that this is so when she said, “I never indulged in self-analysis and often used to get impatient with Willie Yeats who like all writers was terribly introspective and tried to make me so.”

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own