used this harp to teach students at St Enda’s School, Rathfarnham; this instrument now forms part of the exhibit at the Pearse Museum.33
By the end of the nineteenth century, Margaret, Patrick, Willie and Mary Brigid were enjoying active lives as members of, and contributors to, various cultural movements in Dublin. Their carefree lifestyles were facilitated by the success of Pearse and Sons Monumental Sculptors. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, James had secured prestigious commissions for altars, fonts, carvings, monuments, tablets, and all kinds of marble, stone and granite works. His work could be seen in churches all over Ireland from John’s Lane Church and the mortuary chapel, Glasnevin Cemetery, in Dublin, to the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Strabane and St Saviour’s Church in Waterford. The Pearse family’s idyllic home life, however, was shattered by James’s sudden death on 5 September 1900. He died from a cerebral haemorrhage while visiting his brother in Birmingham. His body was brought back to his home in George’s Villa, Sandymount where he was waked, and his requiem mass was concelebrated at Westland Row Church by Fr Galvin and Fr Murphy, the Administrator.34 His death marked a new phase in the lives of Margaret, Patrick, Willie, Mary Brigid and their mother.
CHAPTER 3
A Pearse Family Project
What would you think if later on I were to take all these things and in a bigger house start a school of my own?1
Patrick Pearse
At the time of James Pearse’s death, the family were living at 5 George’s Villa, Sandymount. Over the next few years, they moved frequently, initially to 363 Sandymount Avenue and later to ‘Liosán’ Lisreaghan Terrace, Sandymount, and 39 Marlborough Road, Donnybrook. During this period, various relations lived with them, including their cousins, Mary Kate and John Kelly who were orphaned after the deaths of their parents, John and Catherine (Margaret Pearse’s sister). John junior’s untimely death at the age of sixteen years on 14 November 1902 from injuries sustained after he was knocked off his bicycle by a bread van shocked the family. His death, coupled with the loss of their father, James, their mother’s sister Catherine (d.1887), their maternal grandmother (d.1888) and grandfather (d.1894), and their beloved auntie Margaret (d.1892) deeply affected the Pearse family, in particular, Mary Brigid, who struggled to come to terms with the loss of anyone from her close-knit circle of family and friends. However, the strain of running the family business absorbed much of their time and energy and provided a temporary distraction from their grief.
James Pearse died intestate, leaving an estate valued at £1,470.17s.6d. Pearse and Sons was then a thriving business with premises at 27 Great Brunswick Street, and a number of properties on Townsend Street. After her husband’s death, Mrs Pearse helped in the running of the business, together with James Vincent and Willie. Patrick also worked at the family business in between periods training as a barrister at the King’s Inns. Patrick was called to the Bar in 1901 but, apart from representing the Gaelic League in a case against the Post Office in 1905 for its refusal to deliver post addressed in the Irish language, he did not pursue a legal career.
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