Maud Gonne

New Zealand Tablet, 16 August 1906, Page 9

Maud Gonne

Last Friday's daily papers contained the following cable message from Paris :—

1 Mrs. Maud Gonne Macßride has teen granted a separation, but the court refused her a divorce. A divorce was not granted in the action on the ground that she and her husband were Irish and that Irish Catholics did not permit divorce, and also owing to the fact that her husband's domicile was in Ireland.' * Here, in a squalid divorce case, endeth the romance of Maud Gonne. The daughter of a British o^cer, a State pensioner, she was permitted to rove without let or hindrance through Ireland delivering fiery anti-British harangues, while the representatives of the people weie having their faces broken by constabulary batons for daring to address peaceable meetings of their constituents. Then she raved and stormed through America, where her handsome face and figure captivated the eye, and incautious and unsuspicious admirers dubbed her ' the Joan of Arc of Ireland.' George 111. was puzzled to know how the apples got inside the apple-dumpling. We were puzzled to know how such fiery anti-British wrath got so suddenly inside the corset of Maud Gonne, and how a fair English damosel, whose living came from the State Treasury, succeeded so marvellously in escaping the blud-geon-blows that fell upon the heads of Irish M.P.'s, and the prison-cells that closed upon them for saying the half of what she said with complete impunity. We ' said things ' of the lady at the time. In due course she ' committed matrimony ' with Major Mcßride, an Irish-American fighter on the Boer side in the South African war. Her marriage, like her meteoric mission for the ' hbeiation ' of Ireland, has been a failure. Professing to be a Catholic,' she nevertheless (as it seems) applied for a divorce. But even a French court refused to tamper with a lifelong bond that was contracted in the old Catholic land that knows no divorce legislation, and has no use for it. A judicial separation is the barrier beyond which the Irish ci\il courts cannot go. A man or woman having legal domicile in Ireland can secure a divorce ,(in our acceptance of the term — a vinculo) by the long-drawn and expensive luxury of an Act of Parliament dissolving the union. This was also the state of the law in England till 1857-58. The only instances that we know of, in which such legislation" was sought in Ireland, were the Beaumont-Wallis case (Drishane Castle, County Cork), and Sir Robert McConnell, who was created a baronet while Mayor of Belfast. In both cases the parties were non-Catholics. c In the Catholic Church, the marriage-tie is not a slip-knot. Once propeily bound, it^ 1 Admits no power of revocation, Nor valuable consideration, Nor wiit of eiror, nor reverse Of judgment past, for better or worse.' Some — unfitted for its burdens — make tlie married state ' A slavery beyond enduring, But, then, 'tis of their own procuring. As spideis never seek the liy, But leave him, of himself, tap.ply ; So some are by themselves employed To quit the freedom they enjoyed, And run their necks into a noose, They'd break 'em after, to break loose. As some, whom death would not depart, Have done the feat themselves, by art '. Those misfit unions of nagging incompatibles, who have never learned to bear and forbear, recall the monologuethat (according to Planchc's ' Olympic Revels ') Orpheus spoke in the depths of Tartarus .—. — 1 'Tis said that marriages are made above, Ami so perhaps a few may be by love ; But from this smell of brimstone, I should say, They must be making matches here all day.' A short time ago, Professor Alfred W. Anthony, of the Cobb Divinity School, Maine (U.S.A.), said upon

this subject of divorce : • In this matter, I wish „ all Protestant Churches would come up to the standard of the Roman Catholic Church. The Protestant Episcopal. Church is approaching it. s Divorce, as commonly understood, is not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church, and is totally unknown among good Roman Catholics. To them, marriage is a Sacrament. The Commissioner of Labor of the United States, in publishing a report seventeen years ago upon this subject, said : " Large and increasing as the number of divorces is in the United States, it is an undeniable fact that, were it not for the widespread influence of the Roman Catholic Church, the number would ho much greater ". This,' added Professor Anthony, ' I believe, is true.'