05/05/2025
Each Monday at the Jackie Clarke Collection we are featuring a series of articles about some of Ireland’s most famous historical and political figures. Nothing new in that you may think, however, these stories will focus on the more personal side of the lives and relationships of the men and women who sacrificed so much in the fight for their Country. Today we look at the complex relationship of Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats…….
Yeats met the young and beautiful Maud Gonne on the 30th of January 1889, when she came to his family home to visit his Father. For Yeats it was love at first sight, he recalled the meeting in his memoirs, writing of the encounter……."I had never thought to see in a living woman so great beauty. It belonged to famous pictures, to poetry, to some legendary past."
Unfortunately for Yeats, his feelings were not reciprocated. Yeats proposed marriage to Maud on many occasions but each time she refused. This unrequited love caused Yeats great anguish and deeply impacted his life and work, making Maud Gonne his greatest source of inspiration.
Despite his great love and longing for Gonne, Yeats did not totally approve of her lifestyle. Maud Gonne was a prominent Irish revolutionary and feminist and Yeats disagreed with her belief that violent methods were acceptable to further the cause of Irish independence. Yeats was devastated when Gonne later married Westport native and nationalist rebel Major John Mac Bride. The couple went on to have a son but despite this, their marriage was a deeply troubled one. At the time of his ex*****on for his part in the 1916 Rising, Mac Bride and Gonne were estranged.
Yeats had other love affairs including one with Iseult Gonne, Maud’s beautiful young daughter from a previous relationship. Yeats eventually went on to marry Georgiana Hyde-Lees, 27 years his junior, with whom he had two children.
Despite the complexity of their relationship, they remained lifelong friends and when Yeats died in France in January 1939, at the age of 73, it was Maud and her son Sean MacBride, (then Minister of External Affairs), that had Yeats’ body repatriated to Ireland and buried in Drumcliffe, County Sligo as per his wishes. Maud Gonne survived Yeats by fourteen years and died on 27th April 1953, aged 86.
Yeats is recognised as one of the great Anglo-Irish writers and one of world's greatest poets and is Ireland’s national poet. Gonne was the single most significant influence in Yeats’ life and work, Gonne captured Yeats' heart from the moment they met, and her influence on his poetry was profound. Their complicated relationship served as a muse for many of Yeats' most famous works, imbuing his poetry with a sense of passion and longing that resonates to this day.
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