into the guard’s van. The porters all got to know the eccentric gentleman who was always late, and would courteously keep a door open, and push his flying figure into the carriage in the nick of time.25
She recalled sitting in lecture theatres waiting for Patrick to deliver a lecture knowing that he would probably arrive thirty minutes late for the lecture as he was invaribly fast asleep on the couch in the drawing room of their home.
Willie’s association with the Gaelic League began in 1898. He spoke the language fluently and, in between studying, participating in student exhibitions and working, also taught an Irish language class at the Metropolitan School of Art. Mary Brigid’s connection with the League was through Patrick and her harp teacher, Owen Lloyd. Mary Brigid’s fascination with the harp began after she attended a concert featuring a pedal harpist at the Round Room of the Rotunda in Dublin. She expressed an interest in acquiring a harp, but following the closure of Francis Hewson’s Irish and pedal harp manufactory in York Street, Dublin, in 1872, it became increasingly difficult to source an instrument in Ireland. Nevertheless, knowing how enthusiastic she was about the instrument, Patrick eventually purchased a harp for her.
The memory of getting her first harp remained with Mary Brigid for the rest of her life: ‘I still remember the intense rapture with which I at last held the long-wished-for treasure in my trembling arms. I just loved my harp; and I am proud to say that, despite many vicissitudes, the same precious little instrument can sing to-day as sweetly as it sang in those far-off happy days so long gone by!’26 Ruth Dudley Edwards described Patrick’s generosity as ‘a symptom of his engaging open-handedness and disregard for economic pressures’;27 perhaps it was merely Patrick fostering his sister’s talents again as he had done so often during her childhood.
It is most likely that Mary Brigid was introduced to Owen Lloyd by Patrick. Lloyd was a renowned Irish, pedal and wire-strung harpist and Irish language activist, who, through his busy performing career and teaching duties, transformed the perception and repertoire of the Irish harp in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.28 The tradition of wire-strung Irish harp performance had been in decline for centuries, but inspired by the ideologies of various cultural movements of the late nineteenth century, Lloyd was determined to revive an interest in the performance and teaching of the modern Irish harp in Ireland and amongst the Irish disapora in England and Scotland. Both Patrick and Lloyd were prominent members of the Gaelic League and attended several League events together, including the Mayo Feis in April 1903, at which Lloyd performed to great acclaim. Under Lloyd’s guidance, Mary Brigid progressed quickly on the Irish and concert harps.
Lloyd was a member of the committees of An tOireachtas, a major competitive festival organised by the Gaelic League, and Feis Ceoil, an association that promoted Irish music through concerts and annual competitions. Lloyd’s membership of these committees afforded opportunities for his most promising students to perform. Before 1898, branch meetings of the Gaelic League comprised a language class followed by a discussion or debate. The League made little progress in attracting new membership in its early years, having only forty-three branches in 1897. In November 1897, Patrick proposed at a branch meeting that weekly meetings could be made more appealing through a series of lectures and concerts under the auspices of the League. He also suggested that music, drama or dancing be used to attract new members. Gradually, the League restructured and branches (craobhacha) at regional and local level added musical performances, and lectures on Irish history, folklore and culture, to their existing language classes. Branch meetings, particularly in Dublin, began to conform to a practice of concluding with a performance of songs in Irish or with a short recital on the uilleann pipes or harp; Mary Brigid performed regularly at these branch meetings.
In early 1900, Mary Brigid played at monthly meetings of the central branch in Dublin; many of these meetings were chaired by her brother Patrick. Committee members from the branch organised a scoraíocht (social evening), on 10 January, which featured Thomas Rowsome on pipes, pianists, dancers and singers. Mary Brigid performed a selection of harp pieces and sang ‘Bán Chnoic Éireann Ó’ to an enthusiastic audience of over a hundred people.29 The following month, at another branch meeting, she gave a short recital on the harp which included Thomas Moore’s ‘Has Sorrow Thy Young Days Shaded’ and ‘Garryowen with Variations’.30 Her repertoire, which included old harp tunes, song airs and early nineteenth-century compositions by Moore, reflected the varied nature of music performed on Irish harps in this period.
Feiseanna (competitions), both regional and national, and aeríochtaí (concerts) were also an important means of attracting new membership to the League and were crucial media for the revival of various Gaelic practices, such as dancing, piping and Irish harp performance. Eighteen ninety-seven marked the inauguration of An tOireachtas, a new competition under the auspices of the Gaelic League. Lloyd performed regularly at concerts of An tOireachtas and was joined in 1898 by his band of harps, an ensemble consisting of three or four of his harp students who performed two-part arrangements of a repertoire including ‘Carolan’s Concerto’, ‘Dear Harp of my Country’ and ‘Return from Fingal’.31 In May 1900, Mary Brigid, Miss Butler, Nora Twemlow, Nora Collins and Lloyd played ‘Siúd Síos fa mo Dhídean’ and ‘An Filleadh ó Fhine Ghall’. The band of harps was a regular feature at concerts of An tOireachtas during the first decade of its existence.32
Mary Brigid also won several prizes at harp competitions run by An tOireachtas. To acknowledge her success, Patrick purchased a second Irish harp for her, made by James McFall of 22 York Lane, Belfast. The McFall harp, which was strung with gut, was the most advanced contemporary Irish harp. It could be played in thirteen different keys, had a rich tone, and was beautifully decorated in old Celtic ornamentation. Mary Brigid later used this harp to teach students at St Enda’s School, Rathfarnham; this instrument now forms part of the exhibit at the Pearse Museum.33
By the end of the nineteenth century, Margaret, Patrick, Willie and Mary Brigid were enjoying active lives as members of, and contributors to, various cultural movements in Dublin. Their carefree lifestyles were facilitated by the success of Pearse and Sons Monumental Sculptors. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, James had secured prestigious commissions for altars, fonts, carvings, monuments, tablets, and all kinds of marble, stone and granite works. His work could be seen in churches all over Ireland from John’s Lane Church and the mortuary chapel, Glasnevin Cemetery, in Dublin, to the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Strabane and St Saviour’s Church in Waterford. The Pearse family’s idyllic home life, however, was shattered by James’s sudden death on 5 September 1900. He died from a cerebral haemorrhage while visiting his brother in Birmingham. His body was brought back to his home in George’s Villa, Sandymount where he was waked, and his requiem mass was concelebrated at Westland Row Church by Fr Galvin and Fr Murphy, the Administrator.34 His death marked a new phase in the lives of Margaret, Patrick, Willie, Mary Brigid and their mother.
CHAPTER 3
A Pearse Family Project
What would you think if later on I were to take all these things and in a bigger house start a school of my own?1
Patrick Pearse
At the time of James Pearse’s death, the family were living at 5 George’s Villa, Sandymount. Over the next few years, they moved frequently, initially to 363 Sandymount Avenue and later to ‘Liosán’ Lisreaghan Terrace, Sandymount, and 39 Marlborough Road, Donnybrook. During this period, various relations lived with them, including their cousins, Mary Kate and John Kelly who were orphaned after the deaths of their parents, John and Catherine (Margaret Pearse’s sister). John junior’s untimely death at the age of sixteen years on 14 November 1902 from injuries sustained after he was knocked off his bicycle by a bread van shocked the family. His death, coupled with the loss of their father, James, their mother’s sister Catherine (d.1887), their maternal grandmother (d.1888) and grandfather (d.1894), and their beloved auntie Margaret (d.1892) deeply affected the Pearse family, in particular, Mary Brigid, who struggled to come to terms with the loss of anyone from her close-knit circle of family and friends. However, the strain of running the family business absorbed much of their time and energy and provided a temporary distraction from their grief.
James Pearse died intestate, leaving an estate valued at £1,470.17s.6d. Pearse and Sons was then