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Irish Examiner
17-05-2025
- Irish Examiner
Clodagh Finn: The ‘modern Cinderella' who made her mark behind Iron Curtain
It seemed like a dream come true, just as the newspapers reported. In January 1949, Maura Wallace, a 17-year-old waitress from Sixmilebridge in Co Clare, left the Irish winter behind to take up a job as nanny to a 'sun-seeking, globetrotting millionaire family' on their round-the-world tour. First stop, New York, where her new employers promised her a 'complete wardrobe of new American clothes and finery'. Then it was on to Miami, Florida, for the spring. 'Her childhood dream and youthful wishes have come true in this modern Cinderella story,' the press reports said, with joyful relish. And Maura Wallace really had such a dream. 'When I was a child I once dreamt that I was very wealthy and in a distant land dressed in fine clothes, and as I daily attended the [airline] crew members at the hotel [Old Ground Hotel in Ennis], I wished I could one day go to the United States. But it was just a wish and I never believed it would come true.' When she boarded the four-engined Constellation aircraft at Shannon airport — every detail was noted — the air hostess said: 'Now, Maura, it is my turn to attend to you.' HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading A report on page one about Maura Wallace in the Irish Press, January 1949 It was an exciting time in the Shannon region, which was fast becoming a hub for transatlantic flights. Just two years before, Brendan O'Regan had opened the world's first duty-free shop there, and Maura was working with his sister Josette in Ennis. A pilot staying at the hotel had been asked by an American millionaire industrialist, named as Mr Anzians, to recruit a well-educated young Irish girl to work as nanny to his two children. Josette recommended Maura. 'I am simply overjoyed with the whole idea,' Maura said, as she boarded the plane. Then the trail ends. In the newspapers at least. Whatever happened to this young woman who stepped into a 'modern Cinderella story' all those decades ago? Christina Byrne, sister of Maura Wallace. Her sister Christina Byrne, aged 85, takes up the story at her kitchen table in Co Clare. It's been nearly two years since Ger Reddan, a nephew, put us in touch and now, arrangements finally made, there's a huge welcome, a shepherd's pie, a rhubarb tart (with cream) and pots of tea to fuel the compelling account of what happened next. It feels like a terrible anti-climax, though, to hear that Maura didn't really like her new job. She suffered awful loneliness in those first months away from home, and left the post shortly afterwards to move in with relatives. Love and marriage She stayed on in America though and got work in a hospital. There she met Polish doctor Tomasz Tolwinski, 'fell madly in love', to quote her sister, and married him. The newlyweds moved to Poland in the 1950s which was then behind the so-called Iron Curtain, a fitting metaphor for the sharp division between the Soviet-controlled Communist East and the democratic West. The contrast between Maura Wallace's fairytale trip to the land of plenty and her arrival in a country where economic hardship and repression were daily facts of life could not have been starker. Yet, Maura Tolwinska, or Mora as her friends knew her, was happy there and made a lasting impression on the medical community in Bialystok in northeast Poland where she taught doctors English and translated their medical papers. One of those doctors, Wiktor Laszewicz, Professor of Gastroenterology, recalled her boundless patience and her ability to translate specialised medical texts. The doctors lined up to be taught English by her, he said. 'When she was teaching us English, everybody felt very comfortable with her, and during her lecture we talked freely about everything, but only in English. It was the only language she let us speak. Very often students talked about something very specific, or [personal] problems. She was like a 'confessional'." She had a great sense of humour too, he said, and laughed very hard when somebody told her an anecdote. Maura Wallace kept in touch with home too, as much as travel restrictions and censored letters allowed. Christina Byrne was just nine when her eldest sister left and is still moved to tears when she remembers meeting her again after several years as she was passing through an airport in the UK, in the 1960s, en route to Poland. There were trips home and trips to Poland. She remembers sending suitcases of clothes to Poland after Penneys first opened in the late 1960s and hearing news of Maura's three children, Gaby, Kasia and Stefan. Christina had ten children of her own. 'I remember being pregnant for 12 Christmases in a row, but I lost two,' she says, offering an insight into her own extraordinary life. After her husband died, aged 61, and her children were all grown up, she woke up one morning and decided she wanted to go to California. She did just that and worked as a cook/chef in Beverly Hills for a number of years, bumping into the likes of Lionel Richie, Jackie Jackson, and Anthony Hopkins. When you pull a thread, a story reveals very many strands. The kettle is on again and the photograph album is out; there's a photo of Maura wearing a jacket that Christina gave her. 'She said she liked it and I just gave it to her.' That same connection between sisters is evident again when Christina describes going to Poland to look after her sister when she was terminally ill in 2004. Another sister sent flour and raisins from England because all Maura would eat were scones. She had been a heavy smoker all her life and continued to smoke, but in secret. When Christina saw smoke coming out of the bathroom, she asked Maura why she bothered hiding. 'I'm Irish,' she replied, 'the guilt, you always get the guilt!' During those final days, Maura asked Christina to root out a tape of the Cork comedian Niall Tóibín because she had never laughed so much when she heard it. When Christina pressed play, the tape turned out to be the sisters' mother, also named Christina, talking. It was as if she was joining them too; another woman with a story to tell. The mother of 11 was a great singer, wrote several stories and, shortly before her death, had the distinction of being named Millennium Granny on RTÉ's Live at Three. 'She told Derek Davis that she wanted to bring him a pair of braces because she said his trousers always seemed to be falling down. She thought she was going to be thrown out but then he opened his jacket and pulled on a pair of braces and laughed.' During those last weeks, Christina asked her sister how she had reached such acceptance of death; 'She looked at me, winked and said — she had a little bit of the American accent mixed in — it's because you are here with me, kid.' She died on August 9, 2004. 'We do not say goodbye to you Maura,' Prof Laszewicz wrote later, 'you will always be in our memories.' Sometime after her death, Christina discovered that Maura had written a book. She is going to try to find it. Then perhaps, she might think about writing her own.
Irish Times
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
The Frenchwoman who fell in love with Ireland and Irish republicans
Irish history and politics fascinated Frenchwoman Étiennette Beuque. She took such an interest in Irish affairs in the 1920s and 1930s that she wrote several books about Ireland. Published in Paris, these included books of non-fiction, novels of fiction, and a poetry collection. The Easter Rising and the War of Independence seemed to spark her interest in Ireland. Several key personalities of that time such as Terence MacSwiney and Éamon de Valera caught her imagination and prompted her to research Irish history (particularly the historical relationship to Britain) and write about contemporary Irish politics. One of her first books was published in Paris in 1924. Entitled Pour l'Irlande (For Ireland), it was relatively short at just 110 pages but it set out her political outlook as an Irish republican sympathiser. A photograph of de Valera appeared at the start of the book with the caption 'President of the Irish Republic'. It was prefaced by Leopold Kerney, who had been appointed by Arthur Griffith in 1919 as the Irish commercial representative in Paris. Kerney opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and left that office in 1923. However, he remained in Paris as the republican Dáil's representative. READ MORE Obviously delighted with Beuque's preference for his kind of politics, Kerney was full of praise for the French writer. He said that she 'has so well understood the Irish soul'. He hoped that the book would 'tear the dark veil of lies that has up to now hidden the truth to the French people about Ireland'. The book opened with an homage to Terence MacSwiney, the Sinn Féin lord mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike in Brixton prison in October 1920. MacSwiney was never far from Beuque's thoughts. In a letter to de Valera, she described MacSwiney as 'my hero' and had even planned to write a biography of the late lord mayor. If she admitted that MacSwiney was her hero, it is also clear from what she has written about Ireland that de Valera was another one of her heroes. Several of her books were dedicated to him (complete with effusive praise) and he even wrote the preface to one of them. The Easter Rising was a central theme in her two fiction books. They were heavy on history, if a little light on style. In a review of one of her books on the Rising, a journalist in the Irish Press claimed that the French writer 'shows a knowledge of Irish personages and places so thoroughly informed that it would put many half-knowing Irishmen to shame'. Ultimately, however, they found that it was 'very interesting as history, but hardly as fiction'. One of the ways in which Beuque informed herself on the subjects of Irish history and politics was to write to those who had knowledge or experience of them. As we can see from some of the collections in the National Library of Ireland, she had a healthy correspondence with a number of Irish politicians and political activists. These included Mary MacSwiney (sister of Terence), the republican TD Austin Stack, Art O'Brien (who had been the First Dáil's London representative) and Florence O'Donoghue (who had been a member of the anti-Treaty IRA). She frequently addressed her correspondent with the Irish language salutation 'a chara' and sometimes signed off with 'mise le meas more [sic]'. Her letters also show that she called her home in Paris 'Vert Erin', yet another sign of her avowed Hibernophilia. While on a visit to France in April 1938, the writer and republican activist Dorothy Macardle visited Beuque in 'Vert Erin'. Instead of a chic Parisian dwelling, Macardle found a little piece of Ireland in the French capital. Photographs of Cathal Brugha, Erskine Childers and Terence MacSwiney adorned the wall of her office, prompting Macardle to say that 'Mademoiselle Beuque's study is a little Irish republic'. The writing desk was covered in an orange, white and green embroidered cloth and recent editions of the Irish Press, the newspaper founded by de Valera in 1931, sat alongside a range of books on Ireland. Beuque was not a journalist or a professional writer, yet she managed to produce a wealth of material to promote Irish independence and support Irish republicans at a time when they needed publicity. Her writing reached a wide international audience as her books were reviewed in French, Swiss and Irish newspapers, as well as in French literary and academic journals. However, when I spoke about Beuque's love affair with Ireland at a recent Irish Studies conference in Cork, very few had heard of her. The conference was organised by Hélène Lecossois of Sofeir, the French Society of Irish Studies, and Heather Laird of the Department of English in UCC under the theme of Ireland and Transnational Solidarities. Topics covered ranged from Palestine and India to herbal medicine and surfing.
