25/08/2023
"The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle."
It was at this window that W. B. Yeats saw the beautiful Gore Booth sisters. Constance went on to become the Countess Markiewicz, sentenced to death for her leadership in the 1916 Easter Rising (later commuted), she later became the first woman elected to the British Parliament. A socialist and tireless worker for the poor.
Eva Gore Booth was also a socialist, a prominent suffragist, a trade union organiser and founder, who spend most of her life working for the low-paid in Manchester and the north of England. Having seen the house they grew up in, the immense wealth which they gave up, I am greatly touched by their lives. Yeats's poem is a rather mean-spirited criticism of their choices, he admits to being shocked by this when he would rather reminisce about that great Georgian mansion near Ben Bulben and the sea.
"The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams –
Some vague Utopia – and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,"
Whatever their appearance, or what Yeats thought of them, these were two extraordinary Irish women, may their names be remembered with the heroes.
