Constance Markievicz

Constance Gore-Booth was born into a famous Anglo-Irish family on Feb. 4, 1868 at Buckingham Gate, London. Her father, Sir Henry Gore-Booth was an explorer and philanthropist with a large estate in Co. Sligo. The Gore-Booths were known as model landlords in Sligo. Perhaps being raised in this atmosphere of concern for the common man had something to do with the way Constance and her younger sister Eva would conduct their later lives. Moving in the circles of the Ascendancy and then comparing that to the lives of the poor dispossessed Irish families along the western coast must have affected them as well. Eva would become an advocate for labor and women's suffrage in England, and Constance would become the most famous women of the Irish revolutionary movement.

Living the somewhat rough live of the countryside, Constance grew to be a noted horsewoman and also a crack shot and a beautiful young woman, as well. Both were educated by governesses, not uncommon for girls of their social class, but certainly inadequate for the tasks which lay ahead. Eva chose poetry for her creative outlet; Constance chose painting. But other things beckoned on the horizon. Constance once said of her indulgent life at Lissadell: "We lived on a beautiful, enchanted West Coast, where we grew up intimate with the soft mists and the colored mountains, and where each morning you woke to the sound of the wild birds .... No one was interested in politics in our house. Irish history was also taboo, for 'What is the use of grieving over past grievances?'"

They did what they could to help those poorer than themselves, for that was the family's way. But Constance remembered watching the prosperous Protestant farmers with their Scottish names, while safely hidden out of sight, and comparing their abundance with the dispossessed Gaels of the West Coast in their miserable huts. They were constant and welcome visitors at the estate cottages. Constance is remembered to have sat up with the father of a stud-groom night after night while the older man suffered a serious illness. Upon finding the groom's mother near her confinement, laboring over a wash tub, Constance sent the woman away and finished the washing herself.

Of this and other charitable acts she said: "though Irish in all one's inmost feelings, one's superficial outlook was aloof and vague." Seasons in London produced many admirers for the beautiful Gore-Booth sisters, but none suited. Eva met her lifelong friend, Ester Roper, on a holiday in Italy. For the rest of her life, she would work tirelessly to better the working conditions of women in England.

In 1887 she and Eva were presented at the court of Queen Victoria with Constance being called "the new Irish beauty" by some. But young Constance was not aspiring to the ornamental life of a "great beauty," she had ambition, she intended to be an artist and in 1893 she went to London to study at the Slade School.

Then, in 1898, she left for Paris where she attended the Julian School. It was there in Paris that she met Count Casimir Dunin Markievicz, an artist from a wealthy Polish family that owned land in the Ukraine. Markievicz was a Catholic, and he was already married, but his wife was back in the Ukraine and seriously ill. In 1899 she died and Casimir and Constance married on Sept. 29, 1901; Constance Gore-Booth was now the Countess Markievicz.

The couple had one daughter, Maeve, born at Lissadell in 1901, which tells us that the Countess was pregnant when the couple married. Maeve was raised by her grandparents and would eventually become estranged from her mother. In 1903 the couple moved to Dublin and Constance began to make a name for herself as a landscape artist. The couple was also involved with the Dublin social scene. She and Casimir founded the United Arts Club in 1905 to help bring together people of the artistic renaissance then going on in Dublin, but she was not satisfied with this life. "Nature should provide me with something to live for, something to die for," she said. Then in 1906 a small incident, as so often happens in peoples lives, helped her find that "something" she was searching for, something that had been all around her whole life.

In 1906 she rented a cottage in the Dublin hills. The previous tenant had been Pádraic Colum, a poet, and he left old copies of the revolutionary publications The Peasant and Sinn Féin there. Reading these, Constance knew she had found the cause to inspire her life.

In January, 1904, Arthur Griffith began a series of articles in the United Irishman that would lead the way for a national movement called Sinn Fein and shortly thereafter, Constance would learn of Ireland's struggle for independence. Constance's days of parties and Dublin Castle events were soon to end.

During her stay in a remote cottage, she learned not only of Sinn Fein but also of the Camarilla, embraced by one who had noted her interest and her zeal, coupled by a plan he and his Irish revolutionary friends had concocted. She was taught in secrecy and was told of plans, too extraordinary for imagination.

By 1908, Constance had immersed herself in the theatre, the main path from which Inghinidhe na hEireann (Daughters of Erin) could effectively educate. For years they had played an important role in artistic and nationalist Dublin, and through Arthur Griffith and his urging that Irish women perpetuate a true nationalist spirit in the country by the example in their homes, they hoisted the banner. Yeats' "Cathleen ni Houlihan" and AE's "Deirdre" were first performed by the newly formed Irish National Dramatic Company and the Inghinidhe dramatic class. Constance herself had recently played in Edward Martyn's "Maeve" along with many actors who were avowed nationalists. While reading articles from a bundle left by one of the actors, she happened across Robert Emmett's powerful words from the dock: "When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written." In a flash, she contacted her sire, knowing she must join up. Her conversion to anti-British militarism was swift and all-consuming.

Constance attended her first Inghinidhe meeting one dank, rainy night, coming from a Castle function dressed in a blue velvet cloak, diamonds glittering in her hair, to the unattractive meeting room with its rough table and splintery chairs. The members eyed her with suspicion, were rude to her, and she loved it.

She pulled off her wet shoes, placed them on the hearth, sat at the unpainted table and listened attentively as the meeting progressed. She said she liked the women from the beginning because it was the first time she had been any place she had not been "kowtowed to as a countess."

They gave her work organizing girls' dramatic classes, but she soon was bored and moved on to a class for boys. By 1909 she was on the council for Sinn Fein but she and Griffith never really got along. She was militant and he was a pacifist.

When Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scout movement, the Countess offered a nationalist scout movement. She worked with Jim Larkin and got a place to use as a Boy Scout headquarters. She christened the group Fianna after Finn's legendary warrior band. The boys learned drill, how to use firearms, signalling, first aid, and route marches. The movement grew, and new branches were formed. Larkin allotted one group a room in his newly built Liberty Hall.

During the tram workers' strike of 1913, when strikes and lockouts put 24,000 people out of work, Constance turned the basement of Liberty Hall into a food kitchen and milk depot. For six months she worked night after night, collecting the funds, cooking the food, visiting the sick in their homes, and recruiting a band of helpers from across the social strata.

As her activities increased, so did the marriage deteriorate. Not understanding her newly-aquired passions or her desires to stay up all night long, Casimir willingly went off to fight on Polish soil, and Constance immersed herself even more fully into the nationalist movement. Soon she was undertaking rifle practice, determined to be as good as any of the men. She and her Fianna boys were at the Howth dock to unload the cache of rifles from the deck of the Asgaard, and she succeeded in blowing up a wall with a set of detonators brought by a friend.