For Irish people 1916 is synonymous with the violence of the Easter Rising and the execution of its leaders. But what of the wives of those leaders? Author Sinead McCoole unearthed their stories and discovered how the deaths of their husbands and subsequent upheaval in Ireland profoundly effected them, writes AP Maginness
WHAT can be said about the 1916 Easter Rising that hasn't been said before? Almost 100 years on, wherever green is worn political parties of every shade want a piece of its legacy. How then to gain a clear perspective on one of Irish history's most seminal events? Dublin-based historian and writer Sinead McCoole found a way.
Her new book, Easter Widows - Seven Irish Women Who Lived in the Shadow of the Eater Rising, chronicles the travails of the women whose husbands were executed by the British government in the aftermath of the Rising.
Her historical sidestep has produced an arresting counterpoint to the romantic notion of blood sacrifice espoused by Padraig Pearse and others.
Easter Widows details how the lives of Lillie (Connolly), Maud (Gonne/MacBride), Kathleen (Clarke), Agnes (Mallin), Aine (Ceannt), Grace (Plunkett) and Muriel (McDonagh) were changed, changed utterly in the aftermath of the Rising - before bringing their tragic tales together as a singular narrative view of the event.
When they first met their husbands these women had embarked on very different lives.
They wedded men of the establishment; one married a lecturer, two married soldiers, another a civil servant. They all knew each other yet, because of their husbands, their lives became intrinsically bound together in the years after the Rising.
Some of the widows broke under the strain of their experiences; McCoole's history vividly paints a picture of their pain, their sorrow and how none of them basked in any reflected glory.
Appositely, McCoole was working in Kilmainham Gaol when she first came up with the idea for the book. "I remember asking my boss could I research the story for a pamphlet on the Fenians," she says. "Next thing you know I was involved in the new exhibit for the 80th anniversary of the Rising in 1996. I started to gather material, stories on the leaders, and proposed that I would contact their families."
However, it was the story of Agnes, wife of Michael Mallin, the tenth man to be executed in the aftermath of the Rising, that precipitated writing the book nearly 20 years later. "I remember meeting Maura [Agne's daughter], the baby born after her father's execution.
I asked, 'Do you have any images of your family', and she walked over to the bureau and took out the now famous family picture taken by the National Aid Association to fund raise for the education of the children of the executed leaders. "I had no idea that all the widows had been photographed and so I knew then that if I contacted other families they would have other treasures." And so a book was born. "I also remember her showing me the medal sent to her for her christening by Countess Markievicz, who was not executed but was in prison when she was baptised."
The child was named Maura Constance Connolly Mallin.
The book is full of these little moments where the lives of these women crossed over. This was not immediately clear in the book's conception, however - rather McCoole's extensive research over a period of years uncovered lots of new detail that allowed the women's live to be knitted together in her narrative. "It's like a relationship unfolding;
you talk about your past and make connections. At one point the introduction [to the book] was meant to be a list of the countries - India, Pakistan, South Africa, America, France, Isle of Man, England, Scotland, Algiers - all the countries these men and women lived during their childhoods and early adult life and how they all came to be in one place in Easter 1916. That was one of the most fascinating things."
Remarkably, given the nature of the subject, McCoole uncovered plenty of new and exciting material, a testament to her tenacity and skill as a researcher. "As more source material came to light, the Military Archives, witness statements (such as Áine - more than 80 pages of her own voice, her narration of events), the pension records, the letters from the families, it provided those intersections that novelists have the luxury of imaging but historians have to find the documents."
And the book does read like a novel, which begs the question: Was there any room for poetic licence?
McCoole's answer, unsurprisingly, is a firm no. She explains that there was no need given the level of suffering that these women had to endure, hardship that surprised her given that the first line of the 1916 proclamation makes provision for women - 'Irishmen and Irish women, in the name of God and the dead generations...' "I had no idea that the women suffered so much. Raids and attacks in the War of Independence I would have expected but I had no sense of the brutality towards them in the Civil War and how they suffered at the hands of former friends," McCoole says. "How Kathleen (Clarke) had a completely different view of the Rising and her husband's role, how honest Agnes (Mallin) was about the Rising. The first thing she said to her husband when she met him after the Rising was that it was a fiasco. "Muriel's depression was a surprise. Her husband's distancing himself to take part in the Rising... and Grace's obsession with getting money from the military as a widow."
So does she have a 'favourite widow'? "The best story to uncover was the Mallins' - the excitement of discovering the courtship by correspondence of Agnes and Michael, the love unfolding... as you read letter after letter putting
the story together. "I have a fondness for both of these people because I met their children. It makes them real. "The love story of Kathleen and Tom [Clarke]. I love Aine's honesty and her strength and courage as a widow. Lillie's devotion to James and her support of him even though he was absent and distracted. "Muriel is sad. Maud is interesting, her political and humanitarian work is commendable but her personal life, as outlined, shows another side."
* Easter Widows: Seven Irish Women Who Lived in the Shadow of the Eater Rising by Sinead McCoole is published by Doubleday and is available now.