On September 19th I said good-bye to home, where I had meant to spend a quiet winter, writing and planting trees, and to the little granddaughter for whose first appearance in the world I had waited. There had not been many days for preparation, but it was just as well I did not require large trunks, for on the eve of my journey a railway strike was declared in Ireland and there were no trains to take any one to Queenstown. Motors are still few in the country. We wired to Limerick but all were engaged already; to Galway which did not answer at all; and to Loughrea, where the only one had already been engaged by my neighbour, Lord Gough, who had friends with him who also wanted means to travel. I could but send over a message to his home, Lough Cutra Castle, in the dark of night; and a kindly answer came that he would yield his claim to mine. So at midday on September 19th, I set out with such luggage as I could take, to cross the five counties that lay between me and Queenstown harbour. One of the tires broke at intervals, once on the top of a wild mountain in, I think, the County Limerick, and people came out from a lonely cottage to say how far we were from any town or help; and these delays kept us from reaching Cork till after dark. Then we went on towards Queenstown in a fine rain which had begun, and after a while when we stopped to ask the way we were told we had gone eight miles beyond it. But I was in time after all, went out in the tender and joined the Cymric next morning, and so made my first voyage across the ocean. The weather was rather cold and rough and I was glad of a rest, and stayed a good deal in my cabin. I knew no one on board and I had leisure to write a little play, MacDonough’s Wife, which had been forming itself in my mind for a while past.
I had always had a passion for the sea, as I saw it from our coasts and in our bays and invers, and when going through the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. But the great Atlantic seemed dark and dead and monotonous, and it was a relief when on the last day or two one could see whales spouting, and a sparrow came and perched on the ship; and then fishing boats, looking strange in shape and rigging, came in sight, and I felt like Christopher Columbus.
Mr. Yeats, who had gone on with the Company, came to meet me on board ship as we arrived at Boston on September 29th, St. Michael’s Day, and told me of the success of the first performances there; and that evening I went to the Plymouth Theatre and found a large audience, and a very enthusiastic one, listening to the plays. I could not but feel moved when I saw this, and remembered our small beginnings and the years of effort and of discouragement.
The interviewers saved me the trouble of writing letters these first days. I sent papers home instead. It was my first experience of this way of giving news, and I was amused by it. One always, I suppose, likes talking about oneself and what one is interested in, and that is what they asked me to do. I found them everywhere courteous, mannerly, perhaps a little over-insistent. I think I only offended one, a lady in a provincial town. She wanted to talk about The Playboy, and for reasons of policy I didn’t. She avenged herself by saying I had no sense of humour and that my dress (Paris!) “had no relation to the prevailing modes.”
I had plenty to do at first. I had not much time to go about, for I rehearsed all the mornings and could not leave the theatre in the evenings, but when I got free of constant rehearsal I was taken by friends to see, as I longed to see, something of the country. I wanted especially to know what the coast here was like—whether it was very different from our own of Galway and of Clare; and I had a wonderful Sunday at a fine country house on the North Shore, and saw the islands and the reddish rocks, not like our grey ones opposite; and the lovely tints of the autumn leaves, a red and yellow undergrowth among the dark green trees. My hostess’s grandchildren were playing about. One said, “I am going to be a bear,” and grunted. It made me so glad to think the little grandson at home has a playfellow in the making—in the cradle!
Boston is a very friendly place. There are so many Irish there that I had been told at home there is a part of it called Galway, and I met many old friends. Some I had known as children, sons of tenants and daughters, now comfortably settled in their own houses. I had known of the nearness of America before I came, for I remember asking an old woman at Kiltartan why her daughter who had been home on a visit had left her again, and she had said, “Ah, her teeth were troubling her and her dentist lives at Boston.” England, on the other hand, seems a long way off, and there are many tears shed if a child goes even to a good post over the Channel. Two dear old ladies came to see me, daughters of an old steward of my father’s. One of them said she used to “braid my hair” as a child that I might be in time for family prayers, and had wept when she saw the snapshots in the papers after I landed, and found I was so changed. She said, weeping, “I hope the people of America know you are a real lady; if not, I could testify to it!” And I was able to write to my son of the well-being of tenants’ children: “T. C. and his wife came to the theatre and brought me a beautiful bouquet of pink carnations. I had a visit from M. R., such a handsome, smart girl, and from N. H., sending up her visiting card, very pleased with herself. Many of the ladies I meet tell me the cook or laundress or manservant are so excited at their meeting me and know all about me.” And the son of a Welsh carpenter who had lived at Roxborough in my childhood met me at the theatre door after Spreading the News and said, “I never thought, when you used to teach us in Sunday School, you would ever write such merry comedies.” This reminded me of the tailor from Gort who wrote home after a visit to the Abbey, “No one who knows Lady Gregory would ever think she had so much fun in her.”
On October 8th I wrote home: “I send a paper with opinions for and against the plays. I am afraid there may be demonstrations against Harvest and The Playboy. The Liebler people don’t mind, think it will be an advertisement. I was cheered by a visit from some members of the Gaelic League, saying they were on our side and asking me to an entertainment next Sunday, and from D. K., who is very religious and wants to go into a convent. She says the attacks on the plays are by very few and don’t mean anything. Most of the society people are in the country, but they motor in sixty or eighty miles for the plays. Last night we had a little party on the stage: some Gaelic Leaguers, who brought me a bouquet; some people from the Aran colony—including Synge’s friend, McDonough, whom I had also known in Aran; and from Kiltartan Mary R. and a cousin and Mrs. Hession’s daughters, with the husband of one. They were very smart, one in a white blouse, another in a blue one with pearl necklace. You must tell Mrs. Hession they are looking so well. The management gave us sandwiches on the stage, and punchbowls of claret cup, and we had Irish songs and I called for a cheer for Ireland in Boston. I enjoyed very much watching the Hession women at the play. They nearly got hysterics in Workhouse Ward, and when the old woman comes on, they did not laugh but bent forward and took it quite seriously. It shows the plays would have a great success in the country. The County Galway Woman’s League have asked me to be their president.... Members of the Gaelic League are working a banner for me. They showed me the painted design at a party given in our honour. Yeats leaves for New York to-day, but comes back for first night of The Playboy next Monday and sails Tuesday. They are rather afraid of trouble, but I think the less controversy the better now. It should be left between the management and the audience.
“The manager says we may stay longer in Boston, we are doing so well. I should like to stay on. It is a homey sort of place. I am sent quantities of flowers, my room is full of roses and carnations.”
Now as to the trouble over The Playboy. We were told, when we arrived, that opposition was being organised from Dublin, and I was told there had already been some attacks in a Jesuit paper, America. But the first I saw was a letter in the Boston Post of October 4th, the writer of which did not wait for The Playboy to appear but attacked plays already given, Birthright and Hyacinth Halvey. The letter was headed in large type, “Dr. J. T. Gallagher denounces the Irish Plays, says they are Vulgar, Unnatural, Anti-National, and Anti-Christian.” The writer declared himself astonished at “the parrot-like praise of the dramatic critics.” He himself had seen these two plays and “my soul cried out for a thousand tongues to voice my unutterable horror and disgust.... I never saw anything so vulgar, vile, beastly, and unnatural, so calculated to calumniate, degrade, and defame a people and all they hold sacred and dear.”