The Lausanne Conference of July 1932, attended by the former allied powers of World War I (Britain, France, Belgium and Italy ), and Germany, accepted that the world economic crisis made continued reparations by Germany virtually impossible. Various long-term arrangements were made, but in effect it allowed Germany off the hook for the monetary compensation it had agreed to pay for its responsibility in starting the war. Germany was now free to rebuild its own economy. This was a very importance conference attended by the world press, among whom was Clare Sheridan.
The ‘star’ of the event was Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy and ‘Duce’ of Italian fascism. As he strode through the halls, his entourage practically running to keep up with him, the journalists (all male ) shouted questions. He ignored them. But when he saw Clare, he came over and kissed her hand, then marched away.
Later Clare received a note inviting her up to his rooms for a talk. He was intrigued that an English aristocrat should take a job as a common journalist. When he heard she was a cousin of Winston Churchill, and a sculptor he invited her to Rome, ‘to see his city.’ He agreed to pose for a carved portrait.
Amazed at her good fortune Clare, innocently, arrived in Rome, and was ushered into the Duce’s presence by smiling guards and secretaries. But once the door was closed the Duce’s real reason for the invitation was immediately clear. In her own words ‘he approached with nostrils flaring, head down like an angry bull’. He grabbed her arm whispering “Vous etes une femme pour qui on portrait avoid one grande passion”.
‘Sketch book and clay flew to the ceiling, slaps, punches, wrestling, and cries of amazement (on both sides ) filled the room. Clare managed to get to the door, wrench it open only to have it slammed against her elbow’. Just then the telephone rang, Il Duce turned to his desk, and Clare fled demanding a taxi and a bandage for her very sore elbow.
The following morning two rather ‘grim faced guards’ arrived at her hotel with a letter offering the Duce’s cringing apology. Clare was furious. She had her revenge when her article on Mussolini in the New York World described him as ‘a grotesque tyrant in white spats’.
A free spirit
Then followed a period of ceaseless wandering. She returned to America, where her friend Barney Baruch had commissions waiting for her. She spent time living on an Indian reservation in the Rocky Mountains. She returned to Russia where she was known to fraternise with ‘unsavoury characters’; and then a long period in Istanbul where the Russian consul gave her a villa to live. She earned an MI5 file which noted: ‘She has conducted herself in a disloyal manner in various foreign countries, adopting a consistently anti British attitude’.
Yet Clare provided for herself and children through her sculpture, her journalism and some 16 books on her travels and observations. Peter Murray describes her writings as ‘lively, humane and intolerant of hypocrisy’.
Later she and her son Dick moved to Algeria, where the MI5 noted ‘she appeared to be comfortably off and debt-free for the first time in 10 years.’ She built a house at the edge of the Sahara at Biskra. The tragic death of Dick from appendicitis in north Africa, changed her life.
A long story
Clare told her cousin Anita Leslie that the Atlantic Ocean was calling her ‘home’. She bought Spanish Arch House (attached to the Spanish Arch ), and sent on all her unfinished works, and large slabs of stone and oak, to be carved later, to Anita’s castle, an old Clanricarde stronghold, at the head of Galway Bay. She had been attracted to the Catholic Church for some years, and happily Mussolini had not destroyed her passion for Italy. Just before she came to Galway, she went to Assisi to be baptised.*
She came to the City of the Tribes, intrigued by its 17th century carved stones, positively beaming at becoming a Catholic. She delighted in telling everyone on the Dublin train, the poor Nuns in their convents, the Franciscans and Dominicans in their monasteries, ‘how exciting it was to be a Catholic!’. After a life of wandering she felt settled, and at home.
She had one reservation, and that was her first confession. She had prepared for a lengthy ordeal, but instead, to her surprise, the priest interrupted her almost immediately: ‘My child’, he said, ‘ I quite understand. It is a long story - mais on se passera de tout cela’…. “and I found that I had been given absolution! I couldn’t help feeling a little flat. After all my confession must have been unique - if my sins were many they were interesting”.
In her final years Clare spent time at a convent near Castle Leslie, Co Monaghan, where her aunt Leonie (Jerome ) had lived. She died in England May 31 1970. She was 84 years old. She was survived by her daughter Margaret.
NOTES: * It was not easy to get permission to travel through Europe in the post war period, but once Churchill heard that Clare was going to become a Catholic, he was no doubt relieved that she was unlikely to get into further trouble. He had a path cleared for her through the ruins of Europe.
On the return journey he met her in Geneva with open arms. ‘I know all about it’, he said, ‘ it is all on Vatican Radio. Bless you and may it give you comfort’.
When she thanked him for getting her safely to Assisi, he immediately answered: ‘My help ends here. Don’t think that I can get you into heaven too.’
Clare’s busts of her first cousin Churchill can be found at Blenheim Palace , Chartwell, Harrow School and Hastings Town Hall ; the original plaster is in the possession of her great-nephew Jonathan Frewen. Some items from her large collection of Native American artefacts are on display at Hastings Museum and in the Frewen family's ancestral village of Brede in Sussex. Her sculptures are often shown at Rye Art Gallery. Several of her later works can be found in churches or churchyards, for example at Peper Harrow near Guildford, at St. Catherine's in Hoogstraeten in Belgium, and a fine oak crucifix at the Church of Christ the King Salthill in Galway .
Sources include Restless Spirit - Extraordinary Life and Career of Clare Sheridan, by Peter Murray, Irish Arts Review Summer 2017, and Anita Leslie’s Cousin Clare - The tempestuous Career of Clare Sheridan, Hutchinson, 1976.
Listen to Tom Kenny and Ronnie O'Gorman elaborating on topics they have covered in this week's paper and much more in this week's Old Galway Diary Podcast.
