[Page 169] 

CHAPTER VII

"THE PLAYBOY" IN AMERICA

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 [Page 170]  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 [Page 171]  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 rail- [Page 172]  way 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 [Page 173]  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, Mac Donough'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 [Page 174]  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 did n'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 [Page 175]  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 [Page 176]  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 [Page 177]  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 [Page 178]  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 [Page 179]  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 [Page 180]  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 [Page 181]  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 ex- [Page 182]  pressed 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 [Page 183]  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 [Page 184]  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 [Page 185]  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 did n'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 protecting 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 tonight exactly as it has been given in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, and many cities in Ireland and the other night in [Page 186]  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!" [Page 187] 

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 [Page 188]  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 [Page 189]  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. [Page 190]  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 [Page 191]  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 [Page 192]  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 playwriting, 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 did n'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 [Page 193]  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 "playwriting" 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,

"And may you better reck the rede
Than ever did the advisor!"

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 [Page 194]  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 did n'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 [Page 195]  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 [Page 196]  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. [Page 197]  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 [Page 198]  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 [Page 199]  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 [Page 200]  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 [Page 201]  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 tonight. The last Gaelic American says, 'The New York Irish will send the Anti-Irish Players back [Page 202]  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 tonight 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 need n't [Page 203]  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 would n'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 [Page 204]  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 [Page 205]  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 had n'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 [Page 206]  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 outpatient 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; [Page 207]  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 [Page 208]  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 Jew-man 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 [Page 209]  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! '" [Page 210] 

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 [Page 211]  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 No- [Page 212]  vember 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 [Page 213]  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:

I will not cease from mental strife
Or let the sword fall from my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In–Ireland's–fair and lovely land.

"For, I said, it was a part of the building of Jerusalem. This went very well, and in my lecture at Brooklyn in the evening I tried it again, but it was received with roars of delighted laughter. It was explained to me afterwards that a part of Brooklyn is full of Jews, who are trying to turn it into a Jerusalem of their own!

"Oh, I am tired to-night!"

"Dec. 15th. Mrs. –, the Catholic friend who is working for us, is sending to-day to the Tablet a very good notice of us written by a priest. She says educated priests and Catholics generally are so much ashamed of the riot that they give [Page 214]  out it was got up by the management! She wanted me to have this contradicted, but of course it would be useless. I have just had the Outlook and will send it on to you. Roosevelt 'commanded' Quinn to write an article on us. He said he could n't, but I think it is charming."

"Sunday, 27th. I don't think the Church will really turn on us. It would bring it into a fight with all the theatres and that would make it unpopular. Here Catholics take care to say, 'It is not the Church that is against you, only certain priests.' Father Y. telephoned me this afternoon, saying he was praying for us every day and for the success of our work, and that he thinks Workhouse Ward as fine as Shakespeare! Another priest, Father Z., Chaplain in the Navy, has asked me to tea, and says he will come to see the plays, only not The Playboy."

"A nice matinée yesterday. My friend the wild Irishman who comes to the theatre, tells me the Irish are 'waiting for us' in Chicago, but I don't see what they can do.

"The Gaelic American is firing a very distant and random gun now though it has headed an article 'Playboy as dead as a nail in a door.' I [Page 215]  have just been reading Masefield's Everlasting Mercy. How fine it is, as fine as Nan, but leading to Heaven and the wholesomeness of earth instead of poison pies!

"Mrs. – gave a tea for me yesterday, and people seemed enthusiastic and there is evidently a great deal of talk about us; but it is just like London, we are building downwards from the intellectuals. Image went so well last night I was glad I had put it on. Quinn was delighted with the scene and grouping. He thought each scene like an Augustus John drawing. . . . I believe the critics are bewildered because of so much new work. Priests keep dropping in and seem to enjoy the plays, and O'S. told me last night all the young men are either coming to see us or if they have no money, are reading our plays at the library and getting up debates concerning them.

"A lady at Philadelphia said to another, 'What did you really think of Lady Gregory's play, The "Cowboy" of the Western World ! '

"Many happy New Years to you!"

"December 29th. I am too tired to write a letter. This is just to say all is going well, big houses on these last nights. Kathleen and The [Page 216]  Playboy both go extremely well. We have got the audience, and I believe, and everyone says, we could now run on for weeks, but the theatre is let to someone else. It is just as well leaving at the top of the wave. Next week six towns, then Philadelphia.

"January 2d. I had a talk with Tyler. He was nice, and they want us to confirm the contract for next year. Talking of the opposition he said, 'The Irish seem to be always afraid of things.' . . . Last week was a real triumph."

"Philadelphia, January 9, 1912. I am staying here with Mr. and Mrs. Jayne, in a beautiful house, with great kindness from my host and hostess. We opened very well last night. We had a very appreciative audience. Mr. and Mrs. – afterwards gave a supper for me and presented me with an immense basket of roses.

"We dined on Sunday night with Dr. Furness, the old Shakespearean scholar. We went by rail and had to walk a little way to his house. It was four degrees above zero but so still it did n't seem cold. There has been a good deal of snow, and the streets are very slippery. It is impossible to walk at all without goloshes. [Page 217] 

"Mr. Jayne went after dinner to a meeting of a philosophical society founded by Franklin. He brought back philosophers and learned men of all sorts. We talked on astronomy. I told them I had once walked down the tube of Lord Rosse's big telescope. Mr. Jayne told of Herschel having his telescope brought to him when he was old that he might look at Orion and remember it as his last view of the heavens.

"The Jaynes and some of the philosophers went on to a ball at the Assembly Rooms, and I was invited. It gave me a sense of Philadelphia being a community of its own–very entertaining.

"A Rev. John – called on me yesterday, sending in a message that I used to teach him his catechism at Killinane Church. I had forgotten, but remembered him as a little Protestant boy. Something made me ask what church he belonged to. 'Catholic.' I said: 'My catechism didn't do much good then?' 'Yes,' he said, 'I was an Anglican clergyman for a great many years.' 'Why did you change?' 'Because of authority. I wanted authority, and I cannot give up the belief in the divinity of our dear Lord.' 'But we believe that.' 'No, it's being given up little [Page 218]  by little, and the bishops seemed uncertain. I wanted authority. '

"When we parted we talked about Roxborough thirty-eight years ago. I said, 'We must say a little prayer now and again for each other.' He said, 'Will you please say a great many for me.'

"By orders from New York two secret service men were sent to see me safely home from the theatre, quite unnecessary for Mr. Jayne, who is a leading lawyer, was sufficient escort."

"January 16th. We had a little trouble last night, the first of The Playboy. The first act had n't gone far when a man got up and protested loudly and wouldn't stop. Others shouted to him to go out or keep quiet, and called out 'New York Irish,' but it was a good while before the police could be stirred up to remove him. By that time another man in the stalls was calling out 'This is an insult.' The men near were calling to him to clear out, but they did n't help to evict him. It was Robinson who came at last and led him out like a lamb, but I believe he made some disturbance in the hall. By this time others had started a demonstration in the balcony and there was a good deal of noise, so that for about [Page 219]  ten minutes the play could n't be heard. I went round, but did n't make the actors repeat it, for I thought the audience ought to be made to suffer for not being more helpful. About twenty-five men were ejected or walked out, but all were given back their money at the box office, and I am sure will think it a sacred duty to spend it in the same way again. Two were arrested for assault. Nothing was thrown but a slice of currant cake, which hit Sinclair, and two or three eggs, which missed him–he says they were fresh ones. I lectured at the University this afternoon; some of the students had come and invited me. A very fine attendance, many of the audience standing. I spoke only half an hour, but made quite a new little lecture and it held them. I gave eight tickets to be given to athletes among the Pennsylvania students as A. D. C.'s for me to-night. They would have been very useful putting out offenders and taking messages to the stage. I rehearsed this morning, and then lectured and went to a 'College Club' tea–and I am tired and won't write more."

"January 17th. The riot last night was not so serious as I had expected. The agitators had [Page 220]  been so gently dealt with the first night and had had their money returned, one felt sure they would try again, and when I got to the theatre, one of the officials told me he had been watching the box office during the day, and had seen 'murderers' taking four or five seats together. The auditorium was very full, and at the back, where I sat, there were a great many suspicious-looking characters. One of them began to cough loudly during Kathleen ni Houlihan when Miss Allgood was singing the first little song, and to mutter, so that people near told him he was not the only person in the theatre. Others joined in coughing, but I sent a message round to have the lights put up, and the moment they were turned on, the coughs stopped. I pointed out this man, and was amused to see him sit through the play looking sullen but silent except for an occasional mutter or cough, which was stopped at once, for a policeman in plain clothes had been put on each side of him. Near the end, where all on the stage rush out after Christy when he is going to 'kill his father the second time,' he could not resist laughing, and then he walked out discomfited.

"There was a man behind me who coughed [Page 221]  loudly at intervals all through and sounded as if making ready to spit, so that it took all my courage not to move. In the third act, when Christy boasts of having 'cleft his father to the breeches belt,' he called out 'Shame, shame!' several times and walked out. However, whether he repented or looked through the glass screen at back of the stalls and saw the father come to life again, I don't know, but he returned and stayed to the end.

"The first man who made a noise was the most difficult to deal with. He crooked his legs round the legs of his chair, and it took four men to take him out. One, with a large roll of paper in his hand, stood up and called out that he represented the County Down. There were fifteen evicted altogether, all from the stalls, and some others walked out shouting protests.

"The police were more energetic last night and did their work very well and with joy, as Irish policemen would. The inspector too was there and seemed very determined. Also, I had my eight young athletes from the University at hand, ready and willing to give aid. The play was not interrupted for more than a minute or two at a [Page 222]  time. I told the players to stop speaking whenever there was a row, and to resume when it was over, so nothing was really lost. A good half of the protesters last night stayed till the end of the play. I think they were waiting for the bad bits to begin, so they saw it at all events. The papers say snuff was thrown, but I think not. I think it was premeditated coughing, but the throats did n't hold out very long. On the other hand, there were a lot of rough-looking Irishmen near me, three together on my bench, who did not take any part in the disturbance, and seemed to enjoy the play. I am sure, therefore, that there will be two parties. . . . I am having my University boys again tonight. Flynn had to leave in the middle of the evening and Robinson took Mrs. Flynn to the opera, so we were a little shorthanded, but got on all right. John Quinn is coming from New York and will stay the night, so I shall be quite easy."

"January 17th. At two o'clock I was just finishing lunch alone, Mrs. Jayne lunching out and Mr. Jayne being in bed with a cold, when I was rung up by Mr. Bradford, our manager at the Adelphi, to say that he had warning from Lieblers [Page 223]  that we might have to change the bill to-night and take off The Playboy. I said that could not be done, but he said it might be necessary. There is some legal point, and Mr. Bradford thought that we might all be arrested if we went on. I said I would rather be arrested than withdraw the play and could answer for the players feeling the same. He said there was also danger that Shubert, to whom the theatre belongs, might close it. I said that would be bad but not so bad as withdrawing The Playboy, for it would be Shubert's doing not ours, though that might not be much help in the public view. I was anxious, and I told Bradford not to consent to anything without consulting me. Then I called up John Quinn at New York, got him at his office, and asked him to see the Lieblers, and said that I need not tell him I would sooner go to my death than give in. He said he would see them at once, and that he would be here this evening, as he had intended. At 4 o'clock I heard again from Bradford. He said it had been decided to on, and that a bail bond had been prepared. He asked if there was anyone to represent me in case of my arrest. I said I would wait to consult [Page 224]  Quinn. It is such a mercy he is coming. My only fear is lest they should get out an injunction to stop the matinée to-morrow; even that would be claimed as a victory. They had told me at the theatre this morning there would probably be trouble to-night. The men arrested were let out, had their money returned, and were escorted through the streets by an admiring crowd. However, I should like to avoid arrest, because of the publicity; one would feel like a suffragette."

"Thursday, 18th. When Quinn arrived, we went straight to the theatre–it was then 7:15–and found the whole cast had already been technically arrested! The tactics of the enemy had been to arrest them in the theatre at 8 o'clock and so make a performance impossible. But the theatre lawyer had managed to circumvent them, and the Chief of Police, now our warm friend, had said he would not only refuse to let his men arrest the actors, but he would have anyone arrested who came on the stage to do so. In the end the warrants of arrest were issued and the manager of the theatre signed bail bonds for the appearance of the Company on Friday morning. The warrants are founded on a bill passed [Page 225]  last year in the municipality before S. Bernhardt's visit, forbidding 'immoral or indecent plays.' Our accuser is a liquor dealer. I should have been completely bewildered by the whole thing, but Quinn seemed to unravel it. We had a consultation with the theatre lawyer, and Mr. Jayne's partners, Mr. Biddle and Mr. Yocum, to whom he had sent me. The question seems to be whether it is best to have the hearing put off and brought before a judge, or whether to have it settled straight off tomorrow. The danger is that our case may come up for trial after some weeks, bringing us back here, making it possible for the enemy to boast that we were under bail. Quinn is this morning seeing all the lawyers again, and some decision as to our course will be come to.

"The Commissioner of Public Safety attended the play last night, and said the attack on it must be a joke. . . . I have been interrupted in this by the correspondent of the Telegraph coming to ask if it is true, as stated by the Irish Societies, that I am an envoy of the English Government. I referred him to Mr. Bryce, who, I suppose, would be my paymaster!"

"Saturday, 20th. I have been too anxious [Page 226]  and hard worked to write since Thursday. That was the last performance of The Playboy, and there was an immense audience. I could not get a seat. Even the little boxes at the top–it is a very high theatre with eight boxes at each side were all taken. I had made appointments with reporters and others, and had to get a high stool from the office put in the passage and sit there or at the back of the stage. It was the record matinée of the Adelphi. There was tremendous enthusiasm and not a sign of any disturbance. Of course, we had a good many policemen in the house, to the great regret of the management, who had to turn so much good money away. So that was quite a cheerful day. Someone in the audience was heard declaring that the players are not Irish, but all Jews. I had an anonymous letter from some one, who accuses me of the usual crimes and winds up: 'The writer has never saw the play, but has read all about you and it'! That is the way with most of the letter writers, I think.

"Yesterday, Friday morning, we attended the Magistrate's Court at nine o'clock. We had to wait nearly an hour in a tiny, stuffy room. When [Page 227]  the hearing began, I was given a chair behind the Magistrate, but the others had either to sit at the back of the inner room, where they could not see or hear, or stand as they did, for over an hour. The liquor-seller, our prosecutor, was the first witness. He had stayed only till Shawneen's 'coat of a Christian man' was left in Michael James's hands. He made a disturbance then and was turned out, but was able to find as much indecency even in that conversation as would demoralise a monastery. His brother, a priest, had stayed all through, and found we had committed every sin mentioned in the Act. Another witness swore that sentences were used in the play and that he had heard them, though they are not either in book nor play. Several witnesses were examined or asked to speak, all giving the same story, 'or if it was not the same story, anyway it was no less than the first story. '

"Our actors were furious. Kerrigan tried hard to keep from breaking out and risking all when the priest was attacking his (that is Shawn Keogh's) character and intentions. At last he called out, 'My God!' and the Magistrate said, 'If that man interrupts the Court again, turn him out,' [Page 228]  forgetting that he was speaking of a prisoner at the bar! Indeed, as the prosecutors grew excited, the trial of the Irish Players seemed to be forgotten, and it became the trial of Christy Mahon for the attempted murder of his father. Mr. Gray demanded that the actors should be 'held for Court,' but Quinn, knowing what would happen, had arranged for this, and our lawyers 'sued out a writ of habeas corpus ' (I hope this is the right expression) and had arranged with Judge Carr to try the case in the afternoon. Mr. Gray wanted then to have it tried at once. He said he had to leave town in the afternoon, but in the end the Judge said he could not arrange for the trial before three o'clock. This gave me time to telephone to John Quinn, who had thought the trial was not to be till next morning, and was attending cases of his own in New York. He answered that he would come if he possibly could. Then there was a message that he had missed the train by one minute, but had caught another, ten minutes later. At three o'clock we went to the Court, a large one this time. The Judge did n't know anything about the play, and had to be told the whole story as it went on, [Page 229]  just like old Wall in Dublin at our first riot, so before the case had gone far audience and officials were in a broad grin. The liquor-dealer got a different hearing this time, was asked some pertinent questions instead of being simply encouraged, as he was by the Magistrate.

"The dramatic event was the arrival of Quinn while a witness was being examined. We had got leave from the Judge for him to cross-examine, and the witness had to confess that the people of Ireland do use the name of God at other times than in blessing or thanking those who have been kind to them, and in gratitude or prayer, as he had at first asserted upon oath. Also when he based his attack on indecency by quoting the 'poacher's love,' spoken of by Christy, he was made to admit that, a few sentences earlier, marriage had been spoken of, 'in a fortnight's time when the banns will be called.' Whether this made it more or less moral, he was not asked to say. He called the play 'libidinous.'

"J. Q. asked one witness if anything immoral had happened on the stage, and he answered 'Not while the curtain was up!' I think it was the same witness who said, 'A theatre is no place [Page 230]  for a sense of humour.' The players beamed and the audience enjoyed themselves, and then when the Director of Public Safety was called and said he and his wife had enjoyed the play very much and had seen nothing to shock anybody, the enemy had received, as Quinn said, 'a knock-out blow.' He made a very fine speech then. There is just a little bit of it in the North American, but Mr. Gray made objections to its being reported, but anyhow, it turned the tables completely on the enemy. It was a little disappointment that the Judge did not give his verdict there and then, that we might have cabled home.

"A lot of people have been expressing sympathy. A young man from the University, who had been bringing a bodyguard for me on the riot nights, has just been to say good-bye, and told me the students are going to hold an indignation meeting. The Drama League, six hundred strong, has so far done or said nothing, though it is supposed to have sent out a bulletin endorsing the favourable opinion of Boston upon our plays, a week after we came here, not having had time to form an opinion of its own. Can you imagine their allowing such a thing to happen here as the arrest [Page 231]  of a company of artists engaged in producing a masterpiece, and at such hands! The Administration has been re-formed of late and is certainly on the mend, but there is plenty more to be done, although the city has an innocent look, as if it had gone astray in the fields, and its streets are named after trees. The Company are in a state of fury, but they adore John Quinn, and his name will pass into folk-lore like those stories of O'Connell suddenly appearing at trials. He spoke splendidly, with fire and full knowledge. You will see what he said about the witnesses in the North American and even Robinson says he 'came like an angel.'

"Sunday, 21st. Yesterday was a little depressing, for the Judge had not yet given out his decision; so we are still under bail and the imputations of indecency, etc. The Philadelphians say it because the Act is such a new one, it requires a great deal of consideration.

"A reporter came yesterday to ask whether I considered The Playboy immoral. I said my taking it about was answer enough, but that if he wished to give interesting news, he would go to the twenty-six witnesses produced against us (we [Page 232]  were not allowed to produce one on our side) and try to get at their opinions, and on what they were founded. He answered that he had already been to ten of them that morning, that they all answered in the same words, not two words of difference–that their opinion was founded on the boy and the girl being left alone in the house for the night. They can hardly have heard Quinn making the clerical witness withdraw his statement that immorality was implied by their being left together. I advised him also to look at the signed articles on the play in so many English and American magazines, and to remember that even here the plays have been taught in the dramatic classes of the University of Pennsylvania, that the President of Bryn Mawr had invited the players to the College for the day, and had sent a large party of students to the last matinée of The Playboy, leave being asked to introduce them to me. I told him he might print all this opposite the witnesses' opinions.

"Yesterday's matinée, Rising of the Moon, Well of the Saints, and Workhouse Ward, was again so crowded that I could not get a place and went and sat in the side-wings, where a cine- [Page 233]  matograph man came to ask if I would allow The Playboy to be used for a moving-picture exhibition, as it would be 'such a good advertisement for us!' Last night also there was a very good audience. We took just one dollar short of eight thousand dollars in the week. Such a pity the dollars were turned to the disturbers or we should have gone above it."

"I was advised to go to a certain newspaper office to get evidence that was considered necessary as to the standing of the magistrate who had issued the writ and before whom we had been brought (we had been advised to take an action for malicious arrest). The editor was generous enough to let me have from the files, classified in the newspaper office as 'Obituary Notices,' ready for use at the proper time an envelope containing reports of some curious incidents in the record of the magistrate in question. The editor lamented his troubles of the evening before when he had gone for supper to the Bellevue where I had met him. He had taken to the restaurant a young niece, who wanted something delicate for supper, whereas the editor himself wanted two soft-boiled eggs with rice and cream. These simple dishes, [Page 234]  however, could not be had at the fashionable Bellevue and he was able but to pick at a little of the delicate food. After he had taken the niece home, he made off to his own little homely restaurant, where he secured his rice and eggs. This, and an interview I had seen with Yeats, who supposes that our arrest was due to the fact that Philadelphia is a Puritan town, brought back the rural atmosphere."

Our friends at home were naturally amazed, especially in London where the posters of the newspapers had in large letters, "ARREST OF THE IRISH PLAYERS." Mr. Yeats wrote from Dublin, January 21st: "I need not tell you how startled I was when a reporter came to me on Thursday evening and asked me whether I had anything to say regarding the arrest of the Abbey Players. While I was talking to him and telling him I did n't really know anything about it (he was as ignorant of your crime as I was), a second reporter came in, equally urgent and ignorant. Then a wire came from the London correspondent of the New York Sun, asking for an opinion on the arrest of Abbey Players. We were speculating as to what it could [Page 235]  mean, and I was surmising it was Blanco, when a telegram came from the Manchester Guardian, saying it was The Playboy and asking me to see their reporter. Then a young man arrived with a telegram, and I thought he was the reporter and became very eloquent. He was sympathetic and interested, and when I had finished, explained that he was only the post-office messenger. Then another reporter turned up and after that the Manchester Guardian man. You will have had the papers before this. I think for the moment it has made us rather popular here in Dublin, for no matter how much evil people wish for the Directors, they feel amiable towards the players. If only Miss Allgood could get a fortnight, I think the pit would love even The Playboy. However, I imagine that after a few days of the correspondence columns, we shall discover our enemies again.

"We have done very well this week with the school. I am rather anxious that the school, or No. 2 Company, as it will be, should have in its repertory some of our most popular pieces. . . . The great thing achieved is that if Philadelphia had permanently imprisoned the whole Company, our new Company would in twelve months have [Page 236]  taken their place here in Dublin. We have now a fine general effect, though we have no big personalities."

"Philadelphia, Monday. I forget what I have written, and I don't know if I have explained that we were allowed no witnesses, either at the Magistrate's or the Judge's Court, and with our hastily instructed lawyers we should not have been able to make even any defence through them but for the miraculous appearance of John Quinn. And this is the fifth day we have been under bail on charge of indecency, and its like."

"January 22d, Hotel Algonquin, New York. Contrary to my directions Liebler's man had put on The Playboy for Pittsburg. It was asked for by some ladies who are taking the whole house for a charity performance. Now they have written to ask for another bill instead, Hyacinth, Riders, Workhouse; and the papers say that The Playboy has been taken off on religious grounds."

"Richmond, Indiana, January 24th. The journey to Pittsburg is a quite lovely journey, like Switzerland but less monotonous; the sunshine and snow exhilarating. The plays had begun [Page 237]  when I arrived. There was a very good audience and Hyacinth and Workhouse Ward made them laugh a great deal. Carnegie Hall is all gilding and marbles, and a gilded organ towers above the butcher's shop in Hyacinth. I had to make a little speech and was able to tell of the telegram from Philadelphia, saying the Judge had dismissed the case. We came on here through the night.

"An interviewer who came this morning has sent me an interesting book on Indiana book plates, and an old lady brought me an Irish Bible, and the jeweller who packed my watch would take nothing, and Miss Allgood has sent me a box of roses. So the stars must be in a good mood. I think we ought to start with The Playboy in Chicago and get that over. It would show we are not damped by Philadelphia."

We went on that night to Indianapolis. The Playboy had been specially asked for in Indianapolis. Protests against its production were made to the manager of the theatre by the Ancient Order of Hibernians and others, but the manager said he was powerless. They also called upon Superintendent of Police Hyland, who said: "I will have plenty of men at the theatre to quell a dis- [Page 238]  turbance. I don't believe, however, that there will be any trouble. If there are persons who do not like the show, they can stay away. But there is one thing certain; if they do not stay away and come to the show to make trouble, they will find plenty of it on hand."

The Mayor was also appealed to, but he did not see his way to stop the play. The Irish Societies then decided to stay away, and though the theatre was packed, the play went through in perfect peace.

"Chicago, Hotel La Salle, January 26th. Tyler wired me to come on here, so I left the Company at Indianapolis this morning and came on. We don't begin playing here till the 5th. No theatre is ready. Gaston Mayer was very urgent we should stay another week on account of getting here so late. I told the Company of this and they decided to stay. We shall therefore finish here March 2d and sail on the 6th. We had no trouble at Indianapolis last night. The police authorities were very firm and the threats collapsed. I wish Philadelphia had been as firm. They are all afraid of the politicians. . . .

"I was sorry to leave the Company. I feel [Page 239]  like Wilhelm Meister going through ever-fresh adventures with the little troop. As to the rows, I don't think there is anything you (Yeats) could have done, except that you would have done things yourself while others have done them for me. The Company insist on giving John Quinn a silver cup, in gratitude for his help. I have n't seen Flynn for a fortnight. He is astray among the one-night towns and talked to us at Indianapolis through the telephone, with a bad cold."

"25th or 26th. I see by the papers that at the La Salle Hotel, where I am staying, a meeting of Irishmen has been held at which an 'Anti-Irish Players' League' was formed, beginning with a membership of three hundred. Such a pity I could n't have slipped in to the meeting! A petition had also been written and was being sent out for signature, demanding the suppression of The Playboy. This petition was said to have been signed by eight thousand persons, and twenty thousand signatures were expected. Meanwhile the Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago, at the head of which are various benevolent ladies, had asked leave to buy up the whole house for the first performance [Page 240]  of The Playboy of the Western World. They meant to resell these seats at an increased price for their charity and believed it was likely to draw the largest audience. So they have taken the theatre for Tuesday, February 6, and the public performance of The Playboy will take place the next day."

"January 29th. My typewriter is mended at last, and I am getting settled. Last night one of the boy interviewers–they are all boys here–came in from one of the papers. He showed me two statements written by Liebler's manager here, one colourless, the other offering a reward of five thousand dollars to anyone who could prove the management had bribed rioters for the first night, as has been stated in the papers. I advised that this be put in, as people really seem to believe it is true. This young man had been to see many of the objectors. They said Synge was a 'degenerate,' who had lived abroad to collect a bad atmosphere, which he put round Irish characters afterwards. A nice young interviewer; he wants to write a play around his mother's life, to show what a mother's devotion can be. Another of them is twenty-five and is going to be married [Page 241]  next summer. He showed me his fiancée's portrait, and another went and hunted for a Don Quixote I wanted, to distract my mind from present-day things.

"This morning one came who is in with the Irish Clubs and had all the objections, but now seems quite friendly. He says one of the chief officers of the 'Anti-Irish Players' League' is a man called H., a son of old Mrs. H.! He has hinted that my sympathies are with the landlord side, and that he could tell tales of hard treatment. The interviewer wanted to know if a rehearsal could be held for the Mayor so that he might judge the play, but I said the first night under the patronage of the Anti-Cruelty Society would give him his opportunity. A lady interviewer then came, but I made her take her pencil and write down what I did say, which is more than the boys do. I tell them I put in my pig and it comes out sausage."

"Tuesday, January 30th. I am so tired! Last night I dined with the Hamills, friends of John Quinn. It was a very pleasant dinner and we all went afterwards to see The Woman, a good play in its realistic way. I came home quite cheery [Page 242]  but found in the passage one of my young interviewers, who told me the Town Council had unanimously voted against The Playboy being put on. He had been sent to ask me for a statement, but advised me not to make one, and there was nothing to say. I was going to bed near midnight when another interviewer arrived, and said the Mayor had acted on the recommendation of the Council and suppressed the play. He showed me an article which was to appear in the morning issue of his paper telling this. I was very sad for it seemed as if there was an end of the fight. The hot water apparatus in my room, which is always out of order, began grunting and groaning between one and two when I was asleep and wakened me; so I got no more sleep till late morning, and then was awaked by interviewers at the telephone. They even knocked at my door while I was dressing.

"When I went down, however, I found that the Mayor had not ordered the play off, and the article in the paper had had to be re-printed. Also Flynn arrived and was a help with the army who came in, entertaining them while I typed out a statement about the adventures of The Playboy [Page 243]  so far, and this statement I gave them. Then I 'phoned to Mr. Hamill, who is a lawyer and who had said last night he would help me in any legal difficulty. He came at once and was splendid. He went into the law of the case, and believes that if the Mayor does forbid it, we can take him into the Federal Court, and go on all right. He says another lawyer, who was at dinner last night, has also volunteered to serve. He went to try and see the Mayor but missed him. He is, however, to see him at noon tomorrow. He came back at five for another talk, and says he does n't think the Mayor has power to stop it. He has seen the Corporation lawyer.

"I was engaged to lunch with a nice Mrs. – at one, but got there after the hour and had to be back here before two, and it was an absurd thing: I had had my room changed. I had suffered so much from the unmanageable hot water that I threatened the manager that I would tell the interviewers about it, and he at once gave me another suite. My things were being brought up, and I could n't find hat or coat, therefore had to go just as I was. However the lunch was very pleasant and good, what I had of it. . . . [Page 244] 

"I came back to find a Mr. Field, editor of one of the papers, who had brought 'an enemy,' who announced he had come but for five minutes to hear my views, and spent at least ten in giving his own. Then Liebler's local manager came in. He also thinks we shall be able to circumvent the Mayor. He believes, however, the Mayor will give the order for political reasons, though he has some culture and would not like to be classed with the Aldermen. A couple of ladies called. One comfort of being attacked is that one finds friends to help. . . .

"I have nice rooms now on the ninth floor–there are twenty-two floors altogether–the place riddled with telephones, radiators, etc. I was glad to hear the voice of a fat housemaid from Mayo a while ago.

"It is a strange fate that sends me into battle after my peaceful life for so many years, and especially over Playboy, that I have never really loved, but one has to carry through one's job. One of the accusations has been that there are no Irish persons connected with the Company, and my answer is given accurately in one of the papers. 'The Players are all Irish by birth. They had [Page 245]  never left Ireland until they came to England on the tours made by us. With two exceptions all are Roman Catholics.

"'I believe the play is quite honestly considered by some of my countrymen out here to be injurious to Ireland and her claim for self-government, but I know that such an assumption is wrong and that the dignity of Ireland has been very much increased by the work of the Theatre, of which the genius of Mr. Synge is a component part.'"

"February 1st. Yesterday morning I took a holiday, went to see a little amateur play in a private house. It was on suffrage, called Everywoman, very short and rather amusing. It was given at 11 o'clock and afterwards there was an 'informal lunch,' rather a good idea,–little tables, not set out, here and there. There were first cups of delicious soup, then vegetable sandwiches with little cases of hot mince, and peas, just a plate and fork, then ices and black coffee, and bonbons. It was much pleasanter than sitting down to a table; one could move about. The luncheon was all over by 1:30, and then a Mrs. R– took me for a drive in her motor. We drove about thirty miles about the park and town [Page 246]  and along the lake side, but never really away from the town, which is immense. The lake is lovely, a soft turquoise blue, not the blue of the sea, and there was floating ice near the shore. It was luckily a bright day, the first we have had. Today there is snow again and darkness.

"When I came home, I set to work to correct a copy of The Playboy according to the prompt copy I had just had sent on by the Company, in case the Mayor wanted it. A journalist came in who wanted to know about the cuts, and I got him to help me. Then Mr. Hamill came; he does n't think there will be trouble. Then I took up a lot of telephone addresses that had been left for me to call up, and found one was from 'W. Dillon.' It was a Mr. Dillon representing the enemy, who had been brought to see me on Tuesday. My interview with him had appeared in a very mangled form next day and I found only then that he was a brother of John Dillon, M.P., and the Corporation lawyer. I called him up, and he answered from the City Hall, and said he was writing a report on the legal aspect of the case for the Mayor, and wanted to know if I was sure certain words had been left out of the acting ver- [Page 247]  sion, as I told him had always been done. I said yes, and I could now bring him the prompt copy. He assented and I went round to the City Hall. Mr. Dillon was sitting in his office, dictating to a shorthand writer. He said, 'You may listen to what I am dictating, but you must treat it as confidential.' I said, 'I will go away if you wish,' but he said, 'No, I will trust to your honour as a lady.' He was just finishing his statement, as printed in the papers this morning, denouncing the play but saying that, though in his opinion it might lead to a riot, he did not think the Mayor had power to stop it. I showed him the prompt copy. He asked if we could not strike out still more. I said the passages we had changed or left out had been changed in Mr. Synge's lifetime and with his consent, and we did not feel justified in meddling any more. I think he expected me to make some concession, for he said then, 'I think you would do much better to take the play off altogether.' I said we were bound by contract to Liebler to put on whatever plays they asked for. He said, 'Then it is not in your power to remove it?' I answered, 'No,' and that ended the matter. I felt sorry for the [Page 248]  moment, for it would have been gracious to make some small concession, but afterwards I thought of Parnell. . . . We may bring that play some other time, and there are many who think his betrayal a greater slur upon Ireland than would be even the real killing of a father.

"The Examiner announces that the Mayor won't stop the play. He has said. 'I do not see how the performance can be stopped. I have read part of it and its chief characteristic seems to be stupidity rather than immorality. I should think it would take more than a regiment of soldiers to compel an audience to fill the Grand Opera House to see such a poor production. I certainly shall not see it.'

"I hope I may get some breathing time. The idea of a day spent playing with little Richard seems an impossible heaven! And I feel a little lonely at times. It is a mercy this will be the last fight. I don't think it is over yet. . . . I like to hear of the success of the school. It will be a great enjoyment sitting down to listen to a verse play again if I survive to do it!"

"Feb. 3rd. I dined with the McC–s, and went on to the Opera, Tristan and Isolde, which [Page 249]  I had never seen. It was a great delight, a change from worries. I like the people here. They are more merry than those of the other cities somehow, at least those I have fallen amongst. They are vital. They don't want to die till they see what Chicago is going to do.

"There is snow on the ground and yesterday when I went for a walk, the cold frightened me at first,–such pain in the face, but I went on and got used to it. The thermometer has been six below zero."

"Feb. 8th. I seem to have been busy ever since. The first night of The Playboy was anxious. I was not really anxious the Anti-Cruelty night, and it went off quite peaceably, but I was last night, the open one, for, as I quoted from Image, 'There are always contrary people in a crowd.' But the play was acted in entire peace. I nearly fell asleep! It seems complete victory. The Corporation had to rescind their resolution against it, and I suppose the objectors found public opinion was too strong to permit any protest to be made. It is a great mercy. I did not know how great the strain was till it was over.

"On Monday we opened to a fairly large house [Page 250]  with comedies and they were well received. The Hull House Players came and gave me a lovely bunch of roses. They have been acting some of my plays. When I got back to the hotel, I found a threatening letter written in vile language, and with picture of coffin and pistol, saying I would 'never see the hills of Connemara again,' and was about to meet with my death. It seems a miracle to have got through such a Wood of Dangers with flags flying."

"Feb. 12th. Everything goes on so peaceably we are astonished. The Playboy finished its five days' run on Saturday with never a boo or a hiss. I believe the enemy are making some excuse for themselves, saying they won't riot because it was said they were paid to do so, but it is an extraordinary defeat for them. Quinn was much excited over it when he was here, and he did not know the extent of our victory. He thinks it the pricking of the bubble of all the societies that have been terrorising people. Fibs go on, of course, and a Mrs. F– told me that her Irish maid said she had been forbidden to go to The Playboy 'because it runs down the courage of the Irish.' She was sad, and said 'The Irish always had courage.' [Page 251] 

"It makes one think The Playboy more harmless even than one had thought, their having to make up these inventions. One is glad to put it on for them to see. I feel like Pegeen showing off Christy to the Widow Quinn, 'See now is he roaring, romping?' The author of 'An Open Letter to Lady Gregory' came to me at some Club to ask if I had seen it. I said yes, and that the paper had telephoned to know if I would answer it, but I had said no, and that I wished all my critics would write me open letters instead of personal ones, as I could leave them unanswered without discourtesy.

"We have a good following among the intellectuals, and a good many Irish begin to come in. We know that by the reception of Rising of the Moon.

"Coming back from my lecture at Detroit, I was to have arrived at Chicago at eight o'clock. I awoke to find we were in a blizzard. The train got stuck in a suburb of Chicago, and after hours of waiting we had to wade across the track, ankle deep in snow, I in my thin shoes! After fighting the blizzard, we had to sit in a shed for another hour or two. Then they said we must wade [Page 252]  back to the train. They thought it could be run to the station. I thought I might as well wait for my end where I was, as I could not carry my baggage and there was no one to help me, so stayed on my bench. After a bit some omnibuses came to our relief, and I being near the door was put in first, and got to the hotel at three o'clock. I had not had breakfast, expecting we should be in, and when I asked for it later, the car had been taken off, so all the food I had was a dry roll I had taken from the hotel on Sunday. However, I was none the worse, and glad to have seen a blizzard. It was the worst they had had for many years, deaths were caused by it, and much damage was done.

"I have been walking to the theatre every night as usual in spite of that threatening letter. I don't feel anxious, for I don't think from the drawing that the sender has much practical knowledge of firearms.

"I can hardly believe we shall sail next week! It will be a great rest surely. . . Well, we have had a great victory!"

[Chapter VIII]

Notes:

[Page 202]

¹ See extract in appendix.