SPREADING THE NEWS[37]
By
AUGUSTA GREGORY
Isabella Augusta Persse, later Lady Gregory, was born at Roxborough, County Galway, Ireland, in 1859. One who saw her in the early years of her married life describes her thus: "She was then a young woman, very earnest, who divided her hair in the middle and wore it smooth on either side of a broad and handsome brow. Her eyes were always full of questions. ... In her drawing-room were to be met men of assured reputation in literature and politics and there was always the best reading of the times upon her tables."
Two closely related interests have always divided Lady Gregory's attention. Her occupation with the Irish Players has been constant, and she has from the beginning been a director of the Abbey Theatre, where Spreading the News was first performed on December 27, 1904. This play was also included in the American repertory of the Players, whom Lady Gregory accompanied on their visit to the United States in 1911. The spirit that she puts into her work with them is well illustrated by those lines of Blake which she quoted in a speech made at a dinner given her by The Outlook when she was in New York. Her hard work having been commented on, she replied:
"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."
In her book on Our Irish Theatre, A Chapter of Autobiography, she relates the story of how one day when she assembled the company for rehearsal in Washington, D. C., she invited them to leave their work and come with her to Mount Vernon for a holiday and picnic. "I told them," she writes, "the holiday was not a precedent, for we might go to a great many countries before finding so great a man to honor." Washington, it seems, had been a friend of her grandfather's who had been in America with his regiment.
Her other great interest has been the folklore of Ireland. She has been called the Irish Malory, because through her retelling of the Irish sagas, she has popularized and made accessible the great cycles of heroic legends. She has employed for the vernacular of these romances and folk tales what she calls Kiltartan English, Kiltartan being the village near her home, the dialect of which she has assimilated and utilized. Lady Gregory has also used her historical and legendary knowledge for the background of some of her plays.
It is said that the original impulse that influenced Lady Gregory to interest herself in these old Irish stories came from Yeats, her friend and associate in the project of the Irish National Theatre. It was his suggestion in the first place that led to her writing Cuchulain of Muirthemne. "He could not have been long at Coole," writes George Moore of Yeats, "before he began to draw her attention to the beauty of the literature that rises among the hills and bubbles irresponsibly, and set her going from cabin to cabin taking down stories, and encouraging her to learn the original language of the country, so that they might add to the Irish idiom which the peasant had already translated into English, making in this way a language for themselves." The influence continues, for her latest book, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, contains two essays and notes from the pen of Yeats.
The literary association of Yeats and Lady Gregory has been a fruitful one for Ireland. Not only has Yeats encouraged Lady Gregory's researches into the past, but she has been of the greatest assistance to him in his work. When he is at Coole, she writes from his dictation, arranges his manuscript, reads to him and serves him as literary counselor.
Lady Gregory's life touches the life of Ireland at many points. In addition to her literary occupations, she lectures and co-operates actively with a number of societies that have as their aim social or political betterment.