Unlikely Rebels (7 page)

The young people had their visitors also. Gerald Vere, who was studying law, sometimes brought Eustace and Ambrose Lane, Lady Gregory's nephews, home to dinner. They might stay the night at Temple Villas because even if they were only a little late, their mother would lock them out – despite their both being delicate. Their brother, Hugh Lane, was away in London, they said, collecting pictures to sell. Their Gifford friends were unimpressed: painting pictures would have interested them, but not buying and selling them. Their visitors quickly realised that telling funny stories would make them popular at Temple Villas, and one of them, feeling inadequate at this social grace, kept a notebook of jokes which he consulted discreetly. Muriel, going through a tomboy stage, grabbed the notebook as the unfortunate amateur comic was scanning it under the table. It contained a list of his friends and, opposite their names, ‘suitable' jokes. It was an obvious precaution given that Isabella was so conservative. Another contemporary of her brothers wrote poems to Nellie, but they too disappeared in time.

The children loved the ‘downstairs' visitors, their father's as well as their own. Their mother's drawing-room dolman-gowned guests were less loved than endured.
[14]

Notes

Visiting is a two-way business, however, and the teenage Giffords, as well as entertaining in their home, also paid calls. There are a few descriptions of their being introduced to the social world. On a rather tattered page of
The Monitor
, an old early twentieth-century periodical, there is an article by Nell (Eileen) Gay, a member of a well-known republican family. The title, ‘The Pretty Ladies', sets the tone of the article, written about four of the Gifford girls: Nellie, Muriel, Grace and ‘
John'.
[1]
When Sidney started writing in her teens, while still at Alexandra, she decided, perhaps correctly, that an obviously Protestant sort of name, and the name of a
girl
at that, would not get her very far in republican journalism. She told Jack White, editor of
The Irish Times
, that when she left Alexandra College (about 1905) she signed her very first effort in journalism for Arthur Griffith's
Sinn Féin with the name ‘
John Brennan' because she thought ‘it sounded like a strong Wexford farmer'.
[2]
From then on, except for official papers, she always signed herself ‘
John', and that was what the family called her thereafter.

Eileen Gay's article eulogised the girls' charms, writing that their dress was both beautiful and ‘quaint' – an interesting word
.
The Giffords chose fabrics like velvet and flowing silk and sometimes made their own clothes. Another, more robust description comes from a relation of Maeve Donnelly, Nellie's daughter. He informed Maeve in a letter, ‘They were a rather wild, attractive lot; could have been on the stage.'
[3]
The
Monitor
article describes the girls' entrance to the Sinn Féin rooms, all tastefully dressed: ‘they were like a bouquet of flowers.'
[4]

One of the houses they visited was that of District Justice Reddin on the north side of the city, where they were likely to meet people of artistic, literary and political bent. Another literary salon was in the home of George Russell (
Æ), a gentle, tall, humorous man and a visionary poet. At his Sunday ‘open house' evenings, the Gifford teenagers were made very welcome, partly because of their first appearance there. While in London, young Frederick Ernest Gifford had been befriended by Sylvia Lynd, the wife of the essayist Robert Lynd, who described himself in the
London Times
as ‘a Protestant Ulster nationalist'.
[5]
Sylvia introduced her mother, Nora F. Dryhurst, to Ernest, and she arranged for his attendance with his sisters at Æ's salon. She persuaded the young Giffords to dress in costume for the visit and introduced them under the Celtic names of Deirdre, Fionnuala, Gráinne and Cúchulainn. They had walked to Rathgar, where Æ lived, wearing these theatrical costumes, evoking much interest on the way. To their embarrassment, they found the other guests in normal attire. This alone could have earned them the description of being a little wild and suitable for stage careers. However, it endeared them to their host, Æ, and during later visits to his home they met Count Casimir Markievicz and his wife, Constance Markievicz, James Stephens, Padraic Colum, Sarah Purser (a distant Gifford relative), the Yeats family and Maud Gonne. This was all a far cry from mother's ‘at home' visitors, and these teenagers were made very welcome at Æ's and wherever they went.
[6]

Other members of the family were going out into the world, however, in a more real sense. The shadowy Liebert, second son of Frederick and Isabella, had left home by the time of the taking of the 1901 census, when he was twenty-five years of age. His was a strange name, rather musical and Norman, and its choice was equally unusual. At his birth, the name was familiar to Isabella as the trade name of some household commodity. She fancied the sound of it, and, alone among her sons, he received at baptism only one first name.
[7]
He joined the British Merchant Navy and sought Canadian citizenship.

Edward Cecil, Grace's twin went to America and there seems to have been little if any contact between either him or Liebert with the family over the years. A letter was delivered one day to Temple Villas with an apologetic note from the Rathmines post office.
[8]
The franked stamp indicated a date ten years past. The letter had fallen behind a grid and had lain there till some reconstruction work on the office was being done. It was from one of the absent boys, Liebert or Edward Cecil, but it is unclear which one. Other than this letter, the two seemed to fade from the family history books. Neither
Nellie
nor ‘
John' say much of them in their family records.

The eldest boy, Claude Frederick, went into his father's legal office. Frederick had left the Bachelor's Walk address, and, in 1895, Frederick Gifford & Son operated at 46 Dawson Street. In 1901, Frederick Gifford & Claude Gifford are at 5 Dawson Street, and in 1906 they have moved to No. 16 where they stayed until 1913. The last listing, for Claude only, is 1913.
[9]
By that time his father was seventy-seven. Later, Claude is listed as Lieutenant Claude F. Gifford, 50th Battalion Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. By Easter Week 1916, however, the Claude Gifford family home was in Baggot Street, not very far from where Commandant de Valera was holding Bolands Mills and still nearer to the little Irish Volunteer outpost at Clanwilliam House.

The third Gifford boy, Gerald Vere, had also studied law. He had just done his finals in 1901 when he contracted meningitis and died unexpectedly, aged twenty-three. The family, and especially his mother, were devastated.

Gabriel, the fourth son, took up the study of art, which brought him to London and fraternisation with W. B. Yeats. The poet wrote a poem (lost unfortunately) about their walks in London parks. Gabriel's next move was to America, where he made his living as a commercial artist. He married there and had a daughter, Geraldine, called after Gerald perhaps. His letters show him to be a good family man, but with a decided distaste for both Irish Ireland and Catholic Ireland, in whose faith he had been baptised.

Frederick Ernest, to give him his full name, was the ninth child of Frederick and Isabella. While art, the armed services and the law had provided careers for his brothers, it was decided to make Ernest an electrical engineer, even though he, too, had artistic leanings. It was a sensible choice, in that electricity was obviously an increasingly important source of power. He was placed for his training with an electrical firm in Kildare and, since his work was often at night, his social life was minimal. The firm moved to Rawmarsh, Yorkshire, and later to London. Ernest moved with them. Here too his work inhibited social relaxation so that he had to make a determined effort to find himself an outlet for his leisure time. He discovered a sort of literary club in London, and it was there that he met Sylvia, the wife of Robert Lynd. The warm-hearted girl had observed a tall, red-haired young man, standing shyly and alone at his first meeting. She welcomed him and introduced him to her mother, Nora Dryhurst, whose husband was director of the London Museum and who was herself a journalist and a sort of collector of nationalist causes: the young Indian movement, Young Egyptians, Young Irelanders – they were all grist to the mill of her enthusiasm. She seemed unaware that Ernest might not have had any anti-loyalist feelings, and there is a brief, mind-boggling reference to her attempt to do Irish step-dancing with Indians and Egyptians who wanted their countries to be free of English power and English influence. During these attempts at multi-racial Irish step-dancing they were ‘like wooden figures', and there was much laughter at their attempts to keep the feet in perpetual motion and the torso in statuesque immobility.

Ernest was invited to Nora Dryhurst's London home, and she was delighted to hear of his talented family. She learned of Liebert and Edward Cecil, who had gone off to America; of Claude, who was partner in his father's legal firm; of Muriel who was still in Dublin; of Kate, who had got her degree; of Nellie, who was housekeeping at home; of Gabriel, Grace and Ada, all of whom hoped to make a career in art; and also of his youngest sister, who had left school and wanted to be a journalist. He showed her an article by ‘John' published in Arthur Griffith's
Sinn Féin
and some pictures too, including a reproduction of a painting by William Orpen of Grace, a student at the Slade School of Art. Nora Dryhurst's interest in the colourful careers of Ernest's brothers and sisters led to her friendship with the whole family, to her introducing them to Æ … and to two doomed marriages.
[10]

The girls were also making their way in the world. Because she was over twenty, Kate was allowed to read the newspapers, denied to the younger ones for fear of corruption. She drew Nellie's attention to a government advertisement in the press announcing a new scheme of training, which was to produce at its conclusion ‘An Itinerant Cookery Instructress under the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland' to teach all over Ireland. This grandiose title was soon to be reduced to ‘The Cookin' Woman' by its rural female students. Its training centre was at 20–21 Kildare Street, Dublin, and it was called the Irish Training School of Domestic Economy.
[11]
In fact, the course was in ‘household management' and included both laundry and dressmaking. Kate pointed out that the paper suggested taking a ‘trial course' and thought this was an excellent opportunity for Nellie. Nellie raced off to her amused father to coax the required £1 entrance fee from him because she had no pocket money at that stage. She acquitted herself well at the Kildare Street interview, but she herself remarked, wryly, that several family strings had to be pulled for her to be admitted to the course. Unionist strings would have been almost standard, as they were with practically every post apart from the most menial. Nellie learned that she would require a white apron, that the course would last for six weeks and that, as surprised as she was joyful, she would then be a salaried lady.

Once qualified, Nellie had to provide herself with all her own cooking paraphernalia, and, since her lessons were sometimes held in vacated schools or even sheds (one shared with a sheep shearer), she had to bring not only her pots and saucepans, ingredients and implements, but also a collapsible table. She often had upwards of twenty girls and women in her classes, and the six-week course actually lasted for twelve weeks because it was deemed that a continuous six weeks would be too demanding for the students. She would alternate one group with another, spreading the lessons over twelve weeks in all.

She hired a pony and cart, or donkey and cart – whichever was available – to bring all the gear from venue to venue, including the
pièce de resistance
, which was called a ‘mistress' stove, of reputedly American origin. One English inspector expressed horror when he saw ‘the stable' as he called the shed in which Nellie at that point was teaching, but the young domestic scientist piously (and perhaps not very appropriately) mentioned in defence the most famous stable in the world.

Another difficulty for Nellie when she was working away from Dublin was accommodation. The ‘big houses', owned almost exclusively by Nellie's own class, would never take boarders, so she was obliged to take accommodation in cottages, varying from the very comfortable to the cold and damp. She and her fellow instructors had been warned in their training how to test for a damp bed: on their first night in a bed, in which there was usually placed an earthenware hot-water bottle, they were to insert a mirror between the sheets. If the mirror became misted, the bedclothes were dangerously damp. Nellie solved one such situation by spreading the bedclothes out to dry at the fire and sleeping in a bare but dry bed, wrapped in her warm dressing gown. One cottager with whom she stayed economised (as most of them did) by using dripping instead of butter on the bread. The dog in the house thrived gratefully on the ‘drippinged' bread that Nellie slipped to him.
[12]

Such discomforts she took in her stride, considering her sheltered upbringing. She has left behind an indication of her affection for these Irish country folk in both a fairly excruciating poem, technically speaking (though full of warmth), and a very beautiful and moving short story. It was a love story on both sides for rural Ireland and Nellie Gifford. The country people were reincarnations of her beloved nurse, Bridget Hamill, and she had no difficulty in loving them. She played her violin for their set dances in the evenings, and we get a marvellous glimpse of her ‘goings on
' from Patrick Galligan, Thomastown, Kilbeg, County Meath, interviewed in his own home on 12 November 1970, when he was seventy-four years of age:

There's a bit of history attached to this house that I live in. It was built for a man called Denis Creevan and was finished around 1904 or 1905. There was a cookery class started in the parish, cookery and domestic economy and all to this. The lady that was sent to us was a Miss Gifford and she turned out in later years to be [a sister of] the lady that was the maid, the bride and the widow the one day. She was married to the 1916 leader [Joseph] Thomas [
sic
] Plunkett.

Well, she left this house and went to lodge above in Dunne's of Marvelstown. The reason that she had come to this house was that it was hard to get any place to stop at the time. She was stopping in Kells, I suppose. Father Clavin was after coming here and he was anxious to get some place for her so he got on to the Creevans to know if they could keep her. Julia Creevan stopped with her and she slept above here in this room. But anyway she left because Paddy Creevan was reported for keeping lodgers in a county council cottage.

She remained in Dunne's for some time. But she was a grand person. I remember her well, I used to be a young fellow there doing jobs in the evening for Mrs Dunne and getting my dinner into that. But, anyway, there was nothing for her only Irish tradition, all about Ireland. One thing she longed for turned out to be the cause of her misfortune here, and got her out of the parish. She wanted to see an Irish wake.