The Yeats-Gonne-MacBride triangle

The author uses the material prepared by both Maud Gonne and her estranged husband Major John MacBride for their divorce case in Paris in 1905. Maud wanted cvustody of their baby son, Sean MacBride. she had lost an earlier child, with Lucien Millevoye, and could not psychlogically contemplate losing another. She sought an agreed divorce but John was not preapred to abandon his baby son. Maud then prepared a series of allegations against him for the Parisian Court. WB Yeats happily became her confidant and advisor hoping to win her again in marriage. MacBride met all the allegations in court and was found guilty alone of being drunk on occasion. Custody was given to Maud but John got visiting rights and would have the child live with his for two months later. John later left Paris and his son to return to Ireland to continue the fight against England which ended in his execution in 1916. The iconic status of WB Yeats means that those who write about him belived all he wrote and Major John MacBrude's name has been traduced by successive academics and biographers.