150 Anniversary of Major John MacBride

The 150^th anniversary of the birth of John MacBride at the Quay Westport Co. Mayo occurred on 8 May 2018. He was executed on 5 May1916. John MacBride was the youngest of five brothers born to Honoria Gill from Clare Island and Patrick MacBride from Glenshesk in Co. Antrim. The family was steeped in Irish nationalism and John became a member of the Celtic Literary Society and IRB as a young man. He represented the latter at a Convention in Chicago in 1896. On his return to Ireland he travelled to South Africa and was joined shortly by his good friend Arthur Griffith. They formed an Irish Society there which commemorated the centenary of the 1798 Rising in Johannesburg. When the Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899, MacBride organised a Volunteer Irish Transvaal Brigade which fought alongside the Boers during 1899-1900. As the war developed into a guerrilla war the Brigade was stood down and the members left got passage to America. They would have been charged with treason if they returned to Ireland. MacBride, who had, due to his activities become something of a national hero, stayed closer to Ireland and travelled to Paris where among the welcoming party was Maud Gonne. Within a few months the pair were in America on a fundraising tour for Griffith’s new United Irishman newspaper and the Boer War. They were married in Paris in February 1903. This was devastating news for WB Yeats, who had for many years been seeking to marry, his muse, Maud Gonne. This did not endear MacBride to Yeats.

The marriage had been advised against by both families and all their friends. They were told they had nothing in common except for a dedication to freeing Ireland from English rule. Maud was a wealthy independent English woman used to following her own star. Within a year the marriage was a failure and MacBride decided to risk returning home to Ireland in November 1904. Their baby boy had been born in January 1904. Maud had two babies earlier with her French lover, Lucien Millevoye. Her first baby had been a boy, Georges, who died in infancy, and whose death nearly drove Maud insane. She came to believe in reincarnation and saw her new baby boy as the reincarnation of Georges. The possibility of her estranged husband claiming custody of the baby preyed on her mind when he suggested she meet him in London with the baby. She travelled there with the baby and consulted her solicitor. She then advised John that unless he agreed to give her custody of the baby, she would institute divorce proceedings against him in Paris, accusing him of molesting her eleven year old daughter. Negotiations occurred in London without agreement. Maud returned home to Paris and began the Court case. She omitted the charge of molesting her daughter, but entered a charge of him committing adultery with her half-sister, Eileen Wilson. The case went to Court and MacBride insisted the allegation of molestation be raised and adjudicated upon. The Court did not find against him on either charge.

Maud exchanged letters with WB Yeats during this lengthy process. He was thrilled and hoped that Maud would get a divorce. Her letter of 8 August 1906 to him said “The Court thinks the charges of immorality are insufficiently proved. Grants Mrs MacBride Judicial separation and guardianship of the child…allows the father visiting rights…the father to have him one month a year when over six…I am very disappointed”.

MacBride exercised his visiting rights on a couple of occasion before returning to Ireland, never to see his son again.  John MacBride reintegrated himself into the national struggle. He wrote a thirteen part account of his Transvaal Brigade for the Freeman’s Journal and became a much sought after public speaker throughout Ireland and Britain. Padraig Pearse wrote to him;

 Sgoil Eanna on 17 February 1912:

A Chara,

                     Could you find time to address the members of St. Enda’s Branch of the Gaelic League in our Study Hall, some Friday evening in the near future? Any subject likely to appeal to the imagination of young Gaels would do; history, literature, science, travel, industry, even politics in the wider sense, would all be admissible…

                                         Yours sincerely

                                                PH Pearse

P.S. What the boys would really like is an account of your experiences in the South African War.

He was a confidant of John Devoy and acted as Tom Clarke’s Best Man in New York. He became Water Bailiff for Dublin Corporation, collecting dues at the port with an office at 4 Rogerson’s Quay. In 1914 he, Arthur Griffith, William O’Brien and Sean T. O’Kelly attended a meeting in Dublin with the majority of those who subsequently signed the Proclamation that decided on the necessity of a Rising.

MacBride advised Peadar Kearney that those who could leave Jacob’s Factory before the surrender in 1916 should do so, saying “Liberty is a priceless thing and any of you that see a chance, take it. I’d do it myself but my liberty days are over”.  At his trial he called one witness, his landlady, Clara Allan, of Spenser’s Villas  Glenageary. She was the woman he loved and who loved him. She told the Court-martial, “I have known the accused twenty five years… I have never seen him in uniform, nor has he got such a thing, as far as I know”. As they parted he said, ‘Mind the Flag’, in reference to the flag of the Irish Brigade. Clara was a Methodist and converted to Catholicism after the execution. She and her family protected his Papers etc. until eventually they were placed in the National Library and National Museum. After his trial John told Sean T. O’Kelly, “Nothing will save me, Sean. Remember this is the second time I have sinned against them”. Fr. Augustine OFM who ministered at his execution in Kilmainham reported that John died “a brave man, fearless of death”. In July 1916 Clara Allan together with Maire ni Bhrolcohain, went to Westport for a National Aid concert and stayed with Mrs MacBride on the Quay.

Anthony J. Jordan’s next book is titled Maud Gonne’s Men.