of "Bertram." Her only brother, Judge Elgee, was one of the most distinguished members of the American Bar.
She was brought up in an atmosphere of the most intense conservatism, so much so that when the immense funeral procession of Thomas Davis, a leading Nationalist, passed her window in Leeson Street, she did not know who he was. She got hold of a book. The Spirit of the Nation, containing poems by D'Alton Williams, and her imagination took fire from it, and she became a poetess and a patriot. Under the name of Speranza she sent some poems to the Nation, which was founded and edited by Charles Gavan Duffy. This was about the year 1847, when The Nation had been started five years. There was a poet's corner in it, and Speranza, along with "Eva" (Miss Eva Mary Kelly), "Mary" (Miss Ellen Downing), and "Thomasine," were the principal contributors to it.
Speranza's poems attracted much attention at the time. They were full of ardour, trumpet-calls to action, not feminine wailings for the past. Many thought that this stately daughter of an Irish archdeacon, with her dark flashing eyes, must be a man, and Gavan Duffy, when he went to see her at Leeson Street, was surprised to find that she was a girl of twenty. Of these much lauded verses hardly one has survived. They used to crop up in street
