ABSTRACT
A few extracts from her diary for 1924,1 when ‘My dear Maud’ was often staying with her, may serve to illustrate the attitudes and preoccupations of a privileged woman who had adopted the rebel cause. The first entry (in space, though obviously not in time), under ‘NOTES’, describes 1924, the third year of independence, as ‘perhaps the most disastrous year that our country has ever been through’. As with Maud Gonne, racist motivation is not hard to find: ‘I am again reading up the history of Ireland and have begun Kettle’s book. It opens with a brilliant analysis of the Eng character-insularindividualistic-dominating. Between there and Ireland quite different racial characteristics.’2 Another twenty years would have to pass before such generalizations would become discredited, and then only among the intelligentsia. Attribution of moral shortcomings to genetics was not to receive a serious setback until Hitler had pushed his thesis to its logical conclusion. The day after this entry appeared more practical and humane matters demanded attention: ‘Maud went to Dublin and rescued a stretcher-case from the military.’3
