Life
1852-1932 [Lady Gregory; née Isabella Augusta Persse], b. early
moments of 15 March, 7th dg. of Dudley (d. 1878) and Frances Persse of
Roxborough [House], nr. Loughrea, South Co. Galway, dg. Dudley Persse
by his second marriage, and Frances Barry Perrse, a passionate proselytiser;
twelfth of sixteen children; a high-spirited girl, she experienced religious
scruples in adolescence; m. at twenty-eight to Sir W. H. Gregory, then
a sixty-three year-old widower, former gov. of Ceylon and Trustee of the
National Gallery and MP for Galway (d.1892), 4 March 1880, St. Mathias,
Hatch St., Dublin (before rector Canon Wynne); settled in London, where
the Gregory’s salon was frequented by Browing, Tennyson, Millais,
Henry James, and others; summered at Coole Park, nr. Gort, Co. Galway,
barony of Kiltartan; Robert, a son, b.1881 (Sir William privately wishing
that he were shut up for seven years); lived in Alexandria with Sir William,
and had a sexual love-affair with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 1882-83, writing
the poems he later published as ‘A Woman’s Sonnets’; assisted
him in the defence of [Ali] Arabi Bey; issued ‘Arabi and His Household’ (Times, 23 Sept. 1882); commenced her diary (1892-1902) on the
death of her husband; travelled solo to Inisheer, Aran Islands, and experienced
awakening of interseet in folklore; collected folktales, often in the
Gort workhouse (a scenario rehearsed by Sean O’Faolain in ‘The
End of the Record’) and learnt Irish; the Hiberno-English dialect
of her own Galway locality; met W. B. Yeats, 1896, and received a brief
visit at Coole; commenced collecting folk-lore in Kiltartan region with
W. B. Yeats, 1896; established Irish class at Coole schoolhouse; met Douglas
Hyde, 1897; first of twenty summers spent by Yeats at Coole, 1897; planned
a Celtic Theatre with Edward Martyn and Yeats at Durras [var. Dorcas]
House, property of Count de Basterot, and Coole Park, 1897 [though 1898
in her own account]; fnd. Irish Literary Theatre, 1899-1901, later Abbey
Theatre Company, of which she held the patent (dated 20 Aug. 1904) and
which she directed with Yeats and Synge; edited nationalist essays by
Yeats, AE, D. P. Moran, George Moore, Douglas Hyde, and Standish James
O’Grady as Ideals in Ireland (1901), gathered from journals
incl. chiefly New Ireland Review and the Leader;
made a translation of the Ulster saga as Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902), dedicated ‘to the people of Kiltartan’, and using Kiltartanese
Hiberno-English dialect (‘plain and simple words, in the same way
my old nurse used to be telling me stories from the Irish long ago, and
I a child at Roxborough’); Yeats wrote the preface (‘She will
have given Ireland its Mabinogion, its Morte d’Arthur,
its Nibelungelied’), calling it ‘the best [book] that
has come out of Ireland in my time’ - a phrase that Joyce later ridiculed
in the ‘Telemachiad’ episode of Ulysses (1922); her translation
of Casadh an tSugain (1901) as The Twisting of the Rope appeared
in Samhain, No. 1 (1901); issued Poets and Dreamers (1903),
containing translations of Raftery, folk-tales, and translations of short
plays by Hyde, and greeted as ‘the greatest book to come out of Ireland
in our time’ by Yeats in a review in Bookman (May 1903), a
phrase ridiculed by Joyce in Ulysses; Gods and Fighting Men
(1904), based on mythological cycle and cycle of the kings; A Book
of Saints and Wonders (1906) narrates in Kiltartanese lore of St.
Brigit, St. Patrick, St. Colum Cille, the voyages of Maeldune and Brendan,
the Old Woman of Beare, and ‘Great Wonders of the Olden Time’,
sourced in Irish folk-tales and learned journals but also from local people
around Coole; began writing plays by helping Yeats with the peasant dialogue
of his plays and in effect co-authoring Cathleen Ni Houlihan, The
Pot of Broth (3 Oct. 1902), and Where There is Nothing, et
al.; her first play, Twenty Five (1903), produced with Yeats’s The Hour-Glass; opened the Abbey Theatre with Spreading the
News (28 Dec. 1904), along with Yeats’s On Baile Strand;
supported Synge against Catholic-nationalist opposition to his Playboy
of the Western World (1907), but did not admire it as Yeats did; wrote
nineteen original plays and seven translations for the Abbey, 1904-1912,
incl. several examples of ‘Kiltartan Molière’ such as The Doctor in Spite of Himself (1906), The Rogueries of Scapin
(1908), The Miser (1909), and The Would-Be Gentleman (1923); ‘folk history’ incl. Kincora (1905), on Brian Boru; The
White Cockade (1905); The Canavans (1906), set in Elizabethan
times; The Rising of the Moon (1907), in which a patriotic RIC-man
lets a Fenian escape from the guarded quayside, written with Hyde; also
with Hyde, The Poorhouse (3 April 1907), later called The Workhouse
Ward (1908), a play in which the scolding paupers were a symbol of
Ireland, acc. Lady Gregory’s notes; Dervorgilla (1907); The
Deliverer (1911), an allegory of Home Rule set in Egypt; starts collecting
notebook materials from Irish peasantry using ‘leisure, patience,
reverence and a good memory’ (Visions and Beliefs in the West
of Ireland, p.15); and Grania (1911), all later collected as
Irish Folk History Plays (1912); later comedies incl. Hyacinth
Halvey (Feb. 1906), providing a comment, acc. to Lady Gregory, on
the tendency for reputations in Ireland to be ‘built up or destroyed
by a password or an emotion, rather than by experience and deliberation’; The Image (1909), and Damer’s Gold (1912), and MacDonough’s
Wife (1912), written aboard ship en route to America; birth of son
Richard Graham Gregory, at Coole, to Robert and Margaret, 1909; 20 p.c.
rent reduction application to Land Commissioner Gerald Fitzgerald allowed
to fifteen tenants, 30 July 1909, occasioning Yeats’s poem; published The Kiltartan History Book (1909), The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910); produced Shaw’s Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet in defiance
of Dublin Castle, 1909; called ‘Guiding Genius’ of Abbey American
tour by New York Dramatic Mirror, 1911-12; brief affair with John
Quinn, in New York, 1912; issued a history of the national theatre as
Our Irish Theatre (1913); threatened to sue George Moore for references
to her mother as a prosletyser ‘for the religion of he extreme Irish
evangelical school’ in Vale (1914); in America on tour again,
1915; wrote Shanwalla (1915), a ghost story staged by Hugh Lane;
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, 2 vols. (1920), which
incl. two essays by W. B. Yeats on the material included in it; objected
to Black and Tan brutality in Co. Galway in anonymous articles published
in The Nation, Oct. 1920-Jan. 1921; establish Irish PEN, a branch of the world-wide writers’ association, 1921; her monologue, An Old Woman
Remembers (1923), recited by Maire O’Neill in the Abbey; The
Story Brought By Brigid (Abbey 1923), a moving play; late plays incl.
Sancha’s Master (1927) and Dave (1927); wrote the history
of her home in Coole (1931); sold Coole Park to Forestry Commission,
1927, receiving life tenancy at lease-back of £100 p.a.; played Cathleen
Ni Houlihan in three performances of the play shortly after her 67th
birthday (18-21 March 1919), saying, ‘After all, what is needed but
an old hag and a voice’;d. small hours of 22-23 May; bur. with her
sister Arabella, New Cemetery, Galway; Coole Park sold and stripped of
lead, being pulled down in 1941 [err. 1942]; an ‘Autograph Tree’
preserves initials of Yeats, Synge, Russell, Hyde, Moore, O’Casey,
Shaw, and many others (though of women only Lady Sackville and Countess
Cromartie); most of her works were published in New York by Putnam a little
in advance of the London edns. from the English company of the same name,
the latter keeping her plays in print to the mid 1960s; the Berg Collection
at the New York Public Library acquired most of her papers, incl. all
but one vols. of her diaries (the first being in Emory), from the family
in 1964; remaining stock of titles, primarily plays, held by her London
publisher purchased by Colin Smythe in 1965; Smythe’s bibliographical
collection of c.150 vols. incl. first edns. with numerous other issues
and impressions sold to the UCG library, 1975-76; professed herself ‘with
the Nationalists all through - more than they know or my dearest realise’;
there is portrait in oil by John Butler Yeats in the National Gallery
of Ireland and another dated 1905 by Antonio Mancini in the Municipal
Gallery; George Moore called Lady Gregory’s Kiltartanese
‘a Kiltartan three-hole whistle’; Synge told her, ‘Cuchulainn
is still part of my daily bread’; Gogarty asserted, ‘the
perpetual presentation of her plays nearly ruined the Abbey.’ JMC
DNB NCBE IF DIW DIB DIH DIL OCEL KUN FDA KUN OCIL FDA
Plays
(Selected among 40 others): Spreading the News (Dublin: Maunsel 1904; London & NY: Putnam 1909); Kincora: A Play in Three Acts [Vol. II of Abbey Ser.; 2nd edn.] (Dublin: Maunsel 1905); The Rising of the Moon (Abbey 1907); The Workhouse Ward (Abbey 1908); Hyacinth Halvey (NY: Quinn 1906; Dublin: Maunsel 1910); The Image: A Play in Three Acts (Dublin: Maunsel 1910); Irish Folk History Plays [First Series] (London & NY: Putnam 1912); Irish Folk History Plays [Second Series] (London & NY: Putnam 1912); McDonough’s Wife [first pub.] in New Irish Comedies (NY & London 1913); The Image and Other Plays (London & NY: Putnam 1922); The Dragon: A Play in Three Acts (London & NY: Putnam 1920; Talbot 1920); The Story Brought by Brigit: A Passion Play in Three Acts (London & NY: Putnam 1924)..
Prose
Arabi and His Household (priv. 1882) [on Arabi Bey, one of the colonels in revolt]; Over the River (priv. 1887), pamphlet for poor South London parish of St. Stephen’s, Southwark [vide ‘Among the Poor’ in Seventy Years, autobiography]; A Phantom’s Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin (London: Ridgeway 1893) [anon. pamphlet against Gladstone’s 2nd Home Rule Bill]; ed., Sir William Gregory, KCMG: An Autobiography (London: John Murray 1894), photo port. of Sir William; ed., Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box 1813-30 [cover 1835] (London: Smith Elder & Co. 1898) [acq. by John Murray]; Ideals in Ireland: A Collection of Essays written by AE and Others (London: At the Unicorn VII Cecil Court 1901) [contribs. by Yeats, Moore, Eglinton, Russell, Larminie]; Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster arranged and put into English by Lady Gregory, with a pref. by W. B. Yeats (London: John Murray 1902) [Yeats Pref. listed as Wade 256], and Do., another edn. (London: Murray 1934), xvii, 360pp.; Ulster (London: John Murray 1902); Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish (London: Murray; Dublin: Hodges & Figgis 1903), and Do. [rep. edn.] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1974); Gods and Fighting Men, Preface by W. B. Yeats (London: Murray 1904) [incls. ‘The Story of the Sons of Tuireann’, pp.25-51] [Wade 258]; A Book of Saints and Wonders, put down here by Lady Gregory, according to the Old Writings and the Memory of the People of Ireland (Dublin: Dun Emer Press 1906), and Do., enl. edn. (London: John Murray; NY: Scribners 1907), [200 copies], and Do., (rep. 1908); Seven Short Plays (Dublin: Maunsel 1909), ded. to W. B. Yeats; The Kiltartan History Book (1909), 4 ills. by Robert Gregory; another edn. (1923); Gods and Fighting Men; [1910]; Kiltartan Poetry Book, Translations from the Irish (London & NY: G. P. Putnam 1919); A Book of Saints and Wonders (Dundrum: Dun Emer 1906, enl. 1907); Kiltartan History Book (Dublin: Maunsel 1909); Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography (NY: G. P. Putnam 1913; London: G. P. Putnam 1914; rep. Capricorn Books 1965; Do., foreword by Roger McHugh (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe; NY: OUP 1972) [var. 1973]; Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (London: G. P. Putnam 1920), with notes by Yeats; Do., rep. edn. (Colin Smythe 1970); Hugh Lane’s Life and Achievement, with some account of the Dublin Galleries (London: John Murray 1921) [Jan. 1921], ill.; Lady Gregory, Case for the Return of Sir Hugh Lane’s Pictures to Dublin (Dublin: Talbot 1926); Seventy Years (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1974).
Journals
Lennox Robinson, ed., Lady Gregory’s Journals 1916-30 (London: Putnam 1946; NY: Macmillan 1947); Daniel Murphy, ed., Lady Gregory’s Journals Vol. 1 [Journal Books 1-29] (NY: OUP 1978); Daniel J. Murphy, ed., Lady Gregory’s Journals, Vol. II [Journal Books 30-44] (NY: OUP 1987); James Pethica, ed., Lady Gregory’s Diaries 1892-1902 (Gerrards Cross Colin Smythe 1995), 384pp.[346pp.], ills.
Sundry articles
‘Ireland, Real and Ideal’, in Nineteenth Century, 44 (Nov. 1898), cp.70-75; ‘The Felons on Our Land’, in Cornhill Magazine, 47 (1900), pp.633-34.
Selections & anthologies
Excerpts in Melosina Lenox-Conyngham, ed., Diaries of Ireland from Ludolf von Münchausen to Lady Gregory (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1998), 256pp.; Lucy McDiarmid & Maureen Waters, Lady Gregory: Selected Writings (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1995), 573pp.; [incl. text of Kathleen Ni Houlihan, jointly attrib. to Yeats and Lady Gregory, and Grania, her proto-feminist play; Maria DiBattista and Lucy McDiarmid, eds., The Contributors to High and Low Moderns: Literature and Culture, 1889-1939 (OUP [q.d.], pp.259 [contribs. incl. Roy Foster and Edna Longley, et al., writing on Eliot, Kipling, Lawrence, Shaw, Edward Thomas and Lady Gregory].
Collected editions
Elizabeth Coxhead, ed., Lady Gregory: Selected Plays, foreword by Sean O’Casey (London & NY: Putnam; [NY:] Hill & Wang 1962), and Do. [facs. edn.] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1975), 270pp. [contains 9 plays with extracts from three prose works]; Colin Smythe and T. R. Henn, gen. eds., Collected Works, in Coole Edition of Lady Gregory’s Writings (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1970-82) [as infra]; Edward Malins, ed. and intro., Lady Gregory, Coole (Dublin:Cuala Press 1931) [ltd. 250 copies], 72pp.; Do., [Dolmen Edns. 10] (Dolmen 1971) [ltd. edn. 1050], 108pp., enl. edn. with 2 extra chps.; ed. Colin Smythe, p.27-8]; Mary Fitzgerald, sel. and intro., Selected Plays of Lady Gregory with foreword Sean O’Casey (Washington: Catholic. UP; Gerrards Cross [UK]: Colin Smythe 1983), 378pp. [contains “Travelling Man”; “Gaol Gate”; “Spreading the News”; “Kincora”; “Hyacinth Halvey”; “Doctor in Spite of Himself”; “Rising of the Moon”; “Dervorgilla”; “The Workhouse Ward”; “Grania”; “The Golden Apple”; “Story Brought by Brigit”; “Dave Fitzgerald”], Do., enl. edn. (1993), with add. bibliography; Lucy McDiarmid and Maureen Waters, eds., Selected Writings of Lady Gregory (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1995) [unambiguously assigning Kathleen ni Houlihan to Lady Gregory]; James Pethica, ed., Lady Gregory’s Diaries 1892-1902 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1996), 38pp., 346pp., with 16pp. ills.
Correspondence
Ann Saddlemyer, ed., Theatre Business; The Correspondence of the First Abbey Directors ( Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1982). See also Letters of W. B. Yeats (ed. John Kelly, et al.)
Reprint editions, Lady Gregory, Irish Myths and Legends [1st UK edn. 1910]; Gods and Fighting Men] (Philadelphia: Running Press; London: Creative Umbrella 1998), 446pp.
Definitive works, Colin Smythe & T. R. Henn, gen. eds., The Coole Edition of Lady Gregory’s Writings (1970), including Ann Saddlemyer, ed., with Foreword, Collected Plays, 4 vols. [being Vols. V, VI, VII, and VIII of the Coole Edition]; Comedies [Vol. 1, 304pp.,]; Tragedies and Tragic Comedies [Vol. 2, 362pp.]; Wonder and Supernatural [Vol. 3]; Translations, Adaptions and Collaborations [Vol. 4]; 2 vols. edn. (NY: OUP 1970); (Gerrards Cross 1970), 362 pp., 434 pp., 376 pp. [pb. edn. 1979].
“The Fate of the Children of Lir” and “Oisin and Patrick” (trans. Lady Gregory), at “Irish Resources”, ed. Michael Sundermeier, Creighton University [link].
Seven Short Plays (Dublin: Maunsel 1909), 211, [5]pp. Contents: “Spreading the News” [1] “Hyacinth Halvey” [31]; “The Rising of the Moon” [79]; “The Jackdaw” [97]; The Travelling Man” [163]; “The Gaol Gate” [181]; Music for Songs in the plays [195]; Notes [204]; ded. to W. B. Yeats, ‘good praiser, wholesome dispraiser, heavy-handed judge, open-handed helper of us all [because] you like them and because you have taught me my trade’, 10 May 1909.
Ideals in Ireland (1901), comprising AE [George Russell], ‘Nationality and Imperialism’; D. P. Moran, ‘The Battle of Two Civilizations’; Douglas Hyde, ‘The Return of the Fenians'; George Moore, ‘Literature and Irish Language’; Douglas Hyde, ‘What is Ireland Asking For’; Standish O’Grady, ‘The Great Enchantment’; W. B. Yeats, ‘The Literary Movement in Ireland’.
- W. B. Yeats, ‘Lady Gregory’s Translations’, in The Cutting of the Agate (NY: Macmillan 1912; London: Macmillan 1919) [q.pp.].
- Andrew E. Malone in Dublin Magazine (Jan-March 1933) [q.pp.].
- Vere R. T. Gregory, The House of Gregory: The Gregory Family in Ireland, foreword by T. U. Sadleir, Ulster King of Arms] (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1943), 210pp., ills.
- Hazard Adams, Lady Gregory (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1973) [q.pp.].
- Elizabeth Coxhead, Lady Gregory: A Literary Portrait (NY: Harcourt, Brace & World 1961); Do., [rev. edn.] (London: Secker & Warburg 1966), ill..
- Mary Lou Kohfeldt, Lady Gregory: The Woman Behind the Irish Renaissance (London: André Deutsch; NY: Atheneum 1985).
- Ann Saddlemyer, ‘Augusta Gregory, Irish Nationalist’, in Joseph Ronsley, ed., Myth and Reality in Irish Literature (Ontario 1977).
- Ann Saddlemyer, In Defence of Lady Gregory, Playwright (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1966) [q.pp.] .
- Kohfeldt, Lady Gregory, The [Fine] Woman Behind the Irish Renaissance (London 1984 NY: Atheneum 1985).
- Ann Saddlemyer and Colin Smythe, eds., Lady Gregory: Fifty Years After (Gerrards Cross 1987) [include. Gabriel Fallon, ‘Fragments of Memory’, pp.30-34 ; Elizabeth Longford, ‘Lady Gregory and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’, pp.85-97 ; John Kelly, ‘“Friendship is All the House I Have”: Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats’, pp.179-257[?] ; Mary Fitzgerald, ‘Four French Comedies: Lady Gregory’s Translations of Molière’, pp.277-90 ; Smythe, ‘Lady Gregory’s Contribution to Periodicals: A Checklist’, et al.].
- George F. Butler, ‘The Hero’s Metamorphosis in Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne: Scholarship and Popularisation’, in Éire-Ireland, 22, 4 (Winter 1987), pp.36-46.
- A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: A New Biography (1988).
- E. H. Mikhail, Lady Gregory, An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism (NY: Whitston 1982).
- Mikhail, Lady Gregory: Interviews and Recollections (NJ: Rowman & Littlefield 1977).
- Saddlemyer, In Defence of Lady Gregory, Playwright (Chester Springs PA: Chester Springs: Dufour Edns. 1966).
- James F. Knapp, ‘History against Myth, Lady Gregory and Cultural Discourse’, Éire-Ireland, 22.3 (Fall 1987), pp.30-42.
- Mary Helen Thuente, ‘Lady Gregory and the Book of the People’, Éire-Ireland 15.1 (Spring 1980), pp.89-99.
- James Pethica, ‘“Our Kathleen”: Yeats’s colaboration with Lady Gregory in the Writing of Cathleen ni Houlihan’ in Warwick Gould., ed, Yeats Annual, No. 6 (London: Macmillan 1988), pp.3-31.
- Edward A. Kopper, Lady Gregory: A Review of Criticism [Mod. Irish Literature Monograph Series] (1991).
- James F. Knapp, ‘Irish Primitivism and Imperial Discourse: Lady Gregory’s Peasantry’, in Macropolitics of Nineteenth Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism (Pennsylvania UP 1991), pp.286-301.
- Romine Scott, ‘Lady Gregory and the Language of Transgression’, in Arkansas Quarterly, 2 (1993), pp.109-23.
- Lucy McDiarmid, ‘Augusta Gregory, Bernard Shaw, and the Shewing-Up of Dublin Castle’, in PMLA, 109 (1994), pp.26-44.
- Declan Kiberd, ‘Lady Gregory and the Empire Boys’, in Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape 1995), pp.83-95.
- Mary Lowe-Evans, ‘Hyacinth and the Wise Man: Lady Gregory’s Comic Enterprise’, in Theresa O’Connor, The Comic Tradition in Irish Women Writers (Florida UP 1996), pp.40-55.
- Selina Guinness, ‘Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland: Irish Folklore and British Anthropology’, in Irish Studies Review (April 1998), pp.37-46.
- Patrica Lysaght, ‘Perspectives on Narrative Commonication and Gender: Lady Augusta Gregory’s Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920)’, in Fabula, 39 (1998), 256-76pp.
- Seán & Lois Tobin, eds., Lady Gregory Autumn Gatherings: Reflections at Coole (Galway [2001]), 218pp. [contrib.s incl. Katie Donovan, John Quinn, Lorna Reynolds, Bruce Arnold, Declan Kiberd and Catriona Clutterbuck].
- Colm Tóibín, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush (Lilliput Press 2002), 127pp..
- Declan Kiberd, ‘Augusta Gregory’s Cuchulain: The Rebirth of the Hero’, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), pp.399-419.
- Irish University Review [“Lady Gregory” Special Issue], 34, 1 (Spring/Summer 2004)
Under Twenty-Five (Gaiety Theatre 14 March 1903): an early version was published in New York under the title A Losing Game because the editor of The Gael thought that the card-game “25” at which the returning emigrant deliberately loses his money to the husband of his beloved would be unknown to Americans.
Coole Park, near Gort, Co. Galway; home of Lady Gregory; guests icl. W. B. Yeats (20 years each summer from 1897 to his marriage), O’Casey, Shaw, Synge, Hyde, ‘AE’ (George Russell), Augustus John, Jack B. Yeats, et al.; copper beech ‘autograph tree’ holdfs many signatures; Coole Park estate orig. 8,000 acres; house built by Robert Gregory at date of acquisition with income from the East India Company, 1768; formerly chairman of the Honourable East India Company and later MP for Rochester; s. William Gregory, Under Secretary for Ireland (1812-32); gs. William Henry Gregory, MP; Governor of Ceylon; m. Isabella Augusta Persse of Roxborough House, on death of first wife; much of the estate sold to pay debts, 1855; remainder sold by the Encumbered Estates Board from Robert in 1908 and later from his widow Margaret, 1920; house and demesne sold to the Irish Forestry Commission. 1927; Lady Gregory retained life tenancy; entire contents auctioned three months after her death; pointelessly demolished, 1941 [var. 1942]; bibl., Coole (1931, enl. edn., 1971; se also Yeats’s poems ‘I walked among the seven woods of Coole’, ‘In the Seven Woods’, ‘Coole Park, 1929’, ‘Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931’; Lady Gregory wrote, ‘I have lived there and loved it these forty years and through the guests who have stayed there it counts for much in the awakening of the spiritual and intellectual side of our country. If there is trouble now, and it is dismantled and left to ruin, that will be the whole country’s loss.’ (q.source.)
Thomas Moore cites a report in the Galway Advertiser (18 Oct. 1822) reporting that ‘At the quarter-sessions at Gort, one tithe-proctor processed eleven hundred persons for tithes. They were all, or most, of the lower order of farmers or peasants: - the expense of each process about eight shillings.’ (Captain Rock, 1824, p.297n.)
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W. B. Yeats, of the Perrses of Roxborough: ‘They had all the necessities of life on the mountain or within the walls of their demesne, exporting quantities of game, ruling their tenants, as had their fathers before, with a despotic benevolence, were admired, or perhaps loved, for the Irish people, however lawless, respect a rule founded upon some visible supremacy.' (Autobiographies, 1955, p.393.) Note that Yeats dedicated The Shadowy Waters to her (1900);
A hint taken: ‘[…] we may speculate that Sir William took the hint when he found Isabella Augusta herded into his presence at regular intervals and on one occasion even anticipating his arrival at Romes. In any event he yielded like a gentleman and married her on 4 March, 1880 […]. (Anthony Butler, ‘The Abbey Daze’, in Sean McCann, ed., The World of Sean O’Casey, Four Square 1966, p.93.)
St. John Ervine, Some Impressions of My Elders (NY 1922), incl. remarks on Lady Gregory in a section more generally on Yeats: ‘When one remembers that she has established a considerable reputation as a dramatist on two continents entirely on the strength of a half-dozen one act plays, it is impossible to doubt that she is at least as skilful as he [Yeats] in drawing attention to herself.’ (p.260.)
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G. B. Shaw called her ‘the greatest living Irishwoman’ and attacked the Irish nationality of Devoy (‘not an Irish name’); the company was taken to court by Irish-Americans in Philadelphia, the plaintiff being Joseph McGarrrity; in the NY Evening Sun, during the troublesome Abbey American tour of 1911-12; Lady Gregory advised by G. B. Shaw to leave Ireland for Scotland in 1925, ‘Sell Coole and settle here, you will find all the beauties of Irland with the drawback of Irish inhabitants’; see Lucy McDiarmid, reviewing Dan H Laurence and Nicholas Grene, Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey, A correspondence and a Record (Gerrards Cross 1993).
Under Twenty-Five (Gaiety Theatre 14 March 1903): an early version was published in New York under the title A Losing Game because the editor of The Gael thought that the card-game '25' at which the returning emigrant deliberately loses his money to the husband of his beloved would be unknown to Americans.
McDonough’s Wife, a play by Lady Gregory, was first published in New Irish Comedies (NY & London 1913).
Spreading the News commonly copied as The Spreading of the News [err.], as in framed photography of the premier cast, in Glynn’s Hotel, Gort, Co. Galway; the cast represented incl. P. Mac Shuibhlaig; W. G. Fay; Sara Allgood; Máire Ní Gharbhaigh; Arthur Sinclair (poss. from Irish Nat. Theatre tour to Loughrea, organised by Gerald O’Donovan, 1901).
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Stained glass: ‘The Story Brought by Brigit’ is the subject of a panel from the Geneva Window by Harry Clarke (1929).
Mervyn Wall portrays Lucian Brewse Burke, the hero, writing thus to the newspapers: ‘During the fifteen years office of the de Valera Government mansions all over the country were levelled to provide material for labourers’ cottages or “for the sake of the lead in the roof”; and no one in power raised a hand to save them. Countless material relics of our history were swept away. I need scarcely mention Coole, the residence of Lady Gregory and the birthplace of our literary movement. Today event he site of the house can scarcely be identified. The castle at Barrettstown is the only object which gives dignity to that town, and not only its it a piece of our country’s history but it is associated with one of the greatest of our love stories. There is now a new government in power ... Are they also indifferent, and must we few in this country who care for the things of the spirit reconcile ourselves to living in a land of labourers’ cottages and country council houses? (Leaves for the Burning, 1952, p.18; cited in Patrick Rafroidi, ‘A Question of Inheritance: The Anglo-Irish Tradition’, in Rafroidi and Maurice Harmon, eds, The Irish Novel in Our Time, Université de Lille 1975-76, p.13.)
Berg Collection (New York Public Library holds extensive papers of Lady Gregory including chiefly AMS of poems, also letters with correspondence relating to royal visit of Edward VII, and a copy of James Joyce’s limerick on Lady Gregory (‘poets in beggary ...’; as infra) in her own hand, Irish Statesman, dated 1 June 1928, and a copy of a 1p. letter from Joyce, 22 Nov. 1902, 7 St Peter’s Tce. Cabra. NOTE also the phrases given to Stephen Dedalus in Telemachus episode of Ulysses: ‘That’s folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Hanies, Five lines of text and ten pages of ntoes about the folk and fish gods of Dundrum. Printed by the wiered sisters in the year of the big wind.’
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Eoin MacNeill wrote in a letter to Lady Gregory on reading Cuchulain of Muirthemne, ‘A few more books like it, and the Gaelic League will want to suppress you on a double indictment, to wit, depriving the irish language of her sole right to express the innermost Irish mind, and secondly, investing the Anglo-Irish language with a literary dignity it has never hitherto possessed.’ (Ladey Gregory, Seventy Years, Gerrards Cross, 1974, p.402; cited in Michael Cronin, Translating Ireland: Translations, Languages, Cultures, Cork UP 1996, p.150.)
Portraits: oil by John Butler Yeats [NGI]; Lady Gregory by Antonio Mancini c.1905, Municipal Gallery; see in Brian O’Doherty, The Irish Imagination 1959-1971 (1971), Rosc Exhib. Cat.; also Lady Gregory by Jacob Epstein, see Anne Cruikshank, Ulster Mus. 1965; See also portrait in oil by Gerald Festus Kelly (b.1879); and another by William Orpen in portrait in the National Gallery of Ireland; and a bronze figure by Melanie le Brocquy, ‘Under the Tulipa Tree’ (c.1985).
Derek Mahon has written, wrote, ‘Molière is at home everywhere and in every age’ adding that Lady Gregory play L’avare [based on Molière] had a good run at the Abbey. (q.p.), in his Preface to High Time: A Comedy in One Act (Field Day 1984; Gallery 1985).
Death-dates: Lady Gregory’s death is given as 28 [sic] April 1932 in Jeffares, 1988; 22 April, in Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography (1988); but correctly as first hour of 23 Monday April 1932, in Journals (ed. Murphy). In Commentary on the Poems of W B Yeats (1988), Jeffares gives the date of the demolition of Coole as 1942 (p.93).
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Alexander Irvine’s My Lady of the Chimney Corner (4th impression, 1914) is dedicated ‘To/Lady Gregory/and/The Players of the Abbey Theatre/Dublin’.
Loving - cold: ‘She was the most complicated person I can think of [...] Loving - cold. Womanly - cold. Patriotic - cold. Very calculating, dutiful, courageous, purposeful and all built upon a bedrock of humour and love of fun with a vein of simple coarseness of thought and simple inherited Protestantism.’ (Lady Gregory, observed by a niece of Aubrey De Vere, quoted in P. J. Kavanagh, 'O all the Instruments Agree', review of R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: The Apprentice Mage, 1997 [Times Literary Supplement].)
James Joyce’s Ulysses: Buck Mulligan refers to Gregory of the Golden Mouth, in a reference to a place-name from J. M. Synge's Riders to the Sea, being the Bay where the body of Bartley is washed up.
Joyce’s limerick on Lady Gregory: ‘There was an old lady named Gregory/Who cried, “Come, all ye poets in beggary.”/She found her imprudence/when hundreds of students/Cried, “We're in that noble category.”’ (Given in Stan Gebler Davies, James Joyce: A Portrati of the Artist, 1975, p.116, remarking that Padraic Colum could recite the limerick; also in Ellmann, James Joyce 1959 [q.p.].)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)