Lady Gregory pictured on the frontispiece to "Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography" (1913).
Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (15 March 1852–22 May 1932), née Isabella Augusta
Persse, was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and others, she co-founded
the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey
Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of
stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with
British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the changes to
occur in Ireland during her lifetime.
Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind Irish Literary Revival. Her home
at Coole Park, County Galway served as an important
meeting place for leading Revival figures, and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for
the theatre's development as her creative writings. Her motto was taken from Aristotle: "To
think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people."[1]
Early life and marriage
Lady Gregory was born the youngest daughter of the Anglo-Irish landlord class family
Persse in Roxborough, County Galway. Her mother, Frances Barry, was related to
Standish Hayes O'Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, and her
family home, Roxborough, was a 6,000 acre (24 km²) estate, the big house of which was later burnt down during the
Irish Civil War.[2] She was educated at home, and her future career was strongly influenced by the family nurse (i.e.
nanny), Mary Sheridan, a Catholic and a native Irish
speaker, who introduced the young Isabella Augusta Persse to the history and legends of the local area. This early
introduction may have had a greater impact on her than it otherwise would because the house had no library and her mother, a
strict evangelical Protestant, forbade her to read
novels until she was 18.
She married Sir William Henry Gregory, a widower with an estate at Coole Park,
near Gort, County Galway on 4 March, 1880,[3] at a Protestant church
in Dublin. As the wife of a knight, she became entitled to the title "Lady Gregory." Sir William Gregory, who was 35 years older
than his bride, had just retired from his position of Governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka),
having previously served several terms as Member of Parliament for Galway County. He was a well-educated man with many literary and artistic
interests, and the house at Coole Park housed a large library and extensive art collection, both of which his bride was eager to
explore. He also had a house in London, and the couple spent a considerable amount of time there holding a weekly
salon which was frequented by many of the leading literary and artistic figures of the
day, including Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, John Everett Millais
and Henry James. Their only child, Robert Gregory, was born in 1881. He was killed while
serving as a pilot during the First World War, an event that inspired Yeats's poems "An
Irish Airman Foresees His Death" and "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory".[4][5]
Early writings
The Gregorys travelled in Ceylon, India, Spain, Italy and Egypt. While in Egypt, Lady Gregory had an affair with the English
poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt[6] during which she wrote a series of love poems, A Woman's Sonnets. Blunt later published these
poems under his own name.
Her earliest work to appear under her own name was Arabi and His Household (1882), a pamphlet—originally a letter to
The Times newspaper—in support of Ahmed Arabi Bey,
leader of what has come to be known as the Urabi Revolt - an 1879 Egyptian nationalist
revolt against the oppressive regime of the Khediveand against European domination of Egypt. She
later said of this booklet, 'whatever political indignation or energy was born with me may have run its course in that Egyptian
year and worn itself out'. despite this, in 1893 she published A Phantom’s Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin, an anti-Nationalist
pamphlet against William Gladstone's proposed second Home
Rule Act. She performed charitable work in the parish of St. Stephen’s, Southwark,
London and wrote a pamphlet, Over the River (1887) about her experiences there.
Lady Gregory continued to write prose during the period of her marriage. During the winter of 1883, while her husband was in
Ceylon, she worked on a series of memoirs of her childhood home with a view to publishing them under the title An Emigrant's
Notebook,[7] but this plan was abandoned. She also
wrote a number of short stories in the years 1890 and 1891, although these also never appeared in print. A number of unpublished
poems from this period have also survived. When Sir William Gregory died in March 1892, Lady Gregory went into mourning and
returned to Coole Park where she edited her husband's autobiography, which she published in 1894.[8] She was to write later "If I had not married I should not have
learned the quick enrichment of sentences that one gets in conversation; had I not been widowed I should not have found the
detachment of mind, the leisure for observation necessary to give insight into character, to express and interpret it. Loneliness
made me rich - "full", as Bacon says."[3]
Cultural nationalism
A trip to Inisheer in the Aran Islands in 1893 reawoke
an interest the Irish language[9] and in the folklore
of the area in which she lived. She organised Irish lessons at the school at Coole and began collecting tales from the area
around her home, especially from the residents of Gort workhouse. This activity led to the
publication of a number of volumes of folk material, including A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906), The Kiltartan
History Book (1909), and The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910). She also produced a number of collections of Kiltartanese
versions of Irish myths, including Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and
Fighting Men (1904). In his introduction to the former, Yeats wrote "I think this book is the best that has come out of
Ireland in my time."[10] James Joyce was to parody this claim in the Scylla and
Charybdis chapter of his novel Ulysses.[11] Flann O'Brien would also parody the book
in his At Swim-Two-Birds with his overly literal versions of the myths of the
Fenian cycle.
Towards the end of 1894, encouraged by the positive reception of the editing of her husband's autobiography, Lady Gregory
turned her attention to another editorial project. She decided to prepare selections from Sir William Gregory's grandfather's
correspondence for publication as Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box 1813–30 (1898). This entailed researching Irish history of the
period, and one outcome of this work was a shift in her own position from the 'soft' Unionism of her earlier writing on Home Rule to a definite support of Irish nationalism and Republicanism and what she was
later to describe as "a dislike and distrust of England".[12]
Founding of the Abbey
Edward Martyn was a neighbour of Lady Gregory, and it was during a visit to his house
in Tulira that she first met W. B. Yeats.[13] Discussions between the three of them over the following year or so led to the founding of the Irish
Literary Theatre in 1899.[14] Lady Gregory undertook
fundraising, and the first programme consisted of Martyn’s The Heather Field and Yeats's The Countess Cathleen.
During this period, she effectively co-authored Yeats's early plays, including The Countess Cathleeen, specifically
working on the passages of dialogue involving peasant characters.
The Irish Literary Theatre project lasted until 1901,[15] when it collapsed due to lack of funding. In 1904, Lady Gregory, Martyn, Yeats, John Millington Synge, Æ, Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman and William and Frank Fay came together to form the Irish National Theatre
Society. The first performances staged by the society took place in a building called the Molesworth Hall. When the
Hibernian Theatre of Varieties in Lower Abbey Street and an adjacent building in
Marlborough Street became available, Horniman and William Fay agreed to their purchase and refitting to meet the needs of the
society.
On 11 May 1904, the society formally accepted Horniman's offer
of the use of the building. As Horniman was not normally resident in Ireland, the Royal Letters Patent required were paid for by
her but granted in the name of Lady Gregory.[3]
One of her own plays, Spreading the News was performed on the opening night,
27 December, 1904.[16] At the opening of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in January
1907, a significant portion of the crowd rioted, causing the remainder of the performances to be acted out in dumbshow.[17] Lady Gregory did not
think as highly of the play as Yeats did, but she defended Synge as a matter of principle. Her view of the affair is summed up in
a letter to Yeats where she wrote of the riots; "It is the old battle, between those who use a toothbrush and those who
don't."[18]
Later career
The cover of Lady Gregory's 1905 play
The White Cockade
Lady Gregory remained an active director of the theatre until ill health led to her retirement in 1928. During this time she
wrote more than 19 plays, mainly for production at the Abbey.[9] Many of these were written in an attempted transliteration of the Hiberno-English dialect spoken around Coole Park that became widely known as Kiltartanese, from the
nearby village of Kiltartan. Her plays, which are rarely performed now, were not particularly
popular at the time. Indeed, the Irish writer Oliver St John Gogarty once wrote
"the perpetual presentation of her plays nearly ruined the Abbey". In addition to her plays, she wrote a two volume study of the
folklore of her native area called Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland in 1920. She also played the lead role in
three performances of Cathleen Ni Houlihan in 1919.
During her time on the board of the Abbey, Coole Park remained her home and she spent her time in Dublin staying in a number
of hotels. In these, she ate frugally, often on food she brought with her from home. She frequently used her hotel rooms to
interview would-be Abbey dramatists and to entertain the company after opening nights of new plays. She spent many of her days
working on her translations in the National Library of Ireland. She gained a
reputation as being a somewhat conservative figure.[19]
For instance, when Denis Johnston submitted his first play Shadowdance to the
Abbey, it was rejected by Lady Gregory and returned to the author with "The Old Lady says No" written on the title page.[20] Johnson decided to rename the play, and The Old Lady Says
'No' was eventually staged by the Gate Theatre in 1928.
Retirement and death
Lady Gregory in later life
When she retired from the Abbey board, Lady Gregory returned to live in Galway, although she continued to visit Dublin
regularly. The house and demesne at Coole Park had been sold to the Irish Forestry Commission in 1927, with Lady Gregory retaining life tenancy.[21] Her Galway home had long been a focal point for the writers associated with the
Irish Literary Revival and this continued after her retirement. On a tree in what were the grounds of the now demolished house,
one can still see the carved initials of Synge, Æ, Yeats and his artist brother Jack,
George Moore, Sean O'Casey,
George Bernard Shaw, Katharine Tynan and
Violet Martin. Yeats wrote five poems about or set in the house and grounds: "The
Wild Swans at Coole", "I walked among the seven woods of Coole", "In the Seven Woods", "Coole Park, 1929" and "Coole Park and
Ballylee, 1931".
The woman Shaw once described as "the greatest living Irishwoman"[22] died at home at the age of 80 from breast cancer,[8] and is buried in the New Cemetery in Bohermore, County Galway. The entire contents of Coole Park were
auctioned three months after her death and the house demolished in 1941.[23] Lady Gregory's plays fell out of favour after her death and are now rarely performed. She kept
diaries and journals for most of her adult life, and many of these have been published since her death. They are a rich source of
information on Irish literary history for the first three decades of the 20th century and her diaries covering the period of the
founding of the Abbey are the only extant contemporary record of these events written by a major participant.
Notes
- ^ Yeats, William Butler. "Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend and Myth".
Penguin Classics, Republished February 26, 2002. p. 391. ISBN 0-1401-8001-X.
- ^ Foster (2003), p. 484.
- ^ a b c Reddin, Paul.
"Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory - Playright". An Irish Life, 2007. Retrieved on 23 September, 2007.
- ^ "Representing the Great War: Texts and Contexts". The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8 th Edition. Retrieved
on 05 October, 2007.
- ^ Kermode, Frank. "Romantic Image". (New York) Vintage Books, 1957. p.
31.
- ^ Hennessy, Caroline. "Lady Gregory: An Irish Life by Judith
Hill". Radio Telefís Éireann, 2007. Retrieved on 23 September, 2007.
- ^ Garrigan Mattar, Sinéad. "Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival",
(Oxford University Press), 2004. p. 187. ISBN 0-1992-6895-9.
- ^ a b Gonzalez, Alexander G. "Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook".
Greenwood Press, 1997. p. 98.
- ^ a b Lady Gregory". Irish Writers Online. Retrieved on 23
September, 2007.
- ^ Love, Damian. "Sailing to Ithaca: Remaking Yeats in Ulysses". The Cambridge
Quarterly - Volume 36, Number 1, 2007, pp. 1-10.
- ^ Emerson Rogers, Howard. "Irish Myth and the Plot of Ulysses ". ELH, Vol.
15, No. 4. December 1948. pp. 306-327.
- ^ Komesu, Okifumi; Sekine, Masaru. "Irish Writers and Politics". Barnes & Noble Books, 1990. p. 102
- ^ Graham, Rigby. "Letter from Dublin". American Notes & Queries, Vol. 10,
1972.
- ^ Foster (2003). pp. 486, 662.
- ^ Kavanagh, Peter. "The Story of the Abbey Theatre: From Its Origins in
1899 to the Present". (New York): Devin-Adair, 1950.
- ^ Murray, Christopher. "Introduction to the abbeyonehundred
Special Lecture Series". abbeytheatre.ie. Retrieved on 06 October, 2007.
- ^ Ellis, Samantha. "The Playboy of the
Western World, Dublin, 1907". The Guardian, 16 April, 2003. Retrieved on 23 September, 2007.
- ^ Frazier, Adrian. "The double
life of a lady". The Irish Times 23 March, 2002.
Retrieved on 23 September, 2007.
- ^ DiBattista, Maria; McDiarmid, Lucy. "High and Low Moderns: Literature and
Culture, 1889-1939". (New York): Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 216.
- ^ Dick, Susan; Ellmann, Richard; Kiberd, Declan. "Essays for Richard
Ellmann: Omnium Gatherum". McGill-Queen's Press, The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 22, Medieval Narrative Special Number,
1992. p. 183.
- ^ Genet, Jacqueline. "The Big House in Ireland: Reality and
Representation". Barnes & Noble, 1991. p. 271.
- ^ Goldsmith, Oliver. "The Works of Oliver Goldsmith". (London), John
Murray, 1854. p. 178. OCLC: 2180329.
- ^ "Brief History of Coole Park". coolepark.ie, 2005. Retrieved on 05
October, 2007.
Sources
- Foster, R. F. (2003). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II: The Arch-Poet 1915–1939. (New York): Oxford UP. ISBN
0-19-818465-4.
- Igoe, Vivien. A Literary Guide to Dublin. Methuen, 1994. ISBN 0-413-69120-9
- Pethica, James. Introduction to Lady Gregory’s Diaries 1892–1902 Colin Smythe, 1995. ISBN 0-86140-306-1
- Ryan, Philip B. The Lost Theatres of Dublin. The Badger Press, 1998. ISBN 0-9526076-1-1
Further Reading
Print
- Kohfeldt, Mary Lou. "Lady Gregory: The Woman Behind the Irish Renaissance". André Deutsch, 1984. 0689114869
- McDiarmid, Lucy; Waters, Maureen (edit). "Lady Gregory: Selected Writings". Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, 1996.
ISBN-10: 0140189556
- Napier, Taura. "Seeking a Country: Literary Autobiographies of Irish Women". Univ. Press of America, 2001. ISBN:
0-7618-1934-7
Online
External links
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Gregory, Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
Persse, Isabella Augusta |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
Irish playwright, poet, folklorist |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
March 15, 1852 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
Roxborough, County Galway, Ireland |
| DATE OF DEATH |
May 22, 1932 |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
Coole Park, County Galway, Ireland |
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