A WASTED LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1916, Page 5

A WASTED LIFE.

THE COUNTESS MARKIEWIOZ. (By One Who Knows Her.) Than the Countess Markiewicz, now a prisoner in the hands of the military, there is not in the Dublin revolution *a more tragic figure, if tragedy lies in circumstance and the limitation of character. Her life lias now reached such a pass as when she was a girl of eighteen would have seemed utterly incredible, and those who knew hj>r tlien can only wonder at the waste and sorrow that has resulted from her wild egotism and the humorless intensity with which she flung herself into one craze after another, striving always to be the most outstanding figure among all her companions. It is significant of her that in this cruel business hers is the only woman's name to be' conspicuous. In that way at least she has attained the goal and the only goal at which she ever consistently aimed. For once, and tragically, she has succeeded. As a girl (Constance Gore-Booth), of eighteen she was remarkably beautiful, and as a debutante and for a number of seasons she was exceedingly popular. Something in her intensity and egotism was attractive, and neither her utter lack of humor nor her want of real ability was noticeable in a girl who was not expected to have either character or ■a point of view on life. Then tiring of debutante circles, she became one of a rather famous "set," which was conspicuous in the last reign. As one of (lie youngest and most beautiful, she led for a time. That was her ambition. But soon she was only ,: one of them," and her mood changed. She turned to art, and the first real indication that her friends had of the extremities to which she was capable of going was when she donned a wedding ling and announced that she was wedded to art. A period of Bohemian Paris—the untidy, consciously, slovenly Bohemian Paris—followed, and there she met her husband, Count de Markiewicz—a Polish artist of good country family origin, a big, easy-going, pleasant fellow now fighting for his country with the Russian Army. True to her record, she made her wedding a conspicuous affair—picked out her bridesmaids from the visitors 'in church and refused to wear a redding ring; but afterwards she settled down for a time in Dublin, and lived an ordinary life, attending Dublin Castle functions, and though' regarded then by her friends as rather foolish, still loved for her goodness of heart and her many charming qualities. The Suffragette period came next—her first venture, into politics—and in her behaviour in that case there is strong evidence of her incomplete instability or rather, lack of faith of any kind, and of her passion for notoriety. She drove a coach, and did a dozen or more ridiculous things of the. kind then in fashion, but quickly the fashion became too prevalent. In such a garden as that she could only bo one of the flowers, and too many of her competitors had the vital force she had not of a firm belief in the cause they championed. The moment that her deeds were outshone she left the movement. Then followed the Dublin strike. The real misery of the strikers touched her, and among people of that sort, with soup kitchens and a title, she could be indeed, a personage. At that time, however, a little word she dropped gave to her friends a. sign that the girl beauty who had led one of the smartest sets was beginning to feel that her power was gone. "Do something for them," she wrote to one of her relatives about the strikers. "Get someone to move in the matter. For myself I fear lam too declasse."

Once recognised by the strikers' leaders and in the current of the civil war movement, it was impossiblo for her nature to stop. Nothing is more certain thaJi that she cared for and knew nothing of politics or movements, but jn'st US the Suffragette rioting gave her excitement so did the conspiring of the Sinn Feiners. Her share in it was the share of a child's brain and a "woman's enthusiasm, and the recklessness of her fictions was much on a level with a thing Srhe did when a girl. She was arrested with a friend for furious riding in the Row, and thoughtlessly, wrongly gave instead of her own name.that of a relative. Only her youth excused her, but neither the experience nor any other of lier foolish doings has ever been able to teach her cornmonsense— Daily News.