EARLY ONE winter’s morning, a weary Margaret Anna Cusack took leave of the convent of the Poor Clares in Kenmare, Co Kerry. It was November 16th, 1881, just over 20 years since she had taken up residence there, an eventful two decades that had made her reputation as MF Cusack, “Nun of Kenmare”.
Now, as she bade farewell to the town where she had researched, written and published a body of work that, in the context of her times, was an extraordinary achievement, she was a solitary figure.
It was a far cry from her arrival in November 1861, after a long, arduous journey from Newry. She had travelled south with four other sisters from the Poor Clare community to establish a convent in Kenmare. Hungry and exhausted, the sisters were welcomed at the episcopal palace in Killarney, where the aroma of sizzling bacon promised a hearty breakfast at the bishop’s table. Cusack got her first taste of trials to come when her abbess, in a spirit of humility, declined kind Bishop Moriarty’s invitation to breakfast. “I know I shall never forget the pangs of hunger I felt on that occasion,” she wrote.
Margaret Anna Cusack was more worldly wise than many of those with whom she was to spend the next 20 years. Her family, from Co Dublin, although of ascendancy stock, had fallen on hard times, and she had lived in a number of households as a child, including some years at Abbeville, Kinsealy, home of her uncle. She had tasted the life of a young English lady when the family moved to Exeter while she was in her early teens; she had also attended boarding school in England.
Later, working as a missionary Anglican sister, she had witnessed abject poverty in the east London slums, seeing sights that left a lasting sense of outrage. She recognised the futility of trying to preach the gospel to those who craved only food.
The greatest divide between Margaret Anna Cusack and her fellow sisters was her different religious background. Like John Henry Newman, and like Gerard Manley-Hopkins, she was a convert to Roman Catholicism. She was welcomed into the Church of Rome by Cardinal Wiseman of Westminster and given as her mission to write a Catholic literature for a Catholic readership.
By the time of her arrival in Kenmare, she had already begun to produce pamphlets and short devotional works. The next 20 years, however, were to see her establish a considerable reputation. Writing as MF Cusack, she acquired the persona of Nun of Kenmare, which at once gave her a moral authority but which also proved to be her downfall.
The literary output of MF Cusack during those 20 years in Kenmare was prolific. Initially she wrote devotional works and books that recounted the lives of saints: her book on St Patrick was presented to Pope Leo XIII , who blessed her work.
As she grew in confidence as a writer, she took on more challenging themes. There was a substantial biography of Daniel O’Connell, which benefited from Cusack’s access to the O’Connell papers. Then there were the histories, works that told the story of Kerry, of Cork, of Ireland, from a distinctly Catholic, nationalist perspective.
Cusack enjoyed privileged access to libraries and private papers. She was further facilitated by a supportive community of sisters who ensured she enjoyed a freedom to write, which few other women of her era knew. Her own relative freedom did not, however, temper her insistence in her 1874 book that a “woman’s work”, her sphere of influence and activity, be confined to her “God-given domain”, the home.
AS LONG as Cusack’s writings stayed within the safe boundaries of writing about the lives of saints or the history of Catholic Ireland, she was encouraged by those in positions of power and influence.
Support waned, however, as her work became increasingly politicised. She devoted the same zeal and missionary fervour to writing about landlord abuse and the plight of impoverished tenants as she had done in her previous work. MF Cusack, Nun of Kenmare, carried moral authority.
She wrote letters to the newspapers in Ireland and abroad, highlighting the plight of the poor and dispossessed. She wrote a paper, to be read at a meeting of a Trinity College society, arguing for provisions to be made to educate and prepare those forced to emigrate. She helped raise £15,000, a considerable sum at the time, to help alleviate the 1879-80 mini-famine in Kerry. She publicly espoused causes that were bringing her perilously close to those involved in the land agitation.
She was perceived as a fellow-traveller of the Ladies’ Land League, although there is no evidence of her ever having been a member.
The ladies of the league were already giving scandal. Were they to be joined by a professed member of an order of Catholic sisters?
This was, after all, 1881, when a woman’s sphere of influence and activity was severely circumscribed by laws and customs that ensured her absence from the public domain. She received hate mail. Finally, she received a death threat.
A monster rally was organised in Killarney, ostensibly to protest at the death threat received by the nun but widely seen as a show of strength by the Land Leaguers of Kerry.
More than 8,000 men attended. The spirit of the meeting can be gauged by the chairman’s vow that the “gallant men” present would raise “ten thousand swords”’ to “avenge the insult offered this illustrious lady”.
Not as a lady, not as a Catholic sister, could she be allowed to continue.
The Catholic Church, going from strength to strength, could not afford to place its position in jeopardy. Those of the Catholic middle classes who were becoming increasingly affluent were affronted by her antics. The Nun of Kenmare must be silenced. Her local ecclesiastical superior, Bishop O’Higgins, was deeply hostile. He ensured his views were respected in the convent. Her position became untenable.
Finally, early in the morning of November 16th, 1881, accompanied only by her confessor and secretary, she departed. She subsequently led a life fraught with conflict and difficulty.
Broken in health and in spirit, she never regained what had made her MF Cusack, Nun of Kenmare.