Mr. Yeats wrote from Dublin when he heard of the riot: “December 3d. What a courageous man Roosevelt is! I mean courageous to go so much beyond official routine. I think it is the best thing that has ever happened to us so far as opinion here is concerned. The papers here have been exceedingly venomous. I am having a baize-covered board with a glass frame to fit in it put up in the vestibule, and promised the audience yesterday, speaking from the stage, that I would put up the American notices as they reached us, good and bad alike. At present I have put up an old picture frame with the rather lengthy London notices of the row. I think it wise that our own people should know that they see there on the board some proof of the reception we are getting.... Shaw has just sent me a copy of an interview he is sending to the New York Sun. He says you are ‘the greatest living Irishwoman,’ and adds you will beat the Clan na Gael as you beat the Castle. He makes a most amusing and ferocious attack on the Clan na Gael, and says they are not Irish.... But I forgot, you will have read it before this reaches you. I hope he will not have left you all in the plight the little boy was in after Don Quixote had beaten his master. He will, at any rate, have amused New York, which does not care for the Clan, and all fuel helps when one wants a fire. I am pleased that he has seen the issue—that we are the true Ireland fighting the false.”
I wrote home on December 1st. “The Company have signed on till end of February, so I shall most likely stay till then. The only thing I am at all afraid of is want of sleep. I don’t get much. Everyone says the climate here is exciting, but I may get used to it, and we have had exciting times.
“I have made my little room off the stage into a greenroom, and brought some books there and made regular arrangements for tea. There are no greenrooms in these theatres and the Company look rather miserable straying about. Mrs. G. is lending me her motor this afternoon and I am taking some of the players for a drive and to Quinn’s for tea. He is such a help to me, so capable and kind. My December horoscope, I remember, said, ‘Benefit through friends’ and I think it comes about a month wrong and that things happen in the previous month, for in November I had help from him and Bernard Shaw and Roosevelt!
“A priest came in yesterday to express his sympathy, and attended the plays, and I took him round to see the players. So far ‘the Church’ has not pronounced against us, only individual priests.... The servant maids are told we are ‘come to mock Ireland.’ We are answering nothing now, just going on. Bernard Shaw’s article is splendid, going to the root of the matter, as you say. I am just now going over to the theatre to see the start of the voice-production classes.... I determined there should be a beginning.”
“Dec. 12th. The luncheon with the Outlook was great fun. There were present the editors, an Admiral, and some other military heroes, and after lunch some one called for silence ‘that Lady Gregory might be questioned.’ So they asked questions from here and there, and I gave answers. For instance, they asked if the riot had affected our audience, and I said, yes, I was afraid more people had come to see us pelted than playing. And that I had met a few nights before in Buffalo a General Green, who told me that when driving through crowds cheering for Roosevelt, he had said to Roosevelt, ‘Theodore, don’t you feel elated by this?’ And Mr. Roosevelt had said, ‘Frank, I always keep in mind what the Duke of Wellington said on a similar occasion, “How many more would come to see me hanged”’ (great applause).... Someone asked me why I had worked so hard at the Theatre, and I quoted Blake:
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!