The Transnational Roots of Key Figures from the Early Years of the Gate Theatre, Dublin

Abstract

In Gate Theatre studies, the venue’s original artistic directors, Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir, are commonly described as ‘Englishmen’. This chapter breaks new ground by exploring the Irish roots of Edwards and mac Liammóir, and the rumours that mac Liammóir had Spanish and Jewish ancestry. ‘The Boys’ were not the only figures associated with the early Gate to have transnational backgrounds. Coralie Carmichael, the theatre’s biggest female star in its early years, was of mixed Moroccan and Scottish ancestry, and Nancy Beckh, who worked as an actor, costume designer and milliner at the Gate between 1932 and 1956, was a Dubliner of half-German descent. Using critical theories around new interculturalism, the chapter suggests that the mixed backgrounds of these artists helped them to create intercultural performances. It further demonstrates that these performances cannot be simply dismissed as those of people condescendingly engaging in cultural imperialism or shallow cosmopolitanism.

When considering the avant-garde nature of the early Gate Theatre, critics rightly focus on the queer sexuality and liberal politics of many of the people associated with the theatre at the time. However, it is also important to consider the transnational backgrounds of so many based at the Gate then – especially those individuals whose outsider status and interest in the outré could be linked not simply to foreign origins but also to ethnic and cultural hybridity. This chapter will fill in many gaps and correct various misconceptions regarding the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of four key, English-born figures associated with the early Gate: the theatre’s co-founders Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir, the Gate’s first “leading lady” Coralie Carmichael, and the under-regarded actor, costume designer and milliner Nancy Beckh. It will be made clear that the work of these four artists at the Gate cannot be dismissed as examples of people from comfortable English backgrounds condescendingly engaging in cultural imperialism (i.e. treating the ‘exotic’ cultures of people from marginalized countries like Ireland and various states in Africa and Asia as artistic ‘raw material’) or shallow cosmopolitanism (Stewart 330). Rather, the mixed backgrounds of these artists helped them to create what scholars in the emerging field of ‘new interculturalism’ call ‘intercultural performances’.¹

New Interculturalism and Intercultural Performance

Since 1990, when the publication of Micheál Ó hAodha’s biography of the supposedly Cork-born Micheál mac Liammóir revealed that the Gate co-founder was actually born Alfred Willmore in London, there has been a tendency among commentators to build their analysis of the Gate on the idea that it was a theatre ‘created by two Englishmen […] to diversify and Europeanize Irish theatre’ (Maxwell and Fitzgibbon 413). The lazy equation of the Gate with international drama (in contrast to the Abbey’s focus on Irish plays) existed for decades before Ó hAodha’s biography ever appeared, and critics including Ruud van den Beuken and Feargal Whelan (among others) have demonstrated how reductive such an angle is, since it greatly underestimates the Gate’s contribution to new Irish drama over the course of its entire history (van den Beuken 47; Whelan 147-59; Clare, Lallyand Lonergan 3-7). Arguably, highlighting the English backgrounds of ‘the Boys’ in such a prevailing critical context carries the strong implication that mac Liammóir and Edwards were on a neo-colonial “civilizing” mission to Ireland. The fact that they enlisted the help of other English-born theatremakers, including Coralie Carmichael and Nancy Beckh, would only strengthen such an impression. However, the four, key London-born artists associated with the early Gate discussed in this chapter were not from thoroughly and firmly established well-to-do, English backgrounds. As the examination of their ancestry below reveals, mac Liammóir and Edwards were part-Irish, and their families had only risen from poverty relatively recently; Carmichael had Moroccan and Scottish ancestry, and her immediate family’s shaky fortunes sank steadily during her childhood; and Beckh, while raised in Dublin, was the descendant of German immigrants to England who – like all immigrants – had to work hard to attain prosperity in the new country to which they had moved. Given the ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds of these four artists, their work at the Gate was clearly not an example of what Daphne P. Lei has called ‘hegemonic intercultural theatre’, in which theatre practitioners from more privileged nations use their ‘capital and brainpower’ to create transnational or intercultural performances by effectively exploiting cultural ‘raw material’ and even ‘labor’ from more marginalized countries (571).

Scholars from the field of ‘new interculturalism’, such as Charlotte McIvor, Ric Knowles, Royona Mitra and Justine Nakase (among others since the early Noughties), have demonstrated that, while racism and cultural imperialism undoubtedly inform or affect the production and reception of intercultural performances, subtler forms of intercultural exchange often occur when theatre is made by artists who are from hybrid backgrounds (McIvor; Knowles 2010; Knowles 2017; Mitra; Nakase). The above named scholars have been heeding Jen Harvie’s call to find critical models to better understand ‘intercultural encounters’ in which it is ‘difficult to specify a primary, let alone solitary, location of power, or where the “us” and “them”, “self” and “other” exist within the same community and/or within the same person’ (12). To be able to assess such situations, Nakase has developed the idea of ‘scalar interculturalism’, which ‘extends the analysis of intercultural production to include individual performances, even within productions that on collective level are not necessarily intercultural’ (263). In her work, she stresses the need for scholars to come to a nuanced understanding of an artist’s positioning with regard to the various cultures implicated in their background (while also understanding that the individual’s ‘identity position’ can change according to circumstances – either because of how they perceive themselves or are perceived by others in a particular moment of performance) (277). Such a nuanced understanding helps us to assess whether an individual artist from a mixed background is privileging one aspect of his or her identity over another during a specific performance.

In the case of the four figures examined in this chapter, their sure knowledge that their forebears were not entirely from Ireland’s former colonizer country, England, means that, when examining their work at the Gate, we cannot simply fall back on what Mitra calls ‘historical us-them hierarchies’, since it is clear that these four artists were ‘simultaneously embodying us, them and phases in-between’ (15). That is to say, it was not simply a matter of English artists “civilizing” the Irish by teaching them about international theatre or (in the case of the Gate’s involvement in Irish-language theatre and Irish mythological plays) plundering Irish culture, to satisfy their jaded cosmopolitan appetites which hungered for “exotic” theatrical raw materials.

As McIvor has noted, the work of scholars involved in ‘new interculturalism’ has highlighted ‘the use of intercultural aesthetic approaches by diasporic, migrant and/or otherwise globalized (usually minority) networks’ (5). As will be shown, Edwards and mac Liammóir were aware of their Irish ancestry, and, as members of the Irish diaspora, they would have been conscious of the fact that they were plugging into the culture of (some of) their ancestors. Indeed, mac Liammóir’s thoroughgoing embracing of all things Irish (including learning to speak and write what poet Paul Durcan’s father considered the best Irish in Ireland)² and Edwards’s impressive devotion to the Irish theatre world (and later Irish television) speaks to their deep commitment to the country – a commitment that cannot be written off as the condescending regard of neo-colonialists.

With regard to Coralie Carmichael, it is noteworthy that the role which first brought her to national attention in Ireland was as Anitra, the daughter of a Bedouin chief during the scene in Morocco in Ibsen’sPeer Gynt (which was the Gate’s inaugural production in 1928).³ One could, of course, suggest that the Gate’s depiction of Morocco in this production and Carmichael’s portrayal of Anitra were textbook examples of ‘orientalism’ in Edward Said’s definition of the term (Said passim). There is one major problem with this, however: Carmichael herself was part-Moroccan and (after her father’s death) temporarily resided in the same house as her Tangier-born grandfather. Her grandfather was not from a nomadic Moroccan background like Anitra (as will be seen below, he was possibly of mixed Jewish and Christian heritage); however, it is inconceivable that Carmichael would have approached her playing of Anitra in a blithe, condescending manner, happy to essentialize an “exotic” people for the benefit of a Western audience. This is not to say that her portrayal would not have been tainted to a degree by attitudes absorbed during her schooling in England, her lifelong residence in the West, or her ignorance of the real Morocco. But her awareness of her own Moroccan roots would have undoubtedly given her greater sympathy for characters such as Anitra than would ordinarily be the case for an English or Irish actor. It is even likely that, thanks to her own background, she would have extended this sympathy to the other “exotic” characters she was repeatedly asked to play over subsequent decades. This would include many of her most famous roles at the Gate, including the Palestinian-Jewish title character in Oscar Wilde’sSalomé (with whom she likely shared Jewish heritage), the title character of mysterious origins in Lord Longford’s adaptation of Le Fanu’sCarmilla, the Arabic maiden Biskra in August Strindberg’sSimoom, and Gazeleh (Lady of the King’s Harem) in Padraic Colum’sMogu of the Desert.

Similarly, Carmichael’s portrayal of Irish characters would not simply have been informed by her English background. Her performances would also have been informed by her awareness of her Scottish roots, which would have brought an awareness of how the “Celtic” nations within the British scheme have historically been marginalized by England.

Nancy Beckh’s case is different to the other three included in this essay. The country complicating her relationship with both England (her birthplace and the nation from which half of her ancestors hailed) and Ireland (the country where she was raised and lived for most of her life) was Germany. That country has had an adversarial relationship with England – especially during Beckh’s lifetime, thanks to the two World Wars. And it has had a contradictory relationship with Ireland. On the one hand, many Irish men and women were involved with the Allied cause against Germany during the Great War and also (via enlistment in the British, Canadian, American and Australian armed forces and nursing services) World War II. On the other hand, one could note the attempts at collaboration between the Germans and those involved in the Easter Rising, as well as the fact that Ireland was officially neutral during World War II, which famously led to Taoiseach Éamon de Valera calling on the Third Reich’s ambassador to Ireland to express his condolences upon the death of Hitler. So, in this case, the issue is not whether the theatre practitioner in question may have felt greater or lesser sympathy for Irish characters and themes, thanks to Irish or Scottish roots. Instead, we are concerned with the lasting impact that her German forebears had on her. When scholars discuss, for example, African ‘cultural survivals’ in African-American culture, they demonstrate an awareness of the durability of cultural values, mores, tastes and practices within families over generations (see, e.g., Ekwueme; Ferris and Oliver; Garrett; Hall; King; Turner).⁴ It would be interesting to undertake archival research to see if there is any evidence of German aesthetics apparent in Beckh’s costume and hat designs. We might also question the degree to which her German ancestry might have impacted on her approach to certain roles (though no evidence has yet been found of her performing any German roles). These speculations, however, are beyond the scope of this essay. Our main concern here is to firmly establish the facts around the mixed backgrounds of these four prominent figures from the early Gate, correcting errors and filling in gaps left by previous biographers, critics, and of course by mac Liammóir himself.

Hilton Edwards

In Gate Theatre studies, it is quite common for the London-born Hilton Edwards to be portrayed as almost excessively English. In his autobiographical novel Enter a Goldfish, mac Liammóir depicts Anew McMaster as saying that Edwards is ‘so English […] just a John Bull with the lid off, Britannia’s son’ (1981, 221). Mac Liammóir’s biographer, Micheál Ó hAodha, describes Edwards as ‘an uncompromising Englishman’ (54), and Brian Friel, in a 1964 interview about his breakthrough play Philadelphia, Here I Come!, suggests that there were certain aspects of the relationships between the characters in the play that Edwards, the director of the production, did not understand due to his ‘English’ perspectives on romance and sex (3). (It is noteworthy that Edwards had actually lived in Ireland for over thirty-five years by that stage.) And mac Liammóir himself – Edwards’s professional and romantic partner – is keen in his autobiographical writings to stress Edwards’s no-nonsense Englishness, if only to contrast it with his own elaborate pose as a romantic Irishman.

There is one significant issue with depicting Edwards as unequivocally English, and it is one that has occasionally troubled biographers and critics: his mother’s maiden name was Murphy (see, e.g., Fitz-Simon 33; Ó hAodha 54). Perhaps out of deference to mac Liammóir’s assumed Irishness or because he knew how dismissive Irish-born people can be about members of the diaspora claiming to be Irish, Edwards showed no instinct to assume an Irish identity on the basis of the Murphy connection; as such, biographers and critics have neglected to seek out more details regarding Edwards’s Irish antecedents. Interestingly, genealogical enquiries reveal that Edwards was actually eligible to “play for Ireland”; that is, he was entitled to Irish citizenship through an Irish-born grandfather.

Hilton’s mother, Emily Murphy, was born on 9 May 1861 at 27 Great Marlborough Street in the parish of St. James, Westminster, London, and was the daughter of William Murphy, an Irish-born comb maker, and a Middlesex-born woman of partial Irish descent called Rosina Emily Swain (Birth Cert for Emily Murphy). Emily was baptized as an Anglican in the parish of St. James, Westminster on 23 October 1861 (‘England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975’, entry for Emily Murphy), and she was raised in a house comprised of her Irish-born father William, her part-Irish mother Rosina and her eight London-born siblings, but also her Irish-born paternal grandmother, Catherine (1871 Census of England and Wales, 97 Dean Street, Soho). When Emily was four, her mother died shortly after giving birth to a child called Georgina (Death Cert for Rosina Murphy). Thereafter, Emily’s Irish grandmother served as a surrogate mother to her. These facts make it quite clear that Hilton Edwards’s mother was raised in an Irish household in England.

It should also be noted that the Murphys were not a prosperous family. William Murphy was born circa 1826 in Ireland (exact location unknown) to John and Catherine Murphy, and his first appearance in English records is his 1850 marriage certificate, which reveals that he is of ‘full age’, and that his father is already deceased (Marriage Cert for William Murphy and Rosina Swain).⁵ The 1851 census reveals that William’s mother Catherine was living with her son and his new wife (1851 Census of England and Wales, 9 Foley Place, Marylebone). As such, Catherine Murphy either joined William in London after his emigration to England or came with him, perhaps after the death of her husband in Ireland. William worked as a shell-comb maker for many years after emigrating to London, which was not a well-paid job. It is presumably through his job that William came in contact with his wife Rosina Emily Swain, who was from a similar background: her London-born father, John Swain, was also a shell-comb maker and the maiden name of her London-born mother, Sophia, was the Irish surname Reilly (1841 Census of England and Wales, Norton Street, Marylebone; ‘England Marriages, 1538-1973’, entry for John Swain and Sophia Reily [sic]; ‘England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975’, entry for Rosina Emily Swain). It has proven impossible to determine if it was Sophia’s parents or perhaps people further back in her paternal line who were born in Ireland.⁶

The idea that Hilton Edwards’s mother, Emily Murphy, came from a relatively poor background is not just indicated by the humble profession of her father and maternal grandfather. A further sign of the family’s lack of prosperity is the fact that (from the time of Emily’s parents’ wedding onwards), the Murphys resided in parts of Marylebone and Soho which – unlike now – were full of slum dwellings.⁷ Indeed, the Murphy family cannot be found in the 1861 census, when Rosina would have been heavily pregnant with Emily (the census was compiled in April 1861 and Emily was born, as noted above, on 9 May). Given the social status of the family, it is likely that Rosina may have entered a workhouse or a “poor law” hospital for the birth of her child. Likewise, by 1881, a William Murphy who can be presumed to be Emily’s father was in the Central London Sick Asylum Highgate Infirmary, a “poor law” hospital (1881 Census of England and Wales, Central London Sick Asylum Highgate Infirmary; Central London Sick Asylum District Admission and Discharge Registers).

William was deceased by the time his daughter Emily married Hilton Edwards’s father, Thomas George Edwards, on 18 December 1897 in the Registry Office in the District of Islington (Marriage Cert for Thomas George Edwards and Emily Murphy).⁸ Emily, by that point a thirty-four-year-old spinster, rose in the world through her marriage to Edwards, a forty-two-year-old widower and relatively successful man who had risen from tenement dwellings through hard work: in sundry official records dating from 1871 through 1914, his job is variously described as Artist, Designer, Engraver, Printer, Master Publisher and Christmas Card Designer (see 1871 Census of England and Wales, 70 Margaret Street, Marylebone; Baptismal record for Thomas Albert Edwards; 1881 Census of England and Wales, 18 Alfred Place, Finsbury; 1891 Census of England and Wales, 45 Clepstone Street, Marylebone; Marriage Cert for Thomas George Edwards and Emily Murphy; 1901 Census of England and Wales, 45 Clepstone Street, Marylebone).⁹ However, it is still clear that Gate co-founder Hilton Edwards was raised in close proximity to Irish poverty, through his mother Emily. And this would almost certainly have haunted him as he made a life in Ireland between June 1927 – a mere ten months after the death of his beloved mother (Death Cert for Emily Edwards) – and his own death in 1983.

Micheál mac Liammóir

Hilton’s life partner and fellow Gate co-founder, Micheál mac Liammóir, was born Alfred Lee Willmore on 25 October 1899 at 150 Purves Road, Willesden, London, the youngest child of Alfred George Willmore (a forage dealer’s buyer) and Mary Elizabeth Lee (Birth Cert for Alfred Lee Willmore). As a teenager, Alfred fell in love with Irish mythology and literature, as well as the Irish language – partially as a result of his discovery of the work of Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats but also through the influence of his great friend, Máire O’Keeffe, the London-born daughter of a Tipperary father. Together, Alfred and Máire joined London branches of the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin. And, as biographers Ó hAodha, Christopher Fitz-Simon and Tom Madden have shown, between 1917 and 1927, the Londoner Alfred – with crucial input from O’Keeffe but also a Kildare-born friend called Jack Dunne – successfully transformed himself into the Irish-speaking and supposedly Cork-born Micheál mac Liammóir.¹⁰ It was not until after mac Liammóir’s death that the truth about his English background and his original name became widely known – thanks, as previously noted, to the publication of the Ó hAodha biography (and the many revelations it contained) in 1990.

As Des Lally, Fitz-Simon, Ó hAodha and others have discussed, there were suspicions during mac Liammóir’s lifetime that many of his stories regarding his past – and particularly his Irish past – were not true (see, e.g., Lally 193-207; Fitz-Simon 13, 23; Ó hAodha 4, 189). However, mac Liammóir fooled most Irish people, and it seems that the shock of discovering the surprising truth has led to a situation where commentators are quick to emphasize – indeed, over-emphasize – mac Liammóir’s Englishness. Within Gate studies and Irish Studies, one regularly sees critics asserting that mac Liammóir ‘had no Irish connections whatsoever’ (Walshe 151; see also, e.g., Ó hAodha 4; Fitz-Simon 19; Pine 66; Wilson 120; Cairney 119; Horan; Whitington). They also regularly imply that his decision to take on an Irish persona in life was even more transgressive than it might otherwise have been because he was – of all nationalities – English. However, this reductive treatment of mac Liammóir’s background has virtually shut down enquiries into curious contentions made by Ó hAodha and others that would complicate the picture of “pure” Englishness. These contentions include Ó hAodha’s suggestion that mac Liammóir’s mother might have been from an ‘English Jewish background’, as well as what Ó hAodha rightly refers to as the ‘enigmatic and contradictory traces of a Spanish […] connection’ on the Willmore side of the family tree (4-5). And, finally, there is the fact that Ó hAodha does not dispute mac Liammóir’s contention that his mother’s full name was actually ‘Mary Elizabeth Lawler Lee’ (345, our emphasis).¹¹ The name Lawler would seem to indicate some Irish blood in mac Liammóir’s lineage. Each of these provocative hints regarding mac Liammóir’s possibly “mixed” ancestry requires investigation, in order to get a more accurate sense of his national and cultural starting point.

Having investigated the Jewish connection, it has become clear that Ó hAodha’s surmise in this regard results from his having confused two different Mary Elizabeth Lees. When looking for a birth certificate for mac Liammóir’s mother, Ó hAodha seems to have presumed that she was born in London, and therefore he settled on a document related to the 1867 birth in Islington of a woman called Mary Elizabeth Lee (5, 205). This particular woman was the daughter of a jeweller called Robert Samuel Lee and his wife, Rebecca (maiden name Essex). Ó hAodha is right to suggest that these details would seem to indicate a possible Jewish background (5). The only issue is that this is the wrong Mary Elizabeth Lee.

Mac Liammóir’s actual mother, Mary Elizabeth Lee, was born on 5 July 1864 at Farningham in the District of Dartford, Kent, the daughter of Frederick Lee, a journeyman miller, and his wife Elizabeth (Birth Cert for Mary Elizabeth Lee). Mary can be found in the 1871 census, aged seven years, residing in Tower Hamlets with her Reigate, Surrey-born father, Frederick (described as a miller’s servant), and her Isleworth, Middlesex-born mother, Elizabeth (1871 Census of England and Wales, Parish of St. George in the East). And when she married Alfred Willmore on 12 January 1888 in Camberwell, Mary identified her father as Frederick Lee, a corn merchant (Marriage Cert for Alfred Willmore and Mary Elizabeth Lee). The entries for Mary in the 1891 and 1901 census returns (i.e. after her marriage) also confirm that she was born in Kent (1891 Census of England and Wales, 14 Clarence Road, Hackney; 1901 Census of England and Wales, 150 Purves Road, Willesden). These facts disprove the theory regarding possible London Jewish ancestry. However, that still leaves questions to be answered about the suggestions that mac Liammóir had Spanish and Irish antecedents.

Mac Liammóir frequently contended that he was part-Spanish. He claimed that his grand aunt was called Luisa Concepción Fuentes and that he and his father visited her in Seville in 1914. It seems likely (or at least plausible) that mac Liammóir and his father visited Spain in 1914, but the veracity of many details included in mac Liammóir’s account of the trip in Chapter 4 of his autobiographical novel Enter a Goldfish is certainly open to question. Did mac Liammóir’s father really leave him in Seville for an extended period, so that he could learn Spanish – something that could potentially be useful to him in a future career now that the child acting roles were drying up? Was it really the threat of the Great War breaking out that brought this Spanish sojourn to an end? And, most importantly, were the people he stayed with really his relations? Going back through the Willmore family tree to the late eighteenth century, it becomes clear that there are no Spanish people in mac Liammóir’s direct line. However, it is still conceivable that one of the women named Louisa on that side of his family may have married a Spaniard and moved to Spain.

Mac Liammóir’s grandfather – Edward Willmore, Jr. (born in London in 1834) – had a sister called Louisa, who would seem like a good candidate for the Spanish-based grand aunt (1841 Census of England and Wales, Wellington Buildings, Tower Hamlets; 1851 Census of England and Wales, 4 North Street, Tower Hamlets). However, she married one Henry Forrest in London on 21 January 1861, and died in the English capital only six years later (Marriage Cert for Henry Forrest and Louisa Willmore; City of London and Tower Hamlets cemetery registers). Likewise, that same grandfather had a child called Louisa via his second marriage (1881 Census of England and Wales, 228 Holywell, Shoreditch). It is possible that this woman, who was born in London circa 1873 (1881 Census of England and Wales, 228 Holywell, Shoreditch), married a Spaniard and/or moved to Spain. However, so far, no evidence to this effect has been forthcoming. What is more, this woman was ten years younger than her half-brother, mac Liammóir’s father Alfred, which complicates the picture painted of her as an older aunt figure.

Evidence may yet surface of a Spanish connection to the Willmore family, but – in the end – it is most likely that mac Liammóir was exaggerating the tie to Spain, as a way of acknowledging the significant impact that the 1914 trip had on him. The account in Enter a Goldfish (however unreliable it may be) indicates that the trip included a degree of sexual awakening. That said, if rumours that Fitz-Simon heard are true, the intense impact may have been related not so much to the fact that he became more aware of his homosexuality on that trip but that he was the victim of sexual harassment or even assault, in form of the unwanted ‘sexual advances [… from] an older person’ (39).¹²

While mac Liammóir may have been embellishing or even fabricating his Spanish ancestry out of some attempt to acknowledge or come to terms with events that took place in Spain in 1914, this would not automatically mean that his suggestion of Irish blood through his invocation of the Lawler surname is definitely another fabrication. Indeed, in tracing back the Willmore line in search of Spanish blood, the Lawler/Irish connection has been uncovered. Mac Liammóir’s paternal grandfather, Edward Willmore, Jr., has already been mentioned. By the time Edward’s second son – mac Liammóir’s father Alfred – was born, he was a respectable corn dealer, even if he was living in rough and ready Shoreditch in London’s East End (1871 Census of England and Wales, 228 Holywell, Shoreditch). But he had risen from much humbler origins – origins that he seems to have been keen to cover up.

When Edward married Mary Tyler Bond, mac Liammóir’s grandmother, in 1859, he described his father – Edward Willmore, Sr. (born in Middlesex circa 1796) – as a ‘warehouse man’ (Marriage Cert for Edward Willmore and Mary Tyler Bond). In 1871, after this first wife died, he married a woman called Louisa Moss. On this occasion, Edward Jr. described his deceased father as having been a ‘Gentleman’ (Marriage Cert for Edward Willmore and Louisa Moss). In point of fact, census records show that Edward Willmore, Sr. worked primarily as a ‘labourer’ or ‘dock labourer’ in the East End during Edward Jr.’s formative years, only eventually (and temporarily) rising to the position of ‘warehouse man’ in the late 1850s and early 1860s (see 1841 Census of England and Wales, Wellington Buildings, Tower Hamlets; 1851 Census of England and Wales, 4 North Street, Tower Hamlets; Marriage Cert for Edward Willmore and Mary Tyler Bond). Likewise, Edward Jr. himself started his working life as a ‘servant’ whose specific position was ‘Cheese monger’s Shopman’ (1851 Census of England and Wales, 22 Cable Street, Whitechapel); later on, he became a ‘merchant clerk’, then ‘manager to a Corn Merchant’, before eventually becoming a ‘Corn Dealer’ himself by 1871 (Civil Marriage Cert for Edward Willmore and Mary Tyler Bond; 1861 and 1871 Census of England and Wales, 228 Holywell, Shoreditch).¹³

We can imagine that, in attempting to cover up his humble origins, Edward Willmore Jr. did not just suppress the true nature of his father’s working life by referring to him as a ‘Gentleman’ after his death. It is probable that he would have been unlikely to advertise the fact that his mother was a London-born woman from an Irish background called Mary Lawler, who was born and raised in rough parts of London and whose parents may have been born in Ireland (‘England Marriages, 1538-1973’, entry for Edward Willmore and Mary Lawler; 1841 Census of England and Wales, Wellington Buildings, Tower Hamlets; 1851 Census of England and Wales, 4 North Street, Tower Hamlets; ‘Christenings 1795’, entry for Mary Lawler).¹⁴ Still, the Lawler name clearly survived in the family’s collective memory, since Mary’s great-grandson Micheál mac Liammóir used her surname when attempting to give an Irish sheen to his mother’s name decades later.

Mac Liammóir’s niece, Mary Rose McMaster (the daughter of his sister Marjorie and the great actor-manager Anew McMaster) once admitted that Micheál was ‘prone to distorting facts and exaggeration’ when discussing his Irish background (quoted in Ó hAodha 6). While many of his assertions, from the Cork birth to the suggestion that his mother knew some Irish (Pine 66), were patently false, it is noteworthy that – as his “renaming” of his mother suggests – he was clearly aware of (and chose to pay tribute to) the Lawler connection in his family tree. And it is now clear that mac Liammóir was not – as so many commentators have suggested – completely without Irish connections.

Coralie Carmichael

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Gate Theatre was in an unusual position in that its (informal) company of actors included three women who could play lead roles: Betty Chancellor, Meriel Moore, and Coralie Carmichael. As mac Liammóir put it in his memoir All for Hecuba, this rotation of ‘leading ladies’ made for ‘a discreet and pleasing variety’ (2008, 110). And yet, of these three women, one always seemed to get more attention than the others: the glamourous Coralie Carmichael. Her unusual, dark looks were often described by critics and commentators as ‘exotic’, and, in All for Hecuba, mac Liammóir ascribed this to her background: ‘she had been born in London of origins as mixed and unexpected as those of an American hors d’oeuvres – the lands of her ancestors ranged from Scotland to Morocco’ (14).

Perhaps out of awareness of mac Liammóir’s ability to embellish the truth, scholars have been reluctant to explore Carmichael’s alleged Moroccan ancestry. Ó hAodha is typical when he simply describes her as ‘born in London, of Scottish extraction’ (46-47) – a safe enough surmise given her English accent and Carmichael surname.¹⁵ However, a question remains over whether mac Liammóir was actually lying, in order to intensify Carmichael’s perceived exoticism. One might also wonder about the extent of her Scottish ancestry; after all, her Scots Carmichael forebear could be even further back in her family tree than mac Liammóir’s Lawler relations.

As it turns out, Carmichael’s Scottish and Moroccan roots were both very real and very recent in her lineage. She was born Coralie Esther Percy Carmichael on 6 November 1902 in Hampstead, London, and her parents were Thomas Percy Carmichael, a divorced actor originally from Glasgow, and Simie Benoliel, the Croydon-born daughter of an Anglican clergyman originally from Morocco called Maxwell Mackluff Benoliel and his North London-born wife, Harriet James (Birth Cert for Simie Harriette Ben Oliel; Marriage Cert for Thomas Percy Carmichael and Simie Harriette Ben-Oliel).

To begin with the Scottish side of the family, Coralie’s father, Thomas, was born on 1 May 1862 in Shettleston in Glasgow’s East End, and was raised in that same area (Birth Cert for Thomas Carmichael). His father was originally from Dumfries in southwest Scotland and was a grocer and spirit merchant, and his mother was originally from Forfar, a town about fifty miles north of Edinburgh (1871 Census of Scotland, Shettleston, Glasgow). Despite Thomas’s father possessing a respectable and fairly prosperous job, the young man defied expectations by taking to the stage and acting under the name Arthur Cecil Percy. An obituary note about him from the 25 February 1905 edition of The Era gives us a good sense of his career:

We regret to record the death of Mr. Thomas Percy Carmichael (professionally known as Arthur Cecil Percy), which occurred at Epsom on the 16^th inst. Mr. Percy was a native of Glasgow, and was well known as a very painstaking actor in heavy and character parts. His most distinct successes were made in The Hansom Cab, England, Home, and Beauty, The Trumpet Call, The English Rose, The Penalty of Crime, Alone in London, The French Spy and I Defy the World. His demise at the early age of 43 is deeply regretted by his many friends and acquaintances, especially so by his sorrowing wife. The deceased was interred on Monday at Epsom. (‘Theatrical Gossip’)

His ‘sorrowing wife’ was Coralie’s mother, Simie. Thomas and Simie had married in Birmingham on 14 September 1901 (Marriage Cert for Thomas Percy Carmichael and Simie Harriette Ben-Oliel), less than a year after Thomas’s divorce from his first wife, Mabel Moore, was finalized.¹⁶ Sadly, Thomas died only three and a half years after his second marriage – and only two years and four months after Coralie’s birth. However, his acting talent clearly lived on in his daughter.

Then again, Coralie must also have gotten some of her talent from her mother’s side of the family (specifically, her Moroccan grandfather and her mother), as we shall see. As previously noted, Simie’s father Maxwell was an Anglican clergyman, and his job, of course, certainly required a degree of “performance”. Maxwell was born in Tangier circa 1833, and he was the son of a physician (1871 Census of England and Wales, St. Paul’s Parsonage, Croyden; Marriage Cert for Maxwell Mackluff Benoliel and Harriet James). It is likely that Maxwell was at least partially of Jewish descent, since Benoliel (spelled in a variety of ways) is frequently a Jewish surname in North Africa, as well as in Gibraltar, Spain, Portugal and Cape Verde (see Serels; Researchers of The Museum of The Jewish People). By contrast, the surname Mackluff (also anglicized in various ways) frequently belongs to Christians across the Arab world.¹⁷ It is possible that Maxwell had mixed Jewish and Christian roots, which could explain his Anglican faith.¹⁸ What we do know for certain is that, at the age of twenty, Maxwell emigrated to England, where he took Holy Orders after settling in the northwest of England – first in Birkenhead and then Kirkby Lonsdale (Naturalization Papers for Maxwell Mocluff Benoliel). In 1861, he became a naturalized British citizen, and, six years later, he married Harriet James, daughter of a ‘Gentleman’, in Croydon (Marriage Cert for Maxwell Mackluff Benoliel and Harriet James).

Coralie’s mother, Simie, was born in Croydon six years later (Birth Cert for Simie Harriette Ben Oliel). Prior to Simie’s birth, Maxwell served in various street missions but also as chaplain to the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland.¹⁹ During Simie’s formative years, Maxwell mainly served as a vicar in parishes in southern England. When she came of age, he took up some rather surprising positions: he seems to have led a mission in West Berkeley, California in 1889-1891 and to have served as rector of a parish in San Bernadino, California in 1891-1893. Upon his return to England, he was – for a time in 1896 – head of the Kilburn Mission to the Jews, further confirmation that he was likely of Jewish descent. It is unclear if Simie accompanied her parents to California, but she was certainly living with them after their return to London (1901 Census of England and Wales, Oxford Road, Willesden). Simie left the family home when she married Thomas Carmichael but returned to live with her parents – together with her daughter, Coralie – after her husband’s death. The last record for Maxwell in Crockford’s Clerical Directory appears in the 1907 edition, so we can presume he passed away around that time.

By the time of the 1911 census, Coralie was living in Mortlake, Surrey with her mother, who was now described as an ‘Actress’ (there was no occupation listed for her in the 1901 census), and her grandmother Harriet, a ‘Widow’ living by ‘Private Means’ (1911 Census of England and Wales, Mortlake, Surrey). With Maxwell dead, the family’s financial situation became increasingly precarious, and in 1914, Coralie – who had previously been educated at two expensive private schools – was sent to the Putney County Secondary School in Wandsworth. Her July 1915 discharge record (in which her mother is described as being in the ‘theatrical profession’) seems to indicate that she had some sort of fee exemption (Admission and Discharge Register for Girls, Putney County Secondary School). In the following years, the family is scarcely found in official records. What is clear is that Coralie ‘went on to the stage at 16’ (‘Coralie Carmichael Dead’) and that her grandmother Harriet died in 1919 (Death Cert for Harriet Ben-Oliel). Coralie had amassed lots of varied stage experience in London by the time she joined Anew McMaster’s troupe in 1926, where she later met the co-founders of the Gate and became inveigled in their plans to set up a theatre in Dublin. That venture was greatly helped by Coralie’s strong acting talent and arresting, unusual looks, both of which were inherited from her Moroccan-Scottish-English forebears.

Incidentally, Coralie’s success as an actor and a private vocal coach (she even trained the young Gay Byrne) meant that she could bring her mother, Simie, to Ireland, where the woman died in 1947 (Byrne 77; ‘Ireland, Civil Registration Deaths Index, 1864-1958’, entry for Simie Ben-Oliel). And Coralie herself – who had married fellow Gate/McMaster actor Denis McKenna in 1941 – converted to Catholicism in 1956 and died two years later, at the relatively young age of fifty-six. During her final illness, there was a tribute concert for her held at the Gaiety Theatre, which featured performances by (among others) mac Liammóir, Edwards, Maureen Potter, Jimmy O’Dea, Noel Purcell, and London’s Festival Ballet Company (‘Coralie Carmichael Concert’).

Nancy Beckh

As relatively little scholarship exists on the Gate compared to other major Irish theatre organizations, many important figures who contributed to the theatre’s successes have been overlooked – especially women. One clear example of this is Nancy Beckh, who worked as an actor, costume designer and milliner for several Gate productions between 1932 and 1956. Beckh was completely of German descent on her father’s side of the family. Her paternal grandfather was a Bavarian man called Emil Beckh who was born in Schwabach on 23 July 1824, the son of a merchant named Sebastian Beckh and his wife Auguste Fischer (Baptismal record for Emil Beckh; Marriage Cert for Emil Beckh and Juliet Emily Benecke).²⁰ Emil emigrated to England when he was approximately nineteen. An alien arrival certificate reveals that Emil Beckh arrived with one Carl Kreistner (or Freistner) on 22 February 1844, having departed from Belgium and arrived in the port of Dover (Alien Arrival Document for Emil Beckh).

Once in England, Emil followed in his father’s footsteps and set up as a merchant in Riches Court in the City of London. Emil became a naturalized British citizen in advance of his marriage at the age of twenty-six to an English-born daughter of German parents called Juliet Emily Benecke (Naturalization Papers for Emil Beckh). Juliet’s father Frederick was a ‘manufacturing chemist’ born in Hamburg circa 1803, and his wife Henrietta (née Souchay) was born in Frankfurt circa 1809; the couple married in Deptford in September 1826, and were naturalized British citizens by the time of Juliet’s birth (1851 Census of England and Wales, 84 Denmark Hill, Lambeth; Naturalization Papers for Frederick William Benecke).

Emil and Juliet would go on to have five children (all born in Surrey), and the last of these children was Nancy Beckh’s father, Harry Oscar Beckh, born in 1864 (Birth Cert for Harry Oscar Beckh). Harry excelled at Haileybury College (a public school in Hertfordshire), and at Caius College, Cambridge, where he completed a B.A. in Mathematics and an M.A. in Civil Engineering (Venn and Venn 211). Early in Harry’s career, he worked as a Civil Engineer for firms in London and Colchester, Essex (‘Civil Engineer Membership Forms, 1818–1930’). It was while working in Colchester that he met his wife, Agnes Helen Legh – the daughter of an Anglican clergyman. After marrying in 1899, Harry and Agnes had two children in Colchester: Joan Katherine (born in early 1900) and – the focus of this essay – future theatre practitioner Nancy Helen (born in late 1903) (1911 Census of Ireland, 81 James’s Street, Usher’s Quay Ward, Dublin).²¹ Then, in 1904, shortly after Nancy’s birth, Harry was offered a job with Guinness’s in Dublin and the family moved to Ireland (1911 Census of Ireland, 81 James’s Street, Usher’s Quay Ward, Dublin). A third child, Kate Winifred, was born in Dublin in 1908 (Birth Cert for Kate Winifred Beckh).

Nancy was raised in two houses in Dublin: first 81 James’s Street near Guinness’s Brewery and later 15 Palmerston Road in the suburb of Rathmines (1911 Census of Ireland, 81 James’s Street, Usher’s Quay Ward, Dublin; ‘Irish Wills’). Her interest in performance manifested itself early, as her early appearances in the Irish Times indicate. Her first appearance in Ireland’s “paper of record” relates to her participation in a ‘Swedish Educational Gymnastics’ exhibition, held in Dublin’s Antient Concert Rooms in 1910, in which she and the other students in Miss Studley’s Dublin and Bray gymnastics classes (including Nancy’s sister Joan) showed off various gymnastics and dance moves (‘Swedish Educational Gymnastics’). Her next appearance was in 1925, in a review of a benefit concert organized by famed Cork actor Charles Doran, which sought funds for ‘the Countess of Mayo’s Fund for the relief of distress in the West of Ireland’. The concert was held at Alexandra College; Nancy sang in a group with two other singers, and the Irish Times reviewer complimented the trio on some ‘really excellent vocalism’ (‘Distress in the West’). She appears again in 1928, when the paper notes that Nancy along with two other singers won First Prize in the ‘Ladies’ Vocal Trio’ category at the Dublin Feis (‘The Feis Ceoil’). And, in 1930, she is touted in the Irish Times as being one of the featured speakers at a public meeting of the Pembroke Social Service Union, alongside the Bishop of Meath (‘Social Service Union’).

During the 1920s and early 1930s, Nancy was not simply developing her performance skills as a singer and public speaker: she was also cultivating her love of the visual arts. Elaine Sisson has examined the Headmaster’s annual reports and the attendance books from Dublin’s famous Metropolitan School of Art and determined that Beckh was a student there during the 1920s.²² It appears that she entered the school in 1922, and made a mark right away: she is mentioned in the 1922-1923 Annual Report, which states that she won a ‘Junior Prize’. The 1924-1925 Annual Report announces that she has been hired as a teacher of drawing at the ‘Intermediate School, Celbridge’ (also known as the Collegiate School Celbridge, a well-known school for Protestant girls). Sisson surmises that this probably means that Beckh finished her training in the School of Art by the Summer of 1925; that said, she reappears in the 1928-1929 Annual Report, which states that she won a prize for ‘drawing from natural forms’ and was commended in the ‘Modelling and Sculpture’ category.

It may seem unusual that Beckh was considered a qualified teacher by the school as of 1924-1925 but was then back winning student prizes in 1928-1929. Sisson believes that the most logical explanation is that she re-attended the School of Art a few years later, possibly as a night student, noting that her Metropolitan School contemporaries Harry Kernoff and Rosamond Jacob both attended by night. Of course, in the late 1920s, Kernoffand Jacob were both involved in Desirée ‘Toto’ Bannard Cogley’sCabaret, which provided the early Gate with its initial membership list. Other contemporaries of Beckh at the Metropolitan School were also involved with Toto’s Cabaret and/or the early Gate, including Norah McGuinness and Cecil Salkeld. Sisson suggests that the fact that Beckh would have known these people may indicate how she came to the attention of mac Liammóir and Edwards. Nancy began working at the Gate in 1932, and – over the next two and a half decades – she fulfilled various key roles at the theatre (including actor, costume designer and milliner), both under ‘the Boys’ and with Longford Productions.

Although Nancy is little remembered today, she was actually part of the original cast for the debut of several important plays from the Gate’s early history. Examples include Lord Longford’s 1932 stage adaptation of J.S. Le Fanu’sCarmilla, Christine Longford’s 1938 stage adaptation of Maria Edgeworth’sThe Absentee (for which the former art student also designed the cast’s elaborate, period hats), Denis Johnston’s 1939 play The Golden Cuckoo (on which she also served as Wardrobe Supervisor), and the Irish première of Bernard Shaw’s ‘In Good King Charles’s Golden Days’, put on by the Longfords in 1943.

Other memorable roles were her scene-stealing cameos as Lady Catherine de Burgh in Christine Longford’s 1941 stage adaptation of Jane Austen’sPride and Prejudice (‘Gate Theatre: “Pride and Prejudice”’; ‘Other Houses’) and as the housekeeper, Tabby, in John Davison’s 1944 play The Brontës of HaworthParsonage (Sweeney 1944b), as well as her star turn in the Longfords’ 1943 production of Elizabeth McFadden’sDouble Door. As an anonymous Irish Times journalist puts it in a review of Double Door: ‘This “thriller”, with an American period setting, […] gives an opportunity to Nancy Beckh to show how good an actress she can be. She has the principal […] part in the play, and makes a fine performance of it.’ (‘Double Door’) A review of the production’s revival at the Gaiety suggests that she ‘dominated the stage’ (‘Dublin Theatres’).

In 1944, Nancy left Dublin, but only after passing on her Wardrobe Supervisor duties with Longford Productions to the woman who had been serving as her assistant, Sheila O’Reilly (Sweeney 1944a). She moved first to Belfast, then subsequently to East Ealing, Clapham, Lambeth, and finally back to Clapham, where she died in 1981 (Sweeney 1944a; 1948 Ealing East Electoral Register; 1951 Clapham Electoral Register; 1964 Lambeth Electoral Register; 1981 England & Wales Civil Registration Death Index). She did continue to act, however. Her most notable acting job during these years was arguably her performance in a 1958 BBC television adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Villette (‘Television Programmes’). However, it is fitting that she also made one more return to the theatre to which she had contributed so much. In the spring of 1956, she was brought back to Dublin by Longford Productions to play Lady Lannion in the company’s staging of Mary Hayley Bell’sThe Uninvited Guest.

Conclusion

When discussing the early Gate’s involvement in international cultural exchange, it is easy to point to the fact that one of the theatre’s original Directors was a French woman (the aforementioned ‘Toto’ Bannard Cogley, who was also temporarily part of the Gate’s informal acting company), or to note that Chinese (Hsiung Shih-I) and African-American (William Marshall) theatremakers contributed to key productions during the theatre’s first three and a half decades. However, the early Gate was also involved in quite subtle examples of intercultural performance, thanks to the fact that four key figures from its formative decades were from mixed backgrounds. For too long, there has been too much reluctance to properly understand the national and cultural starting points of Gate figures such as mac Liammóir, Edwards, Carmichael and the almost-forgotten Beckh.

But, of course, the Gate’s involvement with intercultural performance has extended well beyond its first few decades. Consider, for example, its celebrated Beckett Festivals of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: these productions, like the theatre’s 1928 staging of Salomé, involved actors from a variety of national and ethnic backgrounds performing in plays originally written in French by a Dublin-born playwright. Or consider its 2018 production of Hamlet, in which the title role was played by a Limerick actor of Irish and Ethiopian descent, Ruth Negga, and in which Hamlet’s father was played by a black British actor, Steve Hartland.

As noted towards the start of this chapter, in most studies of Irish theatre history, there has been a tendency to underplay the Gate’s contributions to specifically Irish drama and to play up the theatre’s cosmopolitanism. While recent scholarship is correcting this imbalance, it is important that critics do not simply add more weight to the “Irish” side of the national/international scale. Rather, theories around intercultural performance must be employed, so that we can understand – in a more nuanced way – the hybrid nature of many of the Gate’s greatest productions. Clearly, forcing artists from “mixed” backgrounds into one nationality and treating that nationality in an essentialist way will prevent us from adequately understanding the power dynamics and artistic imperatives inscribed within individual and collective performances not just on the Gate Theatre stage but also on stages across the world.

Notes

• 1. See, e.g., McIvor; Knowles 2010; Knowles 2017; Mitra; Nakase.

• 2. Paul Durcan made this comment in conversation with Alan Gilsenan at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, on 29 May 2011.

• 3. It should be noted that Carmichael also played the Green Clad One in that production of Peer Gynt.

• 4. For an overview of ‘cultural survivals theory’, see Boyes.

• 5. At the time in the UK, being of ‘full age’ meant that someone was over twenty-one.

• 6. This has been especially difficult to verify, since it appears that all of these Reilly family members died before the 1841 census, the first census to include place of birth information.

• 7. Margaret Makepeace notes that the ‘world of poverty and deprivation centred on a poor area of London between Lisson Grove and Edgware Road in the Christ Church district of Marylebone. In an 1843 report, the local registrar described a dense population, with up to seven sleeping in one room. The general condition of the local people was “not very cleanly”, their habits “intemperate”, and their earnings irregular.’ (Makepeace) Lisson Grove is, of course, where Bernard Shaw’s fictional Eliza Doolittle was born and raised.

• 8. Witnesses to the marriage were Hugh and Alice Love. Alice was most likely Emily’s sister, Alice Murphy, who married Hugh Love in Islington in 1891 (General Register Office England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes Ref: 1891). It is noteworthy that the maiden name of Hilton’s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth, was also Swain. Thus, it appears that Hilton had Swain blood on both sides of his family tree (Marriage Cert for Robert Edwards and Elizabeth Amelia Swain; ‘England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975’, entry for Thomas Edwards).

• 9. Fitz-Simon and other biographers have conflated and/or confused Hilton’s artistic father, George Thomas Edwards, with a civil servant who served in India called Thomas George Cecil Edwards. However, George Thomas Edwards was residing in London in April 1911 with Emily and their son, Hilton, when the census was compiled, and also appears in an account in the Hendon & Finchley Times on 1 May 1914 (p. 6), which repeats the address from the 1911 census. By contrast, Thomas George Cecil Edwards died in India on 4 July 1911, where he was employed as Collector and District Magistrate for the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. This civil servant also seems to have been the son of a barrister, and he married a woman called Violet College in Cheltenham in 1904 – whereas Hilton’s father was the son of a coach spring maker and was married to Emily Murphy by 1904. What’s more, the 1911 census for George Thomas Edwards recorded his age as fifty-six years, suggesting a year of birth circa 1855. This is at odds with the age of Thomas George Cecil Edwards, who died in Agra aged forty-one years in 1911, suggesting he was born in circa 1870. Finally, at no point does the name Cecil appear on records related to the birth of Hilton or the 1911 census return related to Hilton’s family.

• 10. This transformation is the central concern of Madden’sThe Making of an Artist: Creating the Irishman Micheál MacLiammóir.

• 11. Peter Costello also includes ‘Lawler’ in her name (see Costello 345).

• 12. This may explain why, as Fitz-Simon notes, mac Liammóir wrote to Gate secretary Patricia Turner ‘half a century later’ that ‘Spain, to me, means doom!’ (39, emphasis in the original).

• 13. The 1861 census also seems to suggest that Edward Jr. and his wife Mary ran a lodging house for a time. Edward Jr. was residing at 228 Holywell Street in Shoreditch with Mary (aged twenty-eight) and son Edward (aged one), but the household also included a number of others: three barmaids, a domestic cook, a kitchen maid, an under waiter, a nursemaid and one Cornish widow.

• 14. It is still to be determined if Mary’s parents – named Patrick and Frances Lawler (if we have Mary’s correct baptismal record) – were born in Ireland. There is some uncorroborated evidence (perhaps impossible to confirm) that suggests that her father may have been born in Dublin to Christopher Lawler and Anna Cavanagh, and that he later settled in the East End (Baptismal record for Patrick Lawler). The only proof connecting this gentleman to Mary Lawler are two genealogies uploaded to ancestry.com by Mary’s descendants. Since very few baptismal records survive for the Roman Catholic population of eighteenth-century Ireland, it is possible that the amateur genealogists who compiled these genealogies decided to trust the only surviving documents related to a Patrick Lawler of roughly the right age who was born in Ireland and who moved to London in advance of Mary’s year of birth. A significant amount of additional (possibly fruitless) research would have to be undertaken to discover if this man was, in fact, Mary’s father. The birthplace of Mary’s presumed mother, Frances, is – at present – totally unknown.

• 15. Curiously, the tribute to her in The Irish Press after her death describes her as having been born in London to Spanish parents (‘Death of Coralie Carmichael’).

• 16. According to the divorce petition, it seems that Mabel had ‘frequently committed adultery with Gordon Smith at the White Hart Hotel, St. Albans’ (Divorce Court File 666, Appellant: Thomas Percy Carmichael).

• 17. Prominent examples of Arab Christians bearing the surname include St. Charbel Makhlouf, Fr. George Makhlouf, peace activist Samer Makhlouf, and the writer Georgia Makhlouf. That said, as Georgia Makhlouf herself has observed, the surname also occasionally belongs to ‘Muslim and even Jewish’ people (see Makhlouf).

• 18. There is evidence online that appears to verify Maxwell’s Jewish roots and to suggest that Maxwell’s brother might also have been a Christian clergyman. Someone has uploaded a family tree online which refers to a person who could be Maxwell’s father: a Samuel Ben-Oliel, who was born on 10 June 1791 in Tangier and who was the son of Abraham Ben-Oliel and Paloma Serruya. He married Sahra Eltuaty and his occupation is described as ‘Medico del Sultan de Marruecos’ (see ‘Samuel Ben-Oliel’). No sources are provided for this information, so its accuracy is impossible to verify. And there is a death record in Michigan for a Rev. Abraham Ben-Oliel, who died on 1 June 1900, a seventy-four-year-old married ‘Missionary to the Jews’ who was born in Tangier, Morocco. Abraham was the son of Samuel Ben-Oliel, who was born in Gibraltar – i.e. not Tangier, as the online family tree suggests (see Death record for Rev. Abraham Ben-Oliel). Abraham is cited as a brother of Maxwell in online published family trees, but, again, the accuracy of these genealogies cannot be completely verified. In these family trees, other siblings of Maxwell (besides Abraham) include Moise, Sol and Paloma. As can be seen, if these family trees are indeed related to Maxwell’s family, there is clear evidence of Jewish ancestry, but also some first names and surnames that more frequently belong to Christian or Muslim Arabs (e.g., Sahra Eltuaty, the name of Maxwell’s possible mother) and even Spanish Christians (e.g., Paloma Serruya, the name of Maxwell’s possible paternal grandmother). That said, Sahra is also a Hebrew variant of the Biblical name Sarah, and Serruya can sometimes be a Jewish surname.

• 19. The details regarding Maxwell Benoliel’s clerical career included in this section of the essay can be found in the 1907 edition of Crockford’s Clerical Directory, a copy of which is located in the Lambeth Palace Library.

• 20. According to a genealogist that was engaged in Germany, ‘Emil’s great-grandfather, son of an administrator near Horb (in Baden-Württemberg), born in 1700, founded a factory for gold and silver wire in Schwabach in 1730, which continued to exist, in family hands, until after 1900. The wire is of a special sort, called Leonische Waren; there is a picture on the German Wikipedia page from the town museum in Schwabach. […] There are monuments for the family at the local cemetery in Schwabach. And there is a (short) street named after the family.’ (Schleichert)

• 21. It should be noted that, at the time of writing, the family’s surname is misspelled ‘Beadh’ in the online transcription of their original census form.

• 22. The information about Beckh’s time in the Metropolitan School of Art included in this paragraph and the following one comes from an email from Sisson (see Works Cited). Sisson notes that the Metropolitan School of Art was under the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI) and that DATI reports, including the Metropolitan School of Art’s annual headmaster reports, are held in the National Library of Ireland; however, Sisson clarifies that she consulted the records in the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) and at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD).