On September 7, 1911, I received a letter from Mr. Yeats: “I am trying possible substitutes for Miss O’Neill and some will not do. As a last resource I have told Miss Magee to understudy the part of ‘Pegeen Mike.’ She was entirely natural and delightful in that small part in The Mineral Workers the day before yesterday. I said to some one that she had the sweet of the apple, and would be a Pegeen Mike if she could get the sour of the apple too. Now the serious difficulty of the moment is that there is nobody in the theatre capable of teaching a folk part to an inexperienced person. If there was, I would at once put Miss Magee into Pegeen Mike; by the time she had played it through the States she could come back Miss O’Neill’s successor. Now I am going to ask you if you feel well enough for a desperate measure. Can you, if it seem necessary to-morrow, take my place in the steamboat on Tuesday evening? Allowing eight days for the passage—for the boat is slow—you would arrive in Boston on the 20th. The Playboy cannot come till about the 28th; you would be able to train Miss Magee for the part, or, of course, another if you prefer her.... I can wire to-morrow and get the necessary papers made out (you have to swear you are not an Anarchist). If they want me I can follow next boat and possibly arrive before you. I will go steerage if necessary; that will be quite an amusing adventure, and I shall escape all interviewers. One thing I am entirely sure of, that there is no one but you with enough knowledge of folk to work a miracle.”

I could not set out on the same day as the Company. I was needed at home. But I promised to follow in the Cymric, sailing from Queenstown a week later.

I think from the very first day Mr. Yeats and I had talked at Duras of an Irish Theatre, and certainly ever since there had been a company of Irish players, we had hoped and perhaps determined to go to An t-Oilean ur “the New Island,” the greater Ireland beyond the Atlantic. But though, as some Connacht girls said to me at Buffalo, “Since ever we were the height of the table, America it was always our dream,” and though we had planned that if for any cause our Theatre should seem to be nearing its end we would take our reserve fund and spend it mainly on that voyage and that venture, we did not ourselves make the opportunity at the last. After we had played in the summer of 1911 at the Court Theatre, as ever for a longer period and to a larger audience, we were made an offer by the theatrical managers, Liebler & Co., to play for three or four months in the United States, and the offer had been accepted. They had mentioned certain plays as essential, among them The Playboy of the Western World. Miss O’Neill, who had played its heroine, had married and left us; that is how the difficulty had arisen.

On September 19th I said good-bye to home, where I had meant to spend a quiet winter, writing and planting trees, and to the little granddaughter for whose first appearance in the world I had waited. There had not been many days for preparation, but it was just as well I did not require large trunks, for on the eve of my journey a railway strike was declared in Ireland and there were no trains to take any one to Queenstown. Motors are still few in the country. We wired to Limerick but all were engaged already; to Galway which did not answer at all; and to Loughrea, where the only one had already been engaged by my neighbour, Lord Gough, who had friends with him who also wanted means to travel. I could but send over a message to his home, Lough Cutra Castle, in the dark of night; and a kindly answer came that he would yield his claim to mine. So at midday on September 19th, I set out with such luggage as I could take, to cross the five counties that lay between me and Queenstown harbour. One of the tires broke at intervals, once on the top of a wild mountain in, I think, the County Limerick, and people came out from a lonely cottage to say how far we were from any town or help; and these delays kept us from reaching Cork till after dark. Then we went on towards Queenstown in a fine rain which had begun, and after a while when we stopped to ask the way we were told we had gone eight miles beyond it. But I was in time after all, went out in the tender and joined the Cymric next morning, and so made my first voyage across the ocean. The weather was rather cold and rough and I was glad of a rest, and stayed a good deal in my cabin. I knew no one on board and I had leisure to write a little play, MacDonough’s Wife, which had been forming itself in my mind for a while past.

I had always had a passion for the sea, as I saw it from our coasts and in our bays and invers, and when going through the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. But the great Atlantic seemed dark and dead and monotonous, and it was a relief when on the last day or two one could see whales spouting, and a sparrow came and perched on the ship; and then fishing boats, looking strange in shape and rigging, came in sight, and I felt like Christopher Columbus.

Mr. Yeats, who had gone on with the Company, came to meet me on board ship as we arrived at Boston on September 29th, St. Michael’s Day, and told me of the success of the first performances there; and that evening I went to the Plymouth Theatre and found a large audience, and a very enthusiastic one, listening to the plays. I could not but feel moved when I saw this, and remembered our small beginnings and the years of effort and of discouragement.

The interviewers saved me the trouble of writing letters these first days. I sent papers home instead. It was my first experience of this way of giving news, and I was amused by it. One always, I suppose, likes talking about oneself and what one is interested in, and that is what they asked me to do. I found them everywhere courteous, mannerly, perhaps a little over-insistent. I think I only offended one, a lady in a provincial town. She wanted to talk about The Playboy, and for reasons of policy I didn’t. She avenged herself by saying I had no sense of humour and that my dress (Paris!) “had no relation to the prevailing modes.”

I had plenty to do at first. I had not much time to go about, for I rehearsed all the mornings and could not leave the theatre in the evenings, but when I got free of constant rehearsal I was taken by friends to see, as I longed to see, something of the country. I wanted especially to know what the coast here was like—whether it was very different from our own of Galway and of Clare; and I had a wonderful Sunday at a fine country house on the North Shore, and saw the islands and the reddish rocks, not like our grey ones opposite; and the lovely tints of the autumn leaves, a red and yellow undergrowth among the dark green trees. My hostess’s grandchildren were playing about. One said, “I am going to be a bear,” and grunted. It made me so glad to think the little grandson at home has a playfellow in the making—in the cradle!

Boston is a very friendly place. There are so many Irish there that I had been told at home there is a part of it called Galway, and I met many old friends. Some I had known as children, sons of tenants and daughters, now comfortably settled in their own houses. I had known of the nearness of America before I came, for I remember asking an old woman at Kiltartan why her daughter who had been home on a visit had left her again, and she had said, “Ah, her teeth were troubling her and her dentist lives at Boston.” England, on the other hand, seems a long way off, and there are many tears shed if a child goes even to a good post over the Channel. Two dear old ladies came to see me, daughters of an old steward of my father’s. One of them said she used to “braid my hair” as a child that I might be in time for family prayers, and had wept when she saw the snapshots in the papers after I landed, and found I was so changed. She said, weeping, “I hope the people of America know you are a real lady; if not, I could testify to it!” And I was able to write to my son of the well-being of tenants’ children: “T. C. and his wife came to the theatre and brought me a beautiful bouquet of pink carnations. I had a visit from M. R., such a handsome, smart girl, and from N. H., sending up her visiting card, very pleased with herself. Many of the ladies I meet tell me the cook or laundress or manservant are so excited at their meeting me and know all about me.” And the son of a Welsh carpenter who had lived at Roxborough in my childhood met me at the theatre door after Spreading the News and said, “I never thought, when you used to teach us in Sunday School, you would ever write such merry comedies.” This reminded me of the tailor from Gort who wrote home after a visit to the Abbey, “No one who knows Lady Gregory would ever think she had so much fun in her.”

On October 8th I wrote home: “I send a paper with opinions for and against the plays. I am afraid there may be demonstrations against Harvest and The Playboy. The Liebler people don’t mind, think it will be an advertisement. I was cheered by a visit from some members of the Gaelic League, saying they were on our side and asking me to an entertainment next Sunday, and from D. K., who is very religious and wants to go into a convent. She says the attacks on the plays are by very few and don’t mean anything. Most of the society people are in the country, but they motor in sixty or eighty miles for the plays. Last night we had a little party on the stage: some Gaelic Leaguers, who brought me a bouquet; some people from the Aran colony—including Synge’s friend, McDonough, whom I had also known in Aran; and from Kiltartan Mary R. and a cousin and Mrs. Hession’s daughters, with the husband of one. They were very smart, one in a white blouse, another in a blue one with pearl necklace. You must tell Mrs. Hession they are looking so well. The management gave us sandwiches on the stage, and punchbowls of claret cup, and we had Irish songs and I called for a cheer for Ireland in Boston. I enjoyed very much watching the Hession women at the play. They nearly got hysterics in Workhouse Ward, and when the old woman comes on, they did not laugh but bent forward and took it quite seriously. It shows the plays would have a great success in the country. The County Galway Woman’s League have asked me to be their president.... Members of the Gaelic League are working a banner for me. They showed me the painted design at a party given in our honour. Yeats leaves for New York to-day, but comes back for first night of The Playboy next Monday and sails Tuesday. They are rather afraid of trouble, but I think the less controversy the better now. It should be left between the management and the audience.

“The manager says we may stay longer in Boston, we are doing so well. I should like to stay on. It is a homey sort of place. I am sent quantities of flowers, my room is full of roses and carnations.”

Now as to the trouble over The Playboy. We were told, when we arrived, that opposition was being organised from Dublin, and I was told there had already been some attacks in a Jesuit paper, America. But the first I saw was a letter in the Boston Post of October 4th, the writer of which did not wait for The Playboy to appear but attacked plays already given, Birthright and Hyacinth Halvey. The letter was headed in large type, “Dr. J. T. Gallagher denounces the Irish Plays, says they are Vulgar, Unnatural, Anti-National, and Anti-Christian.” The writer declared himself astonished at “the parrot-like praise of the dramatic critics.” He himself had seen these two plays and “my soul cried out for a thousand tongues to voice my unutterable horror and disgust.... I never saw anything so vulgar, vile, beastly, and unnatural, so calculated to calumniate, degrade, and defame a people and all they hold sacred and dear.”

Birthright, written by a young National schoolmaster in County Cork, had not been attacked in Ireland; both it and my own Hyacinth have been played not only at the Abbey but in the country towns and villages with the approval of the priests and of the Gaelic League. Birthright is founded on some of the most ancient of stories, Cain and Abel, Joseph and the pit, jealousy of the favoured younger by the elder, a sudden anger, and “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me from the ground.” In a photograph of the last scene a Boston photographer had, to fill his picture, brought on the father and mother looking at the struggle between the brothers, instead of coming in, as in the play, to find but a lifeless body before them. This heartlessness was often brought up against us by some who had seen the picture but not the play, and sometimes by those who had seen both.

The Playboy was announced for October 16th, and on the 14th the Gaelic American printed a resolution of the United Irish Societies of New York, in which they pledged themselves to “drive the vile thing from the stage.”

There was, however, very little opposition in the Plymouth Theatre. There was a little booing and hissing, but there were a great many Harvard boys among the audience and whenever there was a sign of coming disapproval they cheered enough to drown it. Then they took to cheering if any sentence or scene was coming that had been objected to in the newspaper attacks, so, I am afraid, giving the impression that they had a particular liking for strong expressions. We had, as I have already told, cut out many of these long ago in Dublin, and had never put them back when we played in England or elsewhere; and so the enemy’s paper confessed almost sadly, “it was a revised and amended edition that they saw ... the most offensive parts were eliminated. It was this that prevented a riot.... But most of those present and all the newspaper men had read the excised portions in the Gaelic American and were able to fill the gaps.”

Because of the attacks in some papers, the Mayor of Boston sent his secretary, Mr. William A. Leahy, to report upon The Playboy, and the Police Commissioners also sent their censor. Both reports agreed that the performance was not such as to “justify the elimination of any portion of the play.” Mr. Leahy had already written of the other plays: “I have seen the plays and admire them immensely. They are most artistic, wonderfully acted, and to my mind absolutely inoffensive to the patriotic Irishman. I regret the sensitiveness that makes certain men censure them. Knowing what Mr. Yeats and Lady Gregory want to do, I cannot but hope that they succeed and that they are loyally supported in America. My commendation cannot be expressed too forcibly.” And after he had seen The Playboy, he wrote: “If obscenity is to be found on the stage in Boston, it must be sought elsewhere and not at the Plymouth Theatre.” After speaking with some sympathy of the objections made to the plays, he says: “The mistake, however, lies in taking the pictures literally. Some of these playwrights, of course, are realists or copyists of life and like others of their kind they happen to prefer strong brine to rosewater and see truth chiefly in the ugliness of things. But as it happens the two remarkable men among the Irish playwrights are not realists at all. Yeats and Synge are symbolists, and their plays are as fantastic and fabulous as the Tales of the Round Table.”

There was no further trouble at Boston. There was nothing but a welcome for all the plays, many of them already so well known, especially through Professor Baker’s dramatic classes at Harvard, that we were now and again reproved by some one in the audience if a line or passage were left out, by design or forgetfulness. I wrote home on October 22nd: “Gaston Mayer came yesterday, representing Liebler. They are delighted with our success, and want us, urged us, to stay till May. We refused this, but will certainly stay January, possibly a little longer. It is rather a question for the Company. They want me to stay all the time. I said I would stay for the present. If I get tired, Yeats will come back.... We had the sad news last night that we are only to have one more week here, and are to do some three night places, opening at Providence on the 30th. Mrs. Gardner came to the theatre this morning, furious at our going so soon.”

We said farewell to Boston October 30th. Yet it was not quite farewell, for on our last day in America—March 5th—we stopped there on the way from Chicago to New York and gave a “flying matinée”; and I brought home the impression of that kind, crowded audience, and the knowledge that having come among strangers, we left real friends.

On October 13th I had written from Boston: “I am sorry to say Flynn (Liebler’s special agent), who has been to Providence, announces strong opposition to The Playboy. A delegation came to demand its withdrawal, but he refused. I had also a letter saying the Clan-na-Gael was very strong there, and advising that we have police at hand. Of course, had we known this, we should not have put on The Playboy, but we must fight it out now. The danger is in not knowing whether we shall get any strong support there. A Harvard lad has interviewed me for a magazine. He promised to try and make up a party to go to Providence Tuesday night, and also to stir up Brown University.”

Though we all grieved at leaving friendly Boston, we found friends also at Providence, with its pleasant name and hilly streets and stately old dwelling houses. But a protest had been made before we arrived, and a committee had waited on the Police Commissioners and presented a petition asking them to forbid the performance of The Playboy.

“I had to appear before the Police Commissioners this morning. The accusations were absurd and easy to answer; most of them founded upon passages which have never been said upon the stage. I wish I had been allowed to take a copy. There was one clause which accused us of ‘giving the world to understand a barbarous marriage custom was in ordinary use in Ireland.’ This alluded to the ‘drift of chosen females from the Eastern World,’ one of those flights of Christy Mahon’s fancy which have given so much offence. I showed them the prompt copy with the acting version we have always used. Unluckily the enemy didn’t turn up. Of course the play is to be let go on, and there are to be plenty of policemen present in case of disturbance. The police people said they had had the same trouble about a negro play said to misrepresent people of colour.

“The Police Commissioners themselves attended and have published a report, saying they not only found nothing to object to in the play but enjoyed every minute of it. Nevertheless, the protesting committee published its statement: ‘How well our objections were founded may be judged from the fact that the Company acting this play has agreed to eliminate from it each and every scene, situation, and word to which we objected, and it is on the basis of this elimination that the play has been permitted to go on.’ And I gave my answer: ‘I think it may be as well to state that we gave the play to-night exactly as it has been given in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, and many cities in Ireland and the other night in Boston. The players have never at any time anywhere spoken all the lines in the published book.’” And after its production I wrote home: “Nov. 1st. The Playboy went very well last night, not an attempt to hiss.”

From another town—Lowell—I wrote: “A newspaper man from Tyrone lamented last night the Playboy fight. He said all nationalities here are very sensitive. The Swedes had a play taken off that represented some Swedish women drinking. The French Canadians, he says, are as touchy as the Irish. He said that in consequence of this sensitiveness, in the police reports the nationality of those brought up before the court is not given. I looked in the Lowell newspaper next day, and I saw that this was true. One José Viatchka was brought up charged with the theft of two yards of cloth. She was found guilty and her nationality was not given. Allan Carter made his second appearance for drunkenness. Being an American citizen, even his dwelling place, Canaan, N. H., was not kept secret. Thomas Kilkelly and Daniel O’Leary were fined for drunkenness. I felt very glad that their nationality was not given!”

Yale like Harvard demanded The Playboy, and we put it on for one night at New Haven. Synge’s plays and others on our list are being used in the course of English literature there, and professors and students wanted to see them. We were there for Monday and Tuesday, the 6th and 7th of November. On the first night we put on other plays. Next day there was a matinée and we gave Mr. Bernard Shaw’s Blanco Posnet and my own Image. I left before the matinée was over for Northampton, as I was to lecture that night at Smith College. Next day I was astonished to see a paragraph in a New Haven paper, saying that the Mayor, having been asked to forbid the performance of The Playboy, had sent his censor, the Chief of Police, Mr. Cowles, to attend a rehearsal of it; that several passages had been objected to by him and that the manager had in consequence suppressed them, and it had been given at the evening performance without the offending passages. I was astounded. I knew the report could not be correct, must be wholly incorrect, and yet one knows there is never smoke without even a sod of turf. The players, who arrived at Northampton that morning, were equally puzzled. There had been no rehearsal, and the play had been given as ever before. I wired to a friend, the head of the University Press at Yale, to investigate the matter. The explanation came: “Chief Cowles,” as the papers called him, had attended, not a rehearsal but the matinée. He was said to have objected to certain passages, though he had not sent word of this to any of our people. The passages he objected to were not spoken at the evening performance of The Playboy, because the play in which they are spoken was Blanco Posnet. Yale laughed over this till we could almost hear the echoes, indeed the echoes appeared in the next day’s papers. The Gaelic American, however, announced that in New Haven one of our plays “was allowed to be presented only after careful excision of obscene passages.”

Washington was the next place where The Playboy was to appear. I wrote home from there on November 12th: “Liebler’s Manager wired for me to come on here and skip Albany. To-day two or three priests preached against us, and a pamphlet has been given away at the chapel doors denouncing us. I think it would be a good thing to put it up in the Hall of the Abbey framed for Dublin people to see. The worst news is that the players have arrived without Sinclair. He had a fall down six steps when coming down to the stage at Albany and hurt his back. The doctor said it was only the muscles that were hurt and that he would be all right to-day, but he has wired to-day that he cannot move. A bad performance would worry me more than the pamphlet.

“These are some of its paragraphs:

“‘The attention of fair-minded Washingtonians is called to a most malignant travesty of Irish life and religion about to be presented upon the stage of a local theatre by the “Irish Players.” This travelling Company is advertised as “coming from the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.” True, but they came from Dublin, followed by the hisses and indignation of an outraged populace!

“‘A storm of bitter protest has been raised in every city in which they have presented their false and revolting pictures of Irish life. Dublin people never accepted the plays. They virtually kicked them from the stage. England gave them no reception.’

“Then they quote ‘a Boston critic’ (this is Dr. Gallagher, who wrote that letter to the Boston papers):

“‘“Nothing but hell-inspired ingenuity and a satanic hatred of the Irish people and their religion could suggest, construct, and influence the production of such plays. On God’s earth the beastly creatures of the plays never existed.”

“‘Such are the productions which, hissed from Dublin, hawked around England by the “Irish Players” for the delectation of those who wished to see Irishmen shown unfit for self-government, are now offered to the people of Washington. Will Washington tolerate the lie?

“‘The Aloysius Truth Society.’

“This is the first time any section of the Catholic Church has come into the fight. It is a good thing they denounce all the plays, not only The Playboy. On the other hand, the Gaelic Association, of which Monsignor Shahan, President of the Catholic University, is head, has asked me to address its meeting next Thursday, and, of course, I shall do so.

“This invitation was incorrectly reported in the papers, and Monsignor Shahan, who is just leaving for Rome, has denied having ‘invited the Irish Players to speak.’ The invitations sent out, printed cards with his printed signature, had asked people to come and hear me speak, and I did so and had a good audience; and a resolution was proposed, praising all I had done for literature and the theatre, and making me the first Honorary Member of the Association, and this was agreed to by the whole meeting with applause.”

For among the surprises of the autumn I had suddenly found that I could speak. I was quite miserable when, on arriving in Boston, I found it had been arranged for me to “say a few words” at various clubs or gatherings. I thought a regular lecture would be better. If it failed, I would not be asked again or I would have an excuse for silence. It would be easier, too, in a way than the “few words,” for I should know how long the lecture ought to be and what people wanted to hear about, and I would have the assurance that they knew what they were coming for instead of having a stranger let loose on them just as they were finishing their lunch. It was at one of these lunches that that wonderful woman who has in Boston, as the Medici in Florence, spent wealth and vitality and knowledge in making such a collection of noble pictures as proves once more that it is the individual, the despot, who is necessary for such a task—bringing the clear conception, the decision of one mind in place of the confusion of many—liked what I said and offered me for my first trial the spacious music room of Fenway Court.

I spoke on play-writing, for I had begun that art so late in life that its rules, those I had worked out for myself or learned from others, were still fresh in my mind; and I wrote home with more cheerfulness than I had felt during the days of preparation, that I thought and was assured my address had gone well; “what I was most proud of was keeping it exactly to the hour. I was glad to find I could fill up so much time. I had notes on the table and just glanced at them now and again but didn’t hesitate for a word or miss my points. It is a great relief to me and the discovery of a new faculty. I shan’t feel nervous again; that is a great thing.”

I had boasted of this a little too soon, for the next letter says: “I had a nice drive yesterday, twenty-five miles to B. A lady called for me in her motor, and we passed through several pretty little New England villages and through woods. Then a wait of an hour before lecture, keeping up small talk and feeling nervous all the time, then the lecture. I forgot to bring my watch and gave them twenty minutes over the hour! It was a difficult place to speak in, a private house,—a room to the right, a room to the left, and a room behind. However they seemed to hear all right.... I had a nice run home alone in the dark.”

I gave my ideas on “play-writing” again at Philadelphia, and was told just before I began that there were several dramatists in the room, including the author of Madame Butterfly. So I had to apologise on the ground of an inferior cook being flattered at being asked to give recipes, whereas a real chef keeps the secrets to himself. And sometimes at the end of all my instruction on the rules I gave the hearers as a benediction,

Mr. Yeats, when lecturing in America, had written to me from Bryn Mawr: “I have just given my second lecture.... They are getting all our books here now. Do you know I have not met a single woman here who puts ‘tin-tacks in the soup,’ and I find that the woman who does, is recognised as an English type. One teacher explained to me the difference in this way: ‘We prepare the girls to live their lives, but in England they are making them all teachers.’”

And I also was delighted with the girls’ colleges and wrote home:

“At Vassar the girls were playing a football game in sympathy with the Harvard and Yale match going on. They were all dressed as boys, had made up trousers, or knickers, and some were playing on combs to represent a band, and singing the Yale song, though the sham Harvard had beaten the sham Yale by 25 to 5. They are nice, merry girls, I think as nice as at Smith’s, where I promised to suggest my granddaughter should be educated. I had an audience of about six hundred, a very good and pleasant one, nearly all girls and a few men. The President was sitting close to the door, and I asked him to call out to me to speak up if he didn’t hear, as I was young as a lecturer and always afraid my voice might not reach. He said he would not like to do that, but would hold up a handkerchief if I was to speak louder. About the middle of the lecture I saw him very slowly raise a handkerchief to the level of his face, but I could not catch his eye, so I stopped and asked if that was the signal. He was quite confused and said, No, he wanted to blow his nose, and the girls shrieked with delight. He told me afterwards he had held out as long as he could. The girls had acted some of my plays. The Jackdaw is a great favourite there as well as at Smith’s, where they have conjugated a verb ‘to Jackdaw.’ One of the ‘Faculty’ said she doubted if our players could do Gaol Gate as well as Mr. Kennedy, the author of The Servant in the House, reads it....”

These lectures gave me opportunity of seeing many places where our plays did not go, and I have delighted memories of rushing waters in Detroit, and of little girls dancing in cruciform Columbus, and of the roar of Niagara Falls, and the stillness of the power house that sends that great energy to create light and motion a hundred or two hundred miles away, and of many another wide-spreading, kindly city where strangers welcomed me, and I seemed to say good-bye to friends. Dozing in midnight trains, I would remember, as in a dream, “the flight of a bird through a lighted hall,” the old parable of human life.

To return to the meeting at Washington:

“I had to get away early because Mrs. Taft had asked me to the White House to hear the Mormon choir. I arrived there rather late but the music was going on. It was a very pretty sight, the long white room with fine old glass chandeliers, and two hundred Mormons—the men in black, the women in white—and about fifty guests. I heard one chorus, and they sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ and everyone stood up. Then we moved about and chatted, and I was presented to the President—pleasant enough, but one doesn’t feel him on the stage like Roosevelt.

“To-day I had a very scattered rehearsal of Spreading the News. The players kept slipping out by a back door, and I found the negroes were dancing and singing out there, it being their dinner hour. It was, of course, irresistible.”

One day when we went to rehearsal, the sun was shining and I offered the players a holiday and picnic to Mount Vernon, and we crossed the river and spent the day there very pleasantly. Donovan said, “No wonder a man should fight for such a home as this.” I told them the holiday was not a precedent, for we might go to a great many countries before finding so great a man to honour. Washington had been a friend of my grandfather’s, who had been in America with his regiment. There was a case of stuffed birds at Roxborough which was said to have been a present from Washington, and there was a field there called Mount Vernon. My grandfather had built a little sea lodge on the Burren coast and had called that also Mount Vernon, so I was specially interested in seeing the house. It is beautifully kept and filled with memorials of its owner and with furniture that belonged to him. The Americans keep their sacred places well. A school at which I lectured wanted to give me a fee; but I did not wish to take one, and I said when they pressed it, that I had seen in a shop window an old jug with portraits of Washington and of Lafayette on it, and had wished for it, but it was nine dollars and I was refraining from luxuries, and that I would accept that if they liked. So it was sent to me, and I brought it safely home to add to my collection of historic delft. It has the date 1824. It was made to commemorate Lafayette’s visit at that time, and the words on it are, “A Republic is not always ungrateful.” It now stands near another jug of about the same date, on which there is the portrait of that other patriot beloved by his people, O’Connell.

On November 18th I arrived at New York. All my work was easier from that time through the help of my friend of some ten years, Mr. John Quinn. I had a pleasant little set of rooms at the Algonquin Hotel. I said to Mr. Flynn, Liebler’s manager, when I arrived there, “Is it near the theatre? Shall I be able to walk there?” “Walk there,” he said, “why you could throw a cricket ball to it.” I did walk there and back many times a day during my stay, and grew fond of the little corner of the city I got to know so well; but I sometimes envied the cricket ball that would have escaped the dangerous excitement of the five crossings, one of them across 6th Avenue, with motors dashing in all directions, and railway trains thundering overhead. The theatre was charming, I wish we could carry it about on all our tours, and I was given a little room off the stage, which had been Maxine Elliott’s own room, and where players and guests often had tea with me.

“Hotel Algonquin, New York, Monday, 20th November. We opened very well last night. A crowded house and very enthusiastic, Rising of the Moon, Birthright, and Spreading the News were given. All got five or more curtains. One man made rather a disturbance at the fight in Birthright, saying it was ‘not Irish,’ but his voice was drowned and he left. I was told that —— one of the enemy who was there, said, ‘Such things do not happen in Ireland; they may happen in Lady Gregory’s own family.’ The Playboy is to be put on next week. J. Q. seems a bit anxious about The Playboy; says they may ‘throw things,’ and that seems what the Gaelic American is inviting them to do when it says The Playboy ‘must be squelched’ and a lesson taught to Mr. Yeats and his fellow-agents of England, and that I have no right to appeal for respect for my sex.

“Last night as I went into the theatre I heard my name spoken, and a girl told me she was the daughter of old Matt Cahel, the blacksmith who had lived at Roxborough, and she had come to see the plays and said her father would have been so proud, if he had lived, to know I was here. I am glad of this, for I hear the plays were preached against by some priests last Sunday. Father Flanagan thinks the attacks all come from Dublin. The players are convinced they are from some of our non-paying guests.... I think we must revise that list. The Playboy is to be put on next Monday. I am glad they are not putting off the fight any longer. It tries the players’ nerves. It will be on for four nights and a matinée. By going behind myself and gathering a party and cheering with what voice I had left, I at last got the shouts for Hughie in Birthright to be less of a mournful wail.”

“Friday, November 24th. I have been to-day to lunch with Mrs. ——, a Catholic lady I had met in London, who gave a lunch to me to show she was on our side. There was a Father X. there, who is not in this diocese and is very much shocked at the action of the priests. One told his congregation on Sunday from the altar, it would be a mortal sin to come to the plays, and another, Father X. says, to his certain knowledge advised his people from the altar if they did come, to bring eggs to throw. Mr. Hackett was sitting behind a woman who said in Birthright ‘it’s a pity it ain’t Lady Gregory they are choking.’ Mr. Quinn heard I held a salon at the theatre and it is wonderful how many people turn up or come to express sympathy. I got a good rehearsal to-day of Mixed Marriage, which I think might take very well here.”

“26th. Plenty of booking for Playboy whether by friends or enemies. I went to lecture at Vassar yesterday. I had no idea the Hudson was so beautiful. The train was close to the brink all the way, and opposite are wooded cliffs and heights, and at night, coming back, the lighted towns on the other side gave a magic atmosphere. I find new scenery an extraordinary excitement and delight. I am going off just now to Oyster Bay for the night to visit the Roosevelts. I have been to church this morning and feel fresher.”

“Algonquin, Monday, 27th. When John Quinn came yesterday afternoon, he brought Gregg with him. Both had heard from different sources that The Playboy is to be attacked to-night. The last Gaelic American says, ‘The New York Irish will send the Anti-Irish Players back to Dublin like whipped curs with their tails between their legs.’ Quinn heard it from a man he knows well, who had called him up to say there is a party of rowdies coming to the theatre to-night to make their demonstration. They thought it possible this might be stopped by letting the enemy know we are prepared, but I thought it better to let them show themselves. They have been threatening us so long; we shall see who they are.

“This morning I saw Flynn and Gaston Mayer and told them the matter was out of my hands now, that we don’t want interviews or argument, and that it is a question between Liebler and the mob. Flynn went off to the police, and I have not heard anything since. I have not told the players.”

“Tuesday, November 28th. The papers give a fairly accurate account of what happened last night.[1] There was a large audience, The Gaol Gate was put on first, which, of course, has never offended anyone in Ireland, but there was a good deal of coughing going on and there was unrest in the gallery. But one man was heard saying to another, ‘This is all right. You needn’t interrupt this. Irishmen do die for their neighbours.’ Another said, ‘This is a part of The Playboy that is going on now, but they are giving it under another name.’ Very soon after the curtain went up on The Playboy the interruptions began. The managers had been taking much too confident a view, saying, ‘These things don’t happen in New York.’ When this did happen, there were plenty of police, but they wouldn’t arrest anyone because no one gave the order, and the disturbance was let go on nearly all through the first act. I went round, when the disturbance began, and knelt in the opening of the hearth, calling to every actor who came within earshot that they must not stop for a moment but must spare their voices, as they could not be heard, and we should do the whole act over again. At the end Tyler came round and I was delighted when he shouted that it should be played again. O’Donovan announced this and there were great cheers from the audience. And the whole play was given then in perfect peace and quiet. The editor of the Gaelic American and his bodyguard were in the stalls, two rows of them. They were pointed out to me when I came in. The disturbers were very well arranged; little groups here and there. In the box office this morning they have a collection of spoils left by the enemy (chiefly stink-pots and rosaries). A good many potatoes were thrown on the stage and an old watch, and a tin box with a cigar in it and a cigarette box. Our victory was complete in the end.

“Ten men were arrested. Two of them were bar-tenders; one a liquor dealer; two clerks; one a harness-maker; one an instructor; one a mason; one a compositor, and one an electrician.

“Some of the police who protected us were Irish. One of them said to our manager, Mr. Robinson: ‘There’s a Kerryman says he has you pictured and says he’ll have your life.’ Mr. Robinson had had some words with this Kerryman and had said: ‘We’ll give you a supper when you come to Dublin,’ and the Kerryman had answered, ‘We’ll give you a wake.’

“The disturbers were fined sums from three to ten dollars each.”

“28th. I was talking to Roosevelt about the opposition on Sunday and he said he could not get in to the plays: Mrs. Roosevelt not being well, he did not like to leave home. But when I said it would be a help to us, he said, ‘Then I will certainly come,’ and settled that to-night he will dine with me and come on.”

“Wednesday, 29th. I was in such a rush last night I sent off my letters very untidily. I hadn’t time even to change my dress for dinner. It went off very well. John Quinn, Col. Emmet, grand-nephew of the Patriot, Mr. Flynn. I had asked Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley) but he was engaged to dinner at eight at the Guinnesses. He came, however, at seven and sat through ours. He was very amusing, and he and Roosevelt chaffed each other.... When we got to the theatre and into the box, people saw Roosevelt and began to clap and at last he had to get up, and he took my hand and dragged me on my feet too, and there was renewed clapping.... Towards the end of Gaol Gate there was a great outbreak of coughing and sneezing, and then there was a scuffle in the gallery and a man throwing pepper was put out. There was a scuffle now and then during The Playboy but nothing violent and always great clapping when the offender was thrown out. We played with the lights up. After the first act I took my party on to the stage and introduced the players, and Roosevelt spoke separately to them and then made a little speech, saying how much he admired them and that he felt they were doing a great deal to increase the dignity of Ireland (he has adopted my phrase) and that he ‘envied them and Lady Gregory for America.’ They were quite delighted and Kerrigan had tears in his eyes. Roosevelt’s daughter, who was with another party, then appeared and he introduced her to them, remembering all the names, ‘This is Mr. Morgan, this is Miss Magee....’ I brought him a cup of tea and it was hard to tear him away when the curtain went up.

“I stayed in my room writing letters through the second act, and when I came back, a swarm of reporters was surrounding Roosevelt and he was declaring from the box, ‘I would as soon discuss the question as discuss a pipe dream with an out-patient of Bedlam.’ This was about an accusation they had just shown him in some paper, saying he had had a secret understanding with some trusts. He was shaking his fist and saying, ‘I am giving you that straight; mind you, take it down as I say it.’ When the play was over, he stayed in the box a few minutes discussing it; he said he would contribute a note on an article he wants John Quinn to write about us. When we left the box, we found the whole route to the door packed, just a narrow lane we could walk through, and everyone taking off hats and looking at him with real reverence and affection, so unlike those royal crowds in London. It was an extraordinary kindness that he did us.”

The Mayor had received a protest against the play and on that second night he sent as his representative the Chief Magistrate, Mr. McAdoo, who had formerly been a member of Congress, had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and as Police Commissioner of New York, and is a leading citizen of the city.

The New York Sun, in the issue of November 30th, summarised his report:

“Chief Magistrate McAdoo, who was sent by Mayor Gaynor on Tuesday night to see The Playboy of the Western World, wrote to the Mayor yesterday that he had sat through the play and had seen nothing in it to warrant the fuss which some Irishmen were making. Magistrate McAdoo told the Mayor that it was not nearly as objectionable as scores of American plays he had seen in this city and that there was no reason why the Mayor should either order the withdrawal of the play or suspend the licence of Maxine Elliott’s Theatre. The Mayor said that the letter had satisfied him that there was no need of any action by the city and that so far as he was concerned the matter was closed.”

“Of the few arrested on the second night one was an Englishman, who objected to British soldiers being spoken of as ‘khaki cut-throats,’ and one was a Jew, who did not give his reasons. For the accusations were getting more and more mixed. A man was heard asking outside the Maxine Elliott Theatre during the riot, ‘What is on to-night?’ and the answer was, ‘There’s a Jewman inside has a French play and he’s letting on it’s Irish, and some of the lads are inside talking to them.’

“I have had a nice letter from Rothenstein. He is here painting some portraits. He says, ‘I would have been to pay you my respects but unhappily I have for the second time been laid up. I hope I may still get the chance, and that the charming and brilliant people I saw with such delight in London are getting their due. I want to bring some friends to see them this week, and am looking forward to the pleasure of seeing them again.’ This was written on the morning of the 28th, and he adds a postscript: ‘Since writing I see at breakfast an account of a big fuss you had last night. I think it is a fine thing that a work of art should have so vital an effect on people that they feel towards it as they do towards life, and wish to exalt or to destroy it. In these days when there is so little understanding of the content and so much said about the technique of these things, I do feel refreshed that such a thing can happen. I hope the physical experience was not too trying. I admire the courage and determination which both sides showed. If a country can produce so great a man as Synge and a public so spirited that it will protest against what seems a wrong presentment of life to them, then we may still have hope that art will find a place by the fireside. I take my hat off to you all.’”

“December 1st. All well last night. Galleries filled, and apparently with Irish, all applauding, not one hiss.

“I was asked at a tea-party ‘what was my moral purpose in writing The Playboy!’”

Mr. Yeats wrote from Dublin when he heard of the riot: “December 3d. What a courageous man Roosevelt is! I mean courageous to go so much beyond official routine. I think it is the best thing that has ever happened to us so far as opinion here is concerned. The papers here have been exceedingly venomous. I am having a baize-covered board with a glass frame to fit in it put up in the vestibule, and promised the audience yesterday, speaking from the stage, that I would put up the American notices as they reached us, good and bad alike. At present I have put up an old picture frame with the rather lengthy London notices of the row. I think it wise that our own people should know that they see there on the board some proof of the reception we are getting.... Shaw has just sent me a copy of an interview he is sending to the New York Sun. He says you are ‘the greatest living Irishwoman,’ and adds you will beat the Clan na Gael as you beat the Castle. He makes a most amusing and ferocious attack on the Clan na Gael, and says they are not Irish.... But I forgot, you will have read it before this reaches you. I hope he will not have left you all in the plight the little boy was in after Don Quixote had beaten his master. He will, at any rate, have amused New York, which does not care for the Clan, and all fuel helps when one wants a fire. I am pleased that he has seen the issue—that we are the true Ireland fighting the false.”

I wrote home on December 1st. “The Company have signed on till end of February, so I shall most likely stay till then. The only thing I am at all afraid of is want of sleep. I don’t get much. Everyone says the climate here is exciting, but I may get used to it, and we have had exciting times.

“I have made my little room off the stage into a greenroom, and brought some books there and made regular arrangements for tea. There are no greenrooms in these theatres and the Company look rather miserable straying about. Mrs. G. is lending me her motor this afternoon and I am taking some of the players for a drive and to Quinn’s for tea. He is such a help to me, so capable and kind. My December horoscope, I remember, said, ‘Benefit through friends’ and I think it comes about a month wrong and that things happen in the previous month, for in November I had help from him and Bernard Shaw and Roosevelt!

“A priest came in yesterday to express his sympathy, and attended the plays, and I took him round to see the players. So far ‘the Church’ has not pronounced against us, only individual priests.... The servant maids are told we are ‘come to mock Ireland.’ We are answering nothing now, just going on. Bernard Shaw’s article is splendid, going to the root of the matter, as you say. I am just now going over to the theatre to see the start of the voice-production classes.... I determined there should be a beginning.”

“Dec. 12th. The luncheon with the Outlook was great fun. There were present the editors, an Admiral, and some other military heroes, and after lunch some one called for silence ‘that Lady Gregory might be questioned.’ So they asked questions from here and there, and I gave answers. For instance, they asked if the riot had affected our audience, and I said, yes, I was afraid more people had come to see us pelted than playing. And that I had met a few nights before in Buffalo a General Green, who told me that when driving through crowds cheering for Roosevelt, he had said to Roosevelt, ‘Theodore, don’t you feel elated by this?’ And Mr. Roosevelt had said, ‘Frank, I always keep in mind what the Duke of Wellington said on a similar occasion, “How many more would come to see me hanged”’ (great applause).... Someone asked me why I had worked so hard at the Theatre, and I quoted Blake: