Life
1886-1958 [Esmé Stewart Lennox]; b. Douglas Co. Cork,
son of a stockbroker turned clergyman, raised at a rectory in Ballymoney
and dressed in black velvet and lace; ed. Bandon Grammar School; saw the
Abbey in Cork, 1907, and became ardent nationalist; first play, The
Clancy Name, ran for 3 months in 1908; Abbey manager in 1910, foremost
of the Cork realists (so-called by Yeats); Annie Horniman, alienated by
his omitting to close the Abbey during the obsequies of Edward VII, demands
his resignation, 1910; The Patriots (1912), poking fun at harmless
ageing Fenians in rural Cork (where it was played at the Opera House and
seen by Frank O’Connor with a shock of recognition), and considered
his best early play; appt. Organising Librarian for Carnegie Trust, 1915-24,
dismissed in censorship of story [see Note, infra]; resigned from Abbey
after unsuccessful American tour, 1914; became a National Volunteer, 1914;
The Whiteheaded Boy (1916), his best-known play, which enjoyed
more performances in Ireland between 1916 and 1965 than any besides Synge’s
Playboy; issued A Young Man from the South (1917), an autobiographical
novel; issued Young Man from the South (1917) and Dark Days
(1918), political sketches; resumed Abbey managership 1919; appointed
Board of Directors, 1923; discovered and encouraged Sean O’Casey;
Abbey director 1923-56, doubling as director-manager; gave W. B. Yeats
a two-volume edition of Berkeley, c.1923; dismissed from Library Board
following fracas caused by appearance of his story ‘The Madonna of
Slieve Dun’, in To-Morrow (1924); conducted successful lecturing
tours of the States; premier of The Big House (Abbey Sept. 1926),
concerning the Alcocks, awaiting news on Armistice day of the return of
their second son Ulick from the Front and receiving news of his death
instead; m. wife Dolly, dg. of the medium Hester Travers Smith,
1931; Drama at Inish (1933), in which John Twohig invites the De
La Mare Rep. Company to play in his Seaview Hotel, where they performed
an unconscious pastiche of Chekhovian drama; incls. caricatures of Michael
Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards; co-scripted the film version of
Birmingham’s General John Regan in 1933; two vols. of autobiography,
In Three Homes (1938) [written with his brother and sister], and
Curtains Up (1941), which includes an account of his hiring by
Yeats; made controversial visit to China on Shaw centenary commemoration,
1956; d. Monkstown Co. Dublin,
14 Oct.; buried St Patrick’s Cathedral; described by Micheál
MacLiammoir as ‘long and boney as Don Quixote’; lived at 20
Longford Tce., Monkstown, c.1926; Sean O’Casey employed the occasion
of his recent funeral service, under the character-name of Lionel Robartes,
to point of sectarian prejudice in his play Behind the Green Curtain
(1961); resided at Sorrento Cottage, Vico Rd., Dalkey; survived by
his wife Dollie; many of his letters are held in the Gregory papers of
the Berg Collection (NYPL); there is an oil portrait of Robinson by Dermod
O’Brien (1918). DIB DIW DIH DIL OCEL KUN FDA OCIL
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Works
Plays (FIRST PERFORMANCES): The Clancy Name (1908); The
Cross Roads (1909); Harvest (1910); Patriots (1912);
The Whiteheaded Boy: A Play in Three Acts (1916); The Lost Leader
(1918) [Parnell alias Lucius Lenihan]; The Round Table (1910)
The Dreamers (1915) [on Emmet]; Crabbed Youth and Age (1922);
The White Blackbird (1925); Portrait (1925); The Far-Off
Hills (1925); The Big House (1926; pub. 1928); Ever the
Twain (1929); Give A Dog (1929); All’s Over, Then?
(1932); Drama at Inish (1933); Church Street (1934)
[technically influenced by Pirandello]; Killycregs at Twilight
(1937); Bird’s Nest (1938); Forget Me Not (1941); The
Lucky Finger (1948); The Demon Lover (1954).
Plays (PRINTED EDITIONS): The Cross Roads: A Play in a Prologue and Two Acts (Dublin: Maunsel 1909) [var. 1911; prologue deleted after first ed.]; Two Plays: Harvest, a play in three acts, and The Clancy Name, a tragedy in one act (Dublin: Maunsel 1911); Patriots: A Play in Three Acts (Dublin: Maunsel 1912); The Dreamers: A Play in Three Acts (Dublin: Maunsel 1915); The Lost Leader, A Play in Three Acts (Dublin: Kiersey 1918); The Round Table (1910); The Whiteheaded Boy, A Comedy in Three Acts (London: Putnam’s 1921); Crabbed Youth and Age, A Little Comedy (London: Putnam’s 1924); Never the Time and Place, a little comedy in one act, in Dublin Magazine 1 (May 1924), 856-67, rep. (Belfast: Carter 1953); The White Blackbird, a Play in Three Acts (London: Macmillan 1925); A Play in Three Acts and Portrait, a Play in Two Sittings (Dublin: Talbot 1926); The Big House: Four Scenes in Its Life (London: Macmillan 1928); Plays [1st Coll. Edn.] (q. pub. 1928); Give A Dog ...: a Play in Three Acts London: Macmillan 1928); Ever the Twain: A Comedy in Three Acts (London: Macmillan 1930); The Far-Off Hills: A Comedy In Three Acts (London: Chatto & Windus 1925); Drama at Inish: An Exaggeration in Three Acts (London: Macmillan 1933), and Do. [another edn., as] Is Life Worth Living (Dublin: James Duffy & Co. 1953), 68pp. [BML]; More Plays: All’s Over, Then?, A Play in Three Acts and Church Street, A Play in One Act London: Macmillan 1935); also Killycregs at Twilight and Other Plays [Is Life Worth Living? and Bird’s Nest, a Play in Three Acts London: Macmillan 1939); also Forget Me Not (1941); The Lucky Finger (1948); The Demon Lover (1954); Chris Murray, ed., and intro., Selected Plays of Lennox Robinson, chosen and with an intro. by (Gerrards Cross/Catholic UP of America 1982) [contains Patriots, The Whiteheaded Boy, Crabbed Youth and Age, the Big House, Drama at Inish, and Church Street; also sel. checklist compiled by Frances-Jane French.] Also Seosamh Mac Grianna trans., An Pastín Fionn [Whiteheaded Boy] [q.d.].
Prose, A Young Man from the South (Dublin: Maunsel 1917); Dark Days Dublin: Talbot 1918); Eight Short Stories Dublin: Talbot 1919); ed., A Golden Treasury of Irish Verse (Macmillan 1925; new imp. 1930), 346pp., index of frst lines, 339ff.; [Foreword v-vi, signed 'Foxrock Easter 1924']; Bryan Cooper (London: Constable 1931) [biog. of Westminster MP for Rathmines]; Towards an Appreciation of the Theatre (Dublin: Metropolitan Pub. Co. 1945); ed. Lady Gregory’s Journals ([London: Putnam 1946]; NY: Macmillan 1947); Palette and Plough (Dublin: Brown & Nolan 1948) [biog. of Dermod O’Brien]; ed., The Irish Theatre: Lectures Delivered During the Abbey Festival Held in Dublin in August 1918 (London: Macmillan 1939), xiii+229pp., and Do., another edn. [facs. rep.] (NY: Haskell 1971); Ireland’s Abbey Theatre: A History 1899-1951 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1951), Do., facs. rep. (Washington: Kennikat 1968); I Sometimes Think (1951); ed., with Donagh McDonagh, Oxford Book of Irish Verse (OUP 1958). (Qry), ed. Further Letters of J. B. Yeats [q.d.]
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Criticism
Ida
G. Everson, ‘Young Lennox Robinson and the Abbey Theatre’s First
American Tour 1911-12’, Modern Drama 2 (1966), 74-89.
Ida G. Everson, ‘Lennox Robinson and Synge’s Playboy, 1911-1920, Two Decades of American Cultural Growth’, in New England Quarterly 44 (mar 1971), 3-21.
Sylvia E. Bowman, Lennox Robinson (NY: Twayne 1964), 161pp. with index [remarketted 1993].
Michael O’Neill, Lennox Robinson (NY: Twayne 1964).
Kaspar Spinner, Die alte Dame Sagt Nein! Drei Irische Dramatiker, Lennox Robinson, Sean O’Casey, Denis Johnston (Bern: Franche Verlag 1961); also Journal of Irish Literature, Special Number, Vol. IX, No.1 (Jan 1980).
Denis Ireland, An Ulster Protestant looks At his World (1930), p. 65.
Daniel Corkery, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature, 1931; Mercier Press Edn. 1966, p.9.
Karen Fricker, review The Whiteheaded Boy (Harvey Th., Brooklyn Acad. of Music), NY Times, Sunday [q.date]..
Hugh Hunt, The Abbey: Ireland's National Theatre 1904-1978, 1979, p.115; quoted in Neil Campbell, op. cit., 2000, p.19.
Aaron Kelly & Alan Gillis, eds., Critical Ireland: New Essays in Literature and Culture (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001), 221pp.
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Notes
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919),
lists a novel, A Young Man from the South (Maunsel 1917), and short
stories, Dark Days (Talbot 1918). Young Man is the story
of Willie Powell, of Protestant and Unionist family, who is converted
to nationalism at the Abbey Theatre’s Kathleen ni Houlihan
[sic]; contains ‘almost’ portraits of personages of 1916. Dark
Days leans towards ‘complete Irish nationalism’. Bio-notes,
b. Douglas, Co. Cork; Mgr. Abbey Theatre 1910-1914; resides Cahirmoyle,
Co. Limerick [cf. Cahirmoyle House, under Dermod O’Brien, Rx.].
Brian Cleeve & Anne Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), lists autobiogs., In Three Homes (1938) and Curtain Up (1941); also anthologies, A Little Anthology of Modern Irish Verse (1929) and Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; selects The Whiteheaded Boy [645-54], and notes at 563-64, 712, 717. And NOTE bibl. L. Robinson, ed. The Irish Theatre, Lectures Delivered During the Abbey Festival Held in Dublin in August 1918 (Macmillan 1939; rep. NY: Haskell 1971) [see Vol. 2, under Shiels]. Vol. 3 selects Drama at Inish [181-91; founded the Drama League in 1919, [ed., Terence Brown], 171; early dramatic attempts marked off by Ibsenite intensity of moral feeling ... found his metier in such well-made comedies [summary of Drama ensues], 173-74, 175; [Ernie O’Malley shelters with McGreevy and Robinson, in On Another Man’s Wound, 1936], 444; [in Vive Moi!, 480]; [?561, 566, 568, 572, 578, 580]; Lennox Robinson’s description of the Abbey playwrights’ reconciliation of ‘poetry of speech’ with ‘humdrum fact’ [ed. Declan Kiberd], 1312; Works, 232 [as supra].
D. E. S. Maxwell, Modern Irish Drama (Cambridge UP 1984) lists Two Plays, The Clancy Name and Harvest (Maunsel 1911); The Lost Leader (Eigas Press, Dublin 1918); The Whiteheaded Boy (Lon. 1921); Ever the Twain (Lon. 1930); Drama at Inish (Lon. 1933); Church Street (Lon. 1935); also Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, A History 1899-1951 (Lon. 1951); Curtain Up (Lon. 1942). Studies, Michael O’Neill, Lennox Robinson (NY: Twayne 1964). REM, DES Maxwell has no information of use but remarks, ‘Church Street makes more than superficial decoration of its modernist conjuring with the stage illusion ... In 1916 The Whitheaded Boy had indicted the direction he could pursue with more modest but more certain expectation, placed between comedy and farce, character and caricature.' (p.75)
Kevin Rockett, et al., eds., Cinema & Ireland (1988), Robinson, Lennox, 45, 57, 98 [formed Dublin Theatre and Television Prod. with Dalton, Blythe, and Louis Elliman, their only joint project being an adapt. of George Shiels 1925 play Professor Tim at £30,000]; 57 [co-scripted adapt. of Birmingham’s General John Regan (Henry Edwards 1933).
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories (RTE 1987), lists RTÉ films of Church Street, dir. Shelah Richards (1965) [91]; The Far Off Hills, dir. Richards (1966) [91], and The Whiteheaded Boy, dir Jim Fitzgerald (1965) [91, 108].
Belfast Public Library Bryan Cooper (1931); Church Street (1955); Crabbed Youth and Aged (1924); Curtain Up (1942); Dark Days (1918); Drama at Inish (1953); The Dreamers (1915); Eight Short Stories (n.d.); Ever the Twain (1930); The Far-off Hills (1930, 1931); Four Plays, The White Blackbird, Portrait, Give a Dog, The Big House (n.d. [1928]); Is Life Worth Living (1933); Killygreggs in Twilight, and other plays (1939); Little Anthology of Modern Irish Verse (1928); The Lost Leader (1954); More Plays (1935); Never the Time and Place, and Crabbed Youth and Age (1953); Palette and Plough (1948); Plays (1928); The Whiteheaded Boy (1925); also ed., Golden Treasury of Irish Verse [London: Macmillan 1925]; ed., Ireland’s Abbey Theatre (1951); Towards an Appreciation of the Theatre (1945); Irish Theatre (1939); also Three Homes, Lennox Robinson, Tom Robinson, and Nora Dorman (1938).
Hyland Catalogue No. 219 (1995) lists The Whiteheaded Boy: Play in Three Acts (n.d.) [cover design by Harry Clarke]; The Far-Off Hills: Comedy in Three Acts (1st edn. 1931); Pictures in a Theatre: A Conversation Piece (1st edn. 1947). Also, Hyland Catl. No. 224 lists Plays [1st Coll. edn.] (1928), port.
A ‘wonderful debacle’ occurred when Lennox Robinson’s Roly Poly (adapted from de Maupassant's ‘Boule de Suif’)
was staged. In setting it in evacuated France, Robinson it incurred the
objections of the German embassy on the grounds that no Nazi officer would
behave in the way portrayed; the Irish, British, and French governments
all objected for separate reasons, and the first night was cancelled;
on the second Robinson appeared to say that he had bought the house for
the night for £50, rendering the performance a private one. See Christopher
Casson, reviewing Christopher Fitzsimon, The Boys, A Double Biography
of Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards (Gill & Macmillan 1994), in Books Ireland (April April 1994, pp.79f).
Carnegie Libraries dismissed Lennox Robinson over the publication of his story ‘The Madonna of Slieve Dun’, in which a girl is raped by a tramp, and professes to be the mother of the new Christ, having heard the tramp say ‘Jesus Christ!’ during intercourse. The story appeared in in Francis Stuart’s periodical To-Morrow (1924). Robinson later recorded that he found ‘the whole thing inexpressibly painful. It alienated many of my Catholic friends and with some the breach will never be healed.’ (See Elborn, Francis Stuart, 1990, pp.66-69.)
Faut pas?: Robinson’s failure to close the Abbey in mourning for the King through lack of savoir faire rather than strongly nationalist feeling, and attempts to dispel the resulting misunderstandings, are recounted in A. N. Jeffares, W B Yeats: A New Biography (1988), p.180.
A Vision?: W. B. Yeats names Robinson in A Vision (1926; rev. edn. 1937), writing, 'when the proof sheets came I felt myself relieved from my promise not to read philosophy and began with Berkeley because a young revolutionary soldier who was living a very dangerous life said, “All the philosophy a man needs is in Berkeley”, and Lennox Robinson, hearing me quote that sentence, bnought me an old copy of Berkeley‘ ’s works upon the quays. Then I took from my wife a list of what she had read [... &c.].’ (A Vision, 1937; 1978, p.19.)
Dublin Drama League was established by Robinson with W. B. Yeats's approval but not Lady Gregory's (see Field Day Anthology, gen. ed. Seamus Deane, Derry: Field Day 1991, Vol. 3, p.171).
Portraits: Portrait of Lennox Robinson by Dermod O’Brien, oil 1918, showing Robinson reading and smoking (see Anne Crookshank, ed., Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Museum 1965 and Brian de Breffny, Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1983)p.204; NGI); also portrait (1943) by James Sleator RHA in the Abbey Theatre; another in Crawford Gallery, Cork, by Margaret Clarke; and a portrait by Estelle Solomons in North Dining Hall, TCD;
James Joyce held a copy of Patriots (Dublin Maunsel 1912) in in his Trieste Library (see Richard Ellmann, The Consciousness of James Joyce, London: Faber & Faber, p.125 [Appendix]).
Sorrento Cottage, Robinson’s home,was the subject of refusal of planning permission by Bord Pleanála in 2001, when the house was occupied by David Evans (‘The Edge’) of U2.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)