Christmas tosee Jimmy O’Dea in the Gaiety Pantomime and to help her mother order vast quantities of clothing at the January Sales.
Twice she had been to the Continent; once to Rome for the Ordination of her favourite brother, Louis, and to Lourdes with her mother, when the old lady’s health began to fail.
On both occasions they travelled straight through London on the Wagons-Lits, but stopped some days in Paris, going and coming.
London they considered a shabby receptacle for poverty-stricken Irish people and petty criminals on the run.
María could play the piano, spoke French and could speak – but not read – Spanish which she learned from her cousins on their trips home from Latin America. She was elegant, beautiful, and when amongst her own sort of people, amiable and good-humoured, whether they were servant boys or graziers.
At a harvest home, there was porter and pig’s cheek, with home made-bread, and María the life and soul of the party. An artless cailín *, she moved amongst the farmworkers and dairymaids with an easy grace, and laughed and danced and played hornpipes on the fiddle for the party.
Loyola she had known since they were children and when he asked her to marry him, it was considered on all sides an excellent match.
They were closely enough related to consolidate the wealth and lands of the Clann *Bolívar, but not closely enough to bring them within the degrees of kindred and consanguinity forbidden by the fifth Precept of the Church.
So, they were married and went to Paris for her shopping – a wedding present from Loyola; to Rome for the blessing of Pope Pius XI, Achille Ratti, just begun his Pontificate; and to Spain for a long and sunny honeymoon.
For long enough she used her accomplishments to entertain Loyola’s guests, and indeed, it was only after nearly fifteen years of marriage and Ciarán and Deirdre were fourteen years of age that she began to get restive at Loyola’s dinner parties and ceased to please his guests.
At a dinner to receive the Cultural Delegation of the Basque Republic to the People of Ireland, she insulted them, not the people of Ireland of whom she was bigotedly fond, but the Cultural Delegation.
This consisted of the Profesor of Middle Euskade Iambica, Bilbao University; a vice-president of the Basque Republic; his chaplain; the Secretary of the Catalan Committee for Joint Anti-Fascist Action of Trotskyites and Communists (3rd International); and Lady Jane Blanchard who spent a week trying to persuade W. B. Yeats to go out and fight in Easter Week 1916, and who was now on the Committee of the International Red Aid.
Lady Jane always insisted on giving this organisation its full name, in case it would be mistaken by its initials for the Irish Republican Army, with which she had fallen out in 1934, on the general question of the day-to-day struggle and the particular one of the I.R.A.’s refusal to spare a dozen twelve-ounce sticks of gelignite for a parcel to be sent to the Secretary of the Employers Federation during the coal strike.
The late Subhas Chandra Rose, the Indian Nationalist leader, described her, ‘as a champion of the down-trodden in every land, a great friend of the Indian people, a fiery preacher for every good cause in her native land, the breaking-up of the big estates, the revival of the Irish language, and birth control – a splendid figure of revolting womanhood.’
Legend had it, that on occasion of her Easter visit, Yeats asked her what did she take him for, said he was too delicate a man and threw her down the stairs two days after the Fall of the General Post Office, because he was going to write a poem about it.
It was believed that she was instrumental in getting Frank Harris and Charlie Chaplin to visit Jim Larkin in Sing-Sing. She certainly used her influence with Governor Al Smith to get him out. Smith had an almost feudal regard for Lady Jane Blanchard, on account of her family having evicted his family from their
Twice she had been to the Continent; once to Rome for the Ordination of her favourite brother, Louis, and to Lourdes with her mother, when the old lady’s health began to fail.
On both occasions they travelled straight through London on the Wagons-Lits, but stopped some days in Paris, going and coming.
London they considered a shabby receptacle for poverty-stricken Irish people and petty criminals on the run.
María could play the piano, spoke French and could speak – but not read – Spanish which she learned from her cousins on their trips home from Latin America. She was elegant, beautiful, and when amongst her own sort of people, amiable and good-humoured, whether they were servant boys or graziers.
At a harvest home, there was porter and pig’s cheek, with home made-bread, and María the life and soul of the party. An artless cailín *, she moved amongst the farmworkers and dairymaids with an easy grace, and laughed and danced and played hornpipes on the fiddle for the party.
Loyola she had known since they were children and when he asked her to marry him, it was considered on all sides an excellent match.
They were closely enough related to consolidate the wealth and lands of the Clann *Bolívar, but not closely enough to bring them within the degrees of kindred and consanguinity forbidden by the fifth Precept of the Church.
So, they were married and went to Paris for her shopping – a wedding present from Loyola; to Rome for the blessing of Pope Pius XI, Achille Ratti, just begun his Pontificate; and to Spain for a long and sunny honeymoon.
For long enough she used her accomplishments to entertain Loyola’s guests, and indeed, it was only after nearly fifteen years of marriage and Ciarán and Deirdre were fourteen years of age that she began to get restive at Loyola’s dinner parties and ceased to please his guests.
At a dinner to receive the Cultural Delegation of the Basque Republic to the People of Ireland, she insulted them, not the people of Ireland of whom she was bigotedly fond, but the Cultural Delegation.
This consisted of the Profesor of Middle Euskade Iambica, Bilbao University; a vice-president of the Basque Republic; his chaplain; the Secretary of the Catalan Committee for Joint Anti-Fascist Action of Trotskyites and Communists (3rd International); and Lady Jane Blanchard who spent a week trying to persuade W. B. Yeats to go out and fight in Easter Week 1916, and who was now on the Committee of the International Red Aid.
Lady Jane always insisted on giving this organisation its full name, in case it would be mistaken by its initials for the Irish Republican Army, with which she had fallen out in 1934, on the general question of the day-to-day struggle and the particular one of the I.R.A.’s refusal to spare a dozen twelve-ounce sticks of gelignite for a parcel to be sent to the Secretary of the Employers Federation during the coal strike.
The late Subhas Chandra Rose, the Indian Nationalist leader, described her, ‘as a champion of the down-trodden in every land, a great friend of the Indian people, a fiery preacher for every good cause in her native land, the breaking-up of the big estates, the revival of the Irish language, and birth control – a splendid figure of revolting womanhood.’
Legend had it, that on occasion of her Easter visit, Yeats asked her what did she take him for, said he was too delicate a man and threw her down the stairs two days after the Fall of the General Post Office, because he was going to write a poem about it.
It was believed that she was instrumental in getting Frank Harris and Charlie Chaplin to visit Jim Larkin in Sing-Sing. She certainly used her influence with Governor Al Smith to get him out. Smith had an almost feudal regard for Lady Jane Blanchard, on account of her family having evicted his family from their
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