Madam, - The auction at Lissadell House today has attracted so much attention because Constance Markievicz and her poet sister Eva Gore Booth grew up there. But what is left to tell us of the two sisters? On the instructions of Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth, Mealeys of Kilkenny have already held two sales in which most of the historic contents of the house were sold off.
Seventeen paintings by Constance were auctioned. These oils were immeasurably more valuable to the people of Ireland than the 17th-century Italian pictures that remain. Paintings by Con's daughter Maeve and by her sister Eva Gore-Booth, as well as some by George Russell (AE), painted in Lissadell, have also gone.
An ancient harp sold for €11,000, the children's dolls' house for €27,000, a painting of a famine scene by Daniel McDonald for €9,400 - as well as uniforms, toys, a magic lantern and much, much more.
An Taisce is to be complimented on its initiative to save the gasoliers and organ, but nothing of historical interest remains to tell us of Constance and Eva, its famous residents. Why, then, should our Government waste public money on furnishings that are nothing more than the trappings of decadent wealth from a vulgar and ostentatious past?
Let us rejoice that the woods around Lissadell will shortly ring to the laughter of the seven young children of Constance Cassidy and Edward Walsh. That is a priceless treasure and the dawn of a bright new era of which our forbears could only dream. - Yours, etc.,
JOE McGOWAN,
(Chairman,
Constance Markievicz
Memorial Committee),
Mullaghmore,
Co Sligo.