OPINION (AN COLÚN): A Birr woman who saw beyond the veil of life

TEN beautiful poems by the acclaimed poet Susan Langstaff Mitchell are now dotted around Birr, attractively mounted on panels in various locations including the library railings, Mill Island, Wilmer Road / Connaught Street and Chapel Lane. These are ten evocative, strong, romantic poems by a woman who was working at the very top of her craft.
Many people in Birr are very proud of Mitchell's association with the town, and it's little wonder. One of Ireland's most acclaimed painters and poets wrote of her that she was “a woman of genius” and “one of the best Irishwomen of her time, capable of following the profoundest thinking and of illuminating it by some flash of her own intuition”.
Mitchell was a journalist, poet and literary critic. Her creative writing exhibited a couple of characteristics. One of these characteristics was a beautiful tenderness, compassion and a profound philosophy; the other was wit and biting satire. In the latter guise she was described as being “a jester extraordinary” and “a caustic observer of the Dublin scene”.
Mitchell was born in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim in December, 1866, the fifth of seven children. Her father was manager of the town’s Provincial Bank. When he died in 1872, the family was split up, with the children being cared for by relatives in Sligo and Dublin. Susan was sent to live with relatives on Dublin’s Wellington Road and then lived with aunts in Birr for a number of years, in Emmet Square. The house she lived in in Birr is long gone. It probably stood where the red bricked post office now stands. A blue plaque was placed at the entrance to Walcot House on Rosse Row a few years ago. While Susan didn't live in Walcot, it was the Mitchell homestead and therefore the best candidate for the blue plaque (seeing that the Emmet Square house no longer existed).
Mitchell attended Trinity College Dublin, after which, in 1900, she became assistant editor of the Irish Homestead, in which she showed herself to be a talented writer and a keen observer of Irish society. This weekly magazine contained articles, poetry and short stories. It was here that James Joyce’s first short story was published. The first three of his stories from Dubliners appeared in the magazine.
She wrote a column for the Irish Homestead called “Household Hints” under a pseudonym, normally “Brigid” or “Bean an Tighe”. This was more than being just an advice column on cooking and cleaning. “Mitchell used the columns,” said one commentator, “to engage with debates about the Irish revival and the changing nature of gender relations”.
She was also a founder member of the United Irishwomen, the forerunner of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association.
Next she worked for The Statesman, also a weekly magazine, which contained articles and poems by a wide range of established and rising artists, poets and writers, including George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty, Paul and Grace Henry, along with Liam O'Flaherty, Austin Clarke and Sean O'Faolain. The Statesman was called "one of the Free State's leading intellectual organs." One visitor to the magazine's offices said Mitchell had “a sly cheerfulness” and was “the hostess of the office". Along with her poetry Mitchell also produced several collections of poetry and a critical study of her friend, the novelist George Moore. Moore wasn't very pleased with the book because Mitchell adopted a satirical tone towards him. Satire was a tone which Moore himself often adopted but he didn't like it when the shoe was on the other foot!
Mitchell was a nationalist. She strongly supported Charles Stewart Parnell and advocated for Home Rule. She wrote a poem called Anti-Recruiting Song in 1908. She later joined Sinn Féin and wrote for that party's newspaper. Her instincts were pacifistic but she strongly believed in using the pen towards the furtherance of a worthy, just cause.
Mitchell's literary social evenings were popular events. They were held on Saturday evenings between 8pm and midnight and were attended by her circle of friends, including the writers James Stephens and Padraic Colum and the poets Ella Young and AE. No alcohol was served. Tea, coffee, sandwiches and cakes were offered. Entertainment included talking, singing ballads, or playing charades.
Mitchell died in March, 1926.
Here, in ballad form, is an example of her wit and biting satire. She sang this during her social evenings. It's about the Hugh Lane painting controversy of the early 20th Century and she has a dig at the mannerisms and vanities of some of the personalities involved:
“AE was there with his long hair,
And Orpen, R.H.A.
Sir Thomas Drew was in a stew
And looked the other way,
But Martyn, who had left the stage
To play the patriot's part
Called for Hungarian policy
In everything but art!
And John B. Yeats stood near the gates
With mischief in his gaze,
While W.B. the poet, has pondered a telling phrase,
You'll find it in The Freeman
After a day or so,
And Moore was there - the same who is High Sheriff for Mayo.”
The contemporary Birr and Tallaght poet Eileen Casey points out that Mitchell's serious poetry is deeply attractive and there is a timeless quality to it. In some poems Mitchell the satirist and nationalist has been put to one side and we see now Mitchell the mystic. This is a philosophy which comes from the more gentle and beautiful intuitions of the heart. As she wrote in the last stanza of her fine poem “Immortality”:
“A while we walk the world on its wide roads
And narrow ways,
And they pass by, the countless shadowy troops
Of nights and days;
We know them not, O happy heart,
For you and I
Watch where within a slow dawn lightens up
Another sky.”