March, 1926, Wednesday 31

Found a letter waiting for me this morning from Mrs. MacDonnell, inviting me out. It is really very generous and kind of her I think I spent some of the happiest days of my life in Castlelack.37 Pappie said if my cold is better I can go on Easter Monday. It will be glorious. Worked at the stairs-carpet all the morning. Had French lesson, and after dinner went to School of Music to show Mammie my letter of thanks to Mrs. MacDonnell before posting it. While there, Mammie brought in Miss Burrowes to hear my little prelude and Chopin’s Mazurka I am playing at present. She was evidently delighted and said she expected me to give a recital in the Imperial Hotel next year. I wonder whether that time will ever come. Sorted old programmes, and went to Tenebrae. The ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Miserere’, and the ‘Te adoremus’ were glorious. Any sinner ought to be converted by that saintly atmosphere. The Farran Ferris boys chanted splendidly.

  1. The MacDonnells’ house in Bandon. They had been one of the few Catholic merchants in the strongly loyalist town. They owned a flour-mill, and were respected, Richard MacDonnell being the first Catholic to be appointed magistrate in 1893. But when William Keyes MacDonnell became involved in the independence movement, founding a Volunteer group in Bandon in 1913, they lost most of their loyalist customers. During the war of independence the mill became a target for Crown forces. William had to leave Ireland, studying in the London Slade School of Art until the secret service caught up with him, whereupon he moved with his wife Kathleen to Munich, not returning until the end of the war. Kathleen MacDonnell published an account of the war of independence in 1972: There is a Bridge at Bandon. [↩]