MURIEL SLIPPED INTO her seat in the Abbey Theatre, nodding across at Thomas MacDonagh who was sitting only a few seats away from her. Grace had persuaded her to come along to see Deirdre of the Sorrows. Sadly, its author, John Millington Synge, had not lived to see its staging. He had died last March and it was left to Willie Yeats and Synge’s fiancée, the actress Molly Allgood, to complete the play. As in Synge’s previous plays, Muriel was glad to see that Molly was taking the lead role.
This time there were no riots or objections to Synge’s play as there had been three years ago when his Playboy of the Western World was first staged; the audience were moved instead by the story of Deirdre’s loss of her beloved and her tragic end. Muriel tried in vain to hide her emotions as they got up to leave the theatre; concerned, both Grace and MacDonagh offered her a handkerchief.
‘Synge was steadfast and true, a fine writer, and I will always hold him in high regard,’ MacDonagh said, glancing at the empty stage.
Muriel knew Synge had directed MacDonagh’s first play in the Abbey and that MacDonagh had strongly defended The Playboy of the Western World and after Synge’s death had written a fulsome tribute praising his life and work.
As they walked towards the foyer he told them he was engaged in writing a new play as well as a book of poetry. He always seemed to have endless energy and enthusiasm and these days their paths regularly crossed. Muriel valued his friendship and looked forward to their meetings, but she suspected as they took their leave of him that MacDonagh already had a romantic involvement.
She herself had begun recently to see a Mr George Murray. He was, she supposed, rather handsome and certainly most attentive. Gabriel had first introduced them, and George had invited her to a concert, then a recital, then to dinner a number of times. She enjoyed his company but found him rather old-fashioned and self-conscious. At thirty-eight years of age, with a successful insurance business, he believed that it was time for him to consider the next stage of his life – marriage, family and the purchase of a large home of his own. Muriel guessed that, even though their relationship was still at an early stage, somehow she was part of this plan.
‘George is far too stuffy for you,’ warned John as she and Grace joined the crowds in the Round Room of The Rotunda in March for a talk organized by the Irishwomen’s Franchise League. British suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst got a rousing welcome as she stood up to speak to them.
‘Votes for women!’ chanted the audience loudly. ‘We want votes for women!’
Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, the organization’s founder, explained to the packed hall that Irish women must join the fight for women’s emancipation alongside their suffragette sisters in Britain as John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster, and Herbert Asquith, the British prime minister, were both equally opposed to supporting the Women’s Franchise Bill.
‘A woman having the right to vote is a threat to such men and their parties!’
‘It is appalling that Irish and British MPs have no care for the women they are supposed to represent,’ Grace declared angrily. ‘That is why we must have the vote, so we can elect better people to represent us.’
John scribbled furiously in her notepad throughout the meeting. Muriel wished that she possessed such a talent. Her sister, now a well-respected journalist, had become a regular contributor to Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Fein, the nationalist newspaper, and had introduced Muriel to Griffith, who along with his friends took them all out rowing in a boat in Sandycove. Griffith was full of praise for her sister’s work.
Grace, too, was getting more regular commissions for her witty sketches and drawings, and of late had been working with Fred and Jack Morrow on some designs for new Theatre of Ireland productions.
Muriel wished that she could find something to engage and interest her in a similar fashion.
She attended a meeting of the Daughters of Ireland at which Maud Gonne MacBride, who had recently returned from France, addressed the gathering.
‘I am appalled by what I have seen, the deplorable conditions that the poor children of Dublin must endure, living in such abject poverty in the slums, tenements and lanes of Dublin.’ Maud passionately implored the members of her organization to rally together to help them.
‘We have to feed and nourish these children. Westminster has brought in free school meals for children in Britain, but has unfortunately refused to implement the same policy in Ireland.’
Everyone was in agreement: the Daughters of Ireland would step in to provide school meals for poor children and Muriel, well used to seeing the poverty of some of her patients in the hospital clinics and wards, immediately volunteered her own services. She also persuaded her sisters to help with the meals in schools in High Street and St John’s Lane when they were available.
The schools were surrounded by tall rows of run-down tenement houses. Once the fine Georgian homes of Dublin’s wealthy merchants, they now lay in a state of utter decay and neglect and housed hundreds of poor families. Many were forced to live in the overcrowded, dingy squalor and filth of a single room. Broken doors, steps and stairways could be seen everywhere; sewers overflowed and there was little sanitation. Muriel wondered how people survived living in such terrible conditions.
Jim Larkin, a union man from Liverpool, had set up the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union to fight for better pay and conditions for these people – bus, rail and tram workers, factory workers, and thousands of casual workers who barely eked out a living.
The children of these city streets and lanes were dirty and hungry, sores around their mouths, hair unwashed, often dressed in rags and barefoot. Muriel’s heart filled with pity for them. School was their only refuge from the filthy, crowded rooms where they lived. Their teachers helped them to learn to read and write to give them the tools of an education which might some day lift them from the hell of poverty into which they had been born.
When Muriel and Grace first came to help in St John’s Lane, Grace paled as they were met by the sight of long tables of hungry children, eyes huge and staring, all waiting to be fed.
‘Grace, remember they are only children like we were,’ Muriel reassured her as the boys and girls noisily nudged and shoved against each other. ‘For most of them this small bowl of stew is often the only meal they get.’
The children were each served a nourishing bowl of stew with meat, potatoes and vegetables on most days, and on Fridays they got rice pudding and jam. The food was provided in big containers by the Ladies Committee in Meath Street, but Maud Gonne and Helena Molony demanded that Dublin Corporation should rightfully incur the costs of the meals.
Rolling up her sleeves, Muriel accepted an apron from one of the other women as Maud Gonne helped to ladle the hot stew evenly into bowls. Studying her discreetly, Muriel could understand why men lost their hearts to her, for Maud was a truly beautiful woman, with large, soulful eyes and high cheekbones, poised and elegant, and possessed of a great kindness. It was no wonder that the poet William Butler Yeats was said to adore her. She had a daughter by a French man and had been involved in a very public divorce scandal from her husband Major John MacBride and a battle over their son, but Maud made no mention of such things and instead involved herself energetically with the revolutionary organization she had founded.
Muriel and Grace helped by passing the bowls around the tables of waiting children.
‘I’m starving, miss,’ murmured one little girl, shoving a spoonful of food into her mouth.
‘You can take your time,’ Muriel promised. ‘No one is let take your bowl.’
The girl looked doubtful.
‘The Ladies Committee would never permit it,’ Muriel assured her, smiling as she saw the child relax and actually properly taste and enjoy the meal.
She went up and down the tables, serving bowl after bowl to the children. A few of them paid a little for their food, but most could not afford it. One or two asked for second helpings which unfortunately they were not permitted.
‘They are good children, but some try to bring their meal back for their families,’ cautioned Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, one of the organizers. ‘The meal we serve here is a school dinner, which means the parents will make sure the children attend, as these dinners are often the only form of regular nourishment some of these children will get.’
As Muriel gathered up the piles of empty bowls and spoons for washing up, she felt guilty for the life of privilege and wealth she and her brothers and sisters had enjoyed. How could families and children live in such a state less than a mile from the leafy road where she grew up?