Maude Gonne was the daughter of an army officer and was educated and raised in Paris. She was a beautiful actress and she was very passionate about nationalist politics. She was an Irish revolutionary. Yeats was not an Irish revolutionary like Gonne, so she never returned her love for him. Yeats and Gonne met in London in 1889, when she was there for nine days because her father had passed away. Within that time Yeats fell madly in love with her. A love that would last a lifetime. Yeats asked Gonne to marry him first in 1891 but was rejected. He then proposed three more times in 1899, 1900 and 1901 and was still rejected. His heart was broken in 1903 because Gonne agreed to marry Major John McBride. However, their marriage did not last. After they had a son together Gonne filed for a divorce claiming McBride was abusive. Their divorce request was not granted however they were allowed to be legally separated. Throughout the years Gonne and Yeates stayed in contact. In 1908, Gonne and Yeats spent a passionate night together, but Gonne still was firm that she would never love him. Gonne was the inspiration for much of the poetry that Yeats had written. She even starred in one of the plays he had written, “Cathleen Ni Houlihan”. Since Gonne would not marry him after many attempts, he asked her daughter, Iseult to marry him and was also rejected. Yeats then married Georgie Hyde-Lees and they had two children together Anne and Michael. Yeats had lived a long period of his life unsuccessfully trying to get women to love him.
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