“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 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!”
THE BINDING
I had but just written these pages and put together these letters when in last Christmas week we set out again for America. We spent there the first four months of this year, but this time there were no riots and we were of the happy people who have no history, unless it may be of the continued kindness of America, and of the growing kindness and better understanding on the part of our own countrymen.
Last year, it was often said to me in New York and elsewhere, “You must not think that we Americans helped in these attacks.” And I would answer, “No; our countrymen took care to make that clear by throwing our national potato. If you had attacked us you would have thrown pumpkins, and we should have fared worse than Æsop’s philosopher under the oak.”
I think the facts I have given show that the opposition was in every case planned and ordered before the plays had been seen—before we landed, and by a very small group working through a political organisation. As to the reason and meaning of that attack, it is for those who made it to set that out. I cannot but remember Alexander Hamilton’s words when the building of America began: “After this war is over, will come the real war, the great battle of ideas”; and that the long political war in Ireland may be, and seems to be, nearing its end. I think too of Laeg looking out from the wounded Cuchulain’s tent and making his report at Ilgaireth: “I see a little herd of cattle breaking out from the west of Ailell’s camp, and there are lads following after them and trying to bring them back, and I see more lads coming out from the army of Ulster to attack them”; and how Cuchulain said: “That little herd on the plain is the beginning of a great battle.” The battle of ideas has been fought elsewhere and against other dramatists. Was not Ibsen banished from his country, and Molière refused Christian burial?
It is after all the old story of the two sides of the shield. Some who are lovers of Ireland believe we have lessened the dignity of Ireland by showing upon the stage countrymen who drink and swear and admire deeds of violence, or who are misers and covetous or hungering after land. We who are lovers of Ireland believe that our Theatre with its whole mass of plays has very greatly increased that dignity, and we are content to leave that judgment to the great arbitrator, Time. And amongst the Irish in America it was easy to rouse feeling against us. Is not the new baby always the disturber in the household? Our school of drama is the newest birth in Ireland, that Ireland which had become almost consecrated by distance and by romance. An old Irishwoman who loves her country very much said while I was in America: “I don’t want to go back and see Ireland again. It is a finished picture in my mind.” But Ireland cannot always be kept as a sampler upon the wall. It has refused to be cut off from the creative work of the intellect, and the other countries creating literature have claimed her as of their kin.