Remembering Irish Botanist Charlotte Grace O’Brien

June 3, 1909

On this day, the Irish immigration reformer Charlotte Grace O'Brien died.

After a life devoted to improving the lives of others, Charlotte devoted her leisure time to writing and studying plant life.

Charlotte had found a place for herself along the river Shannon, which she called Ardenoir - the height of gold - referring to the golden gorse that covered the hillsides in spring.

She once mused:

The baby heather that blossoms so soon,
in the splendid heat that comes after June.
 

When one considers Charlotte's humanitarian work across both sides of the Atlantic and her genius for gardening, it's stunning to discover that by the time Charlotte reached adulthood, she was completely deaf.

In 1879, Charlotte wrote about her deafness, saying, 

Oh, bitter loss! all natures voice is dumb

Oh, loss beyond all loss! About my neck, the children cast their arms.

No voices break upon my ear, no sounds of laughter come -

Child's laughter wrought of love, and life, and bliss;

Heedless, I leave the rest, had I but this.

 

In the last half of her life, Charlotte firmly established herself as a writer, a poet, and a plant collector.

Her last article contained these prophetic lines.

I will puzzle the botanists of another generation,

and when my bones are dust and my good spade rust

when my house is pulled down,

and my garden asphalt and bricks,

my extra special wild briars and my daffodils

will still linger on the hillside and scent the bloomy air

for generations that know me not, nor mine.