COUNTESS MARKIEVICZ.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3133, 4 September 1922, Page 7

COUNTESS MARKIEVICZ.

(By E.J?, in the Daily Chronicle).

The Countess Markievicz. reported fighting in the Republican cause in Dublin, is the stormy petrel of rebellion. Sentenced to death for her share in the Easter rising of 1916, repneyed, and later released on the general amnesty, she was again court-martialled in 1920 for being associated in organising the murder of police and soldiers, and sent to prison; she was out again in time to bo the bitterest opponent of the Treaty. Here is a pen-portrait by Mr R. A. Scott-James, who heard her speak in the T)ail in January:— "She rose, trembling with anger and excitement. Her little nervous, darting eves Hashed out on the assembly, her hands beat the table, and her words were rapped out jerkily, with a sort of petulant energy which simulates passion."

Elder daughter of the late Sir William Gore-Booth, of Lissadell, Co. Sligo, and sister to Miss Eva GoreBooth, she was, 25 years ago, a daring rider to hounds and an enthusiastic tennis player. Keenly interested in literature and art, high-spirited and unconventional—she scandalised a decorous countryside by being one of the first women to ride in a point-to-point race —her youth yet gave no hint of the share she was destined to take in the Irish struggles. Art studies took this beautiful young Irish girl to Paris, and there she met and married the Count de Markievicz, a Polish artist. Later she settled down for a time in Dublin, attending Dublin Castle functions and living the ordinary life of Irish society. The suffragette period marked hter first venture into politics. Then eamie a great strike in Dublin, her debut as a Labor leader, and her entry to the ranks of agitators'. When the Sinn Fein movement grew in strength she threw herself into it with all her fiery zeal. When she was arrested during the 1916 rising she was dressed as a man, entirely in green—green tunic, green hat with green leather, green breeches and green puttees. Surrounded with a body of 120 Feiners, who were in possession of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, she kissed her revolver before handing it over to a. British officer. She was the first woman elected' to the Houwe of Commons at Westminster, heading the poll for St. Patrick's, Dublin, in the general election of 1918. But in common with other Sinn Feiners she refused to take her seait in the British Parliament, and, indeed, it was declared that as an alien by marriage she was not entitled to do so. Gunfire and the barricades in Dublin: they are a long way from her happy youth, when her daring exploits?—riding, driving, swimming, and venturing on the wild Atlantic of the West Coast in a frail canoe —were the talk and delight of the Irish countrysidle. Where will her wild enthusiasms lead her next? People, who have known her at different stages of her varied career will be asking that question in Dublin and London and Paris to-day.