Monk Gibbon - Private Life

Private Life

In 1928, he married Mabel Dingwall, daughter of Walter Molyneux Dingwall of Bonchurch and Mabel Sophia Spender, a daughter of Edward Spender of Bath, Somerset. They were the parents of six children. Mrs Gibbon's father, Edward Spender, was a strong supporter of the Women's Suffrage movement in which his sister, the novelist Emily Spender played a leading role as a member of the executive committee of the Central Committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage. Edward Spender was a cousin of the diarist Henry Crabb Robinson, and a brother-in-law of the novelist Lillian Spender and the liberal politician William Saunders, with whom he founded the Central News Agency (London). Mrs Gibbon's mother was a first cousin of John Alfred Spender, uncle of the poet Sir Stephen Spender.

The Gibbons' home, Tara Hall, at Sandymount, County Dublin, was a literary centre and afternoon tea parties there often ran into the night. Frequent visitors there included Irish writers such as Padraic Colum, Ulick O'Connor and Austin Clarke. Gibbon always wrote in bed and often wandered down to the sea front in his pyjamas to collect driftwood. He was a keen cyclist all his life and could still be found riding his bicycle around Sandycove in his late 80s.