| Collection Description | McNEILL, Josephine (1895–1969), diplomat, was born 31 March 1895 in Fermoy, County Cork,
daughter of James
Ahearne, shopkeeper and hotelier, and Ellen Ahearne (née O’Brien). She was educated at
Loretto Convent, Fermoy,
and UCD (BA, HDipEd). With a BA in French and German she began a teaching career,
teaching at St Louis’ Convent,
Kiltimagh, at the Ursuline Convent, Thurles, and at Scoil Íde, the female counterpart of St
Enda’s, established by her
friend Louise Gavan Duffy (qv). A fluent Irish-speaker with an interest in Irish language, music,
and literature, she took
an active part in the cultural side of the Irish independence movement. She was also a member
of Cumann na mBan
and in 1921 a member of the executive committee of that organisation. She was engaged to
Pierce McCann, who died
of influenza in Gloucester jail (March 1919). In 1923 she married James McNeill, Irish high
commissioner in London
1923-8. Josephine McNeill took reluctantly to diplomatic life, but it never showed in public. Her
charm and intelligence
were immediately apparent, and in a period when Joseph Walshe (qv), the secretary of the
Department of External
Affairs, viewed married diplomats and diplomatic wives with disdain, McNeill was a noted
hostess, both in London and
later in Dublin, where James McNeill was governor general of the Irish Free State (1928–32). A
paragraph in her
obituary in the Irish Times sought to separate the real McNeill from her official persona. The
‘immediate impression she
gave was of a very mannered woman of the world’; but this was a mask which ‘concealed very
considerable shyness
as well as a protean nature. This apparently conventional woman, with the air of a hostess in a
Pinero play, was an
adventurous and romantic spirit. Possibly those who knew her in her Cumann na mBan days got
nearer to the real
woman than later acquaintances, when she had become an official hostess.’ Due to her position
as the wife of the
governor general, she ‘suppressed the rebel and produced the public servant.’
Josephine McNeill greatly resented the manner in which her husband was treated by Fianna Fáil
when they
suppressed the office of the governor general in 1932; yet, when minister to Switzerland later in
her career, she put
aside all differences with Eamon de Valera, who was in the country for an eye operation, and
went to sit with him
during his convalescence.
After James McNeill’s death (1938), Josephine McNeill became honorary secretary of the
council of the Friends of the
National Collections and acted as chairman of the executive committee of the Irish
Countrywomen’s Association to
1950. She wrote on social, cultural, and economic issues, was a member of the Department of
External Affairs
advisory committee on cultural relations, and represented Ireland at the general assembly of
UNESCO at Paris in
1949.
The foundation of Clann na Poblachta gave McNeill a new lease of life and she embraced
working for the party with
the enthusiasm of her Cumann na mBan days. In 1950 she was appointed minister to the
Netherlands by the party
leader, Seán MacBride, minister for external affairs in the inter-party government in 1950. She
thus became Ireland’s
first female diplomat to be appointed in a ministerial capacity to represent the Irish state abroad.
However, the career
diplomats in the Department of External Affairs looked on this overtly political appointment
poorly. McNeill’s reports to
Dublin from The Hague paid particular attention to the problems of Dutch decolonisation. She
was appointed minister
to Sweden in 1955 and held a joint appointment to Switzerland and Austria (1956–60), when she
retired from public
life. She was a collector of porcelains and paintings and an amateur pianist, and in 1933
publishedFinnsgéalta ó India.
Her Irish Times obituary considered that ‘there were several Josephines, the rebel who became
a servant of her
people, the musician, the art lover (she had real taste), the practical enthusiast, the feminist. All
held under by a
restraint which was misleading, because it suggested too much a concern for social activity.’ Yet
it concluded that ‘she
did more than any three or four women usually achieve. And yet she left the impression of one
whose full potential -
perhaps from unconquerable shyness - was never fully realised.’
Josephine McNeill died 19 November 1969 in St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, and was buried in
Kilbarrack cemetery.
[© Dictionary of Irish Biography and Prof. Michael Kennedy]
|
|---|