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TENSION ENVELOPE CORP.

OOT76 3162

THE FAYS OF THE

W. G. FAY, a Self Portrait

THE FAYS

of the Abbey Theatre

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL RECORD

BY
W. G. FAY 8 CATHERINE CARSWELL

WITH A FOREWORD BY
JAMES BRIDIE

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1935, BY
:HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

All rights reserved, including
the right to reproduce this bQok
or portions thereof in any form'.

first edition

IN THE tTN!TEl> STATES OF
*Y THE POI.YG*APHIC COMPANY OF A MERI

cc nothing extenuate
Nor set down aught in malice.**

TO

HERSELF " BRIGIT

FOREWORD

I HAVE not yet read this book. It is impossible,
therefore, to recommend it further than to say this :
That when I do read it, the first dull page I encounter
will give me the surprise of my life. Mrs. Carswell
and Mr. Fay may be capable of many things, but not
of dullness. Further, that this is a very clever kind of
collaboration to think of and that I thought of it first.
Anybody can write an autobiography and it is difficult
to write one that is not interesting in parts ; but the
reader has to select and make allowances and take
passages with a grain of salt and perhaps even despise
the writer before he can get his full money's worth out
of the book. This is another way of saying that
not one in ten thousand books of reminiscence is a
work of art.

"Very well, then," I said to Billy Fay, "you are an
artist who has spent most of his working life at a
composite art, speaking other people's words on the
stage and making them live. Why not let an artist
in these things take your words and acts and make
them live on the printed page ? " This is not an
Aloysius Horn business, mark you. Fay wrote it on
his own typewriter and Mrs. Carswell took the plastic
material and made it take shape. It is likely that she
has given the adventures and sincerities and oddities
of the book their just oppositions and emphases.
When we begin to confess, the neatest introspectors
among us are apt to be a little gauche.

So you are going to have, I hope, an example of

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

a new way of writing history through the medium of
a very interesting personality who helped to make
that history. It is not necessary at this date to appraise
the position of the Abbey Theatre in the history of
the Stage. It initiated a new kind of playhouse, a
new kind of play and a new kind of acting. The
part played in this feat by the Fays has, perhaps, been
insufficiently emphasised in the text-books. Many
more assertive or spectacular personalities than theirs
were mixed up in the venture. In this version of a
very Irish pageant it may emerge that they had their
importance. Of one of the brothers it may certainly
be said that it is easy not to notice him if you look
round with too careless a regard.

Some years ago a number of us sat round a leather-
topped table discussing the bleak future of the Scottish
National Theatre Society. We were going through
a heap of letters offering the services of the brilliant
young and the experienced old in the office of Producer
to the Society. Somebody said, " What about Fay ? "

It was as if the L.M.S. in search of a managing
director had suddenly heard the name of George
Stephenson. The Abbey was our ideal, our star. It
seemed to us to have been there since the beginning of
time. It was incredible that one of its founders should
still be alive and practising his art and kicking against
the pricks. We found that such was the case and
that we could just afford his fee. So it happened that
John Brandane and I walked a rainy Sauchiehall Street
with the impresario of Synge, Yeats, Russell and
Lady Gregory. He was a wizened little man in a

FOREWORD

soaking mackintosh and insecure-looking pince-nez.
A wet cigarette hung from his expressive lower lip.
We showed him the theatre where the Glasgow
Repertory used to be. It is now the property of the
Young Men's Christian Association. He looked
dismally at the asbestos box which had been erected
on the stage to prevent fire and the rapid change of
scenery. " The Lord look sideways on them," he
said. As cheerfully as an Old Contemptible moving
up to the attack on Passchendaele Ridge he agreed to
undertake our melancholy task. We felt ashamed of
intruding on his sorrows ; but later he went to tea at
the Brandanes' and made them laugh till they were ill.

He was installed in Glasgow, to which he brought
some books on theosophy, some engraving tools, the
mask of the girl who was drowned smiling and a
stout heart and a merry one, for all his mournful face.
He gave us a string of lovely productions and almost
persuaded the local wealthy to give us a theatre of our
own. He had awe-inspiring bursts of eloquence and
he clearly knew what he was talking about and meant
what he said. But the Scots are funny. . . .

Well, I am not, thank God, writing a book about Mr.
Fay; but. there is one more thing to be said. The
theatrical profession is, in many ways, a preposterous
one. It is subject to mass and individual hysteria. It
is often shiftless, often improvident, often plumb mad.
But in no profession are there so many seniors who are
prepared selflessly to devote their time and energy to
helping a tyro with the least glimmering of promise.
They neither expect nor get any adequate sort of

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

reward in this world and won't, I suppose, till they
take .turns at conducting the Choir of the Morning
Stars. They are seldom thanked. Hundreds of good
actors and thousands of people to whom they have
given pleasure owe a debt to Mr. Fay. One playwright
at least would like to acknowledge that he is conscious
of his debt.

JAMES BRIDIE.
Glasgow y March 1935.

POSTSCRIPT

By CATHERINE CARSWELL

WHEN this book gets into print, Mr. Fay and I are
going to send a presentation copy jointly to Mr, Bridie
in kind acknowledgment of his having brought us
together on the job. Whether he will read it is not
so easily known. He is not only a busy man, but a
godlike one, combining in himself the functions of
the dramatist and the healer and therefore moving in a
doubly mysterious way. Having begun by writing
an introduction to a book that he had not read, he
went on by what process of insight mere mortals
cannot guess to recommend to the author that it
ought to be rewritten by a specific hand, namely mine.
This being accomplished, he obligingly wrote a new
introduction to the rewritten but still, by him,
unread book. One thing alone is clear : he will never
be able to compare Mr. Fay's draft with mine, and I
think his best procedure will be to put this volume
reverently unopened on the shelf he reserves for his
own works. Then, each time he looks at its spine,
he will be able to congratulate himself on his neat
piece of surgery in transplanting one of Mr. Fay's
ribs in such a way that it might be clothed with the
flesh that publishers require.

For my part it gives me special satisfaction to put
my name beside that of the original author's on the
title-page, even if I should never discover by what
chain of circumstances I was enabled to do so. While

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

still callow, though old enough not to be, I found
myself dramatic critic of The Glasgow Herald and a
standing example of the triumph of enthusiasm over
ignorance. Not that ignorance was without its
victories. Mr. Fay, in one of our conversations, has
told me that one of my mistakes happily a very little
one occurred in my notice of the first visit of the
Irish Players to Glasgow, although, again happily, I
had nothing but appreciation for what they gave us.
But the depth of my inexperience was mercifully hidden
from me until I came to read the script of Mr. Fay's
book. Then I knew. And I wondered how any-
body, knowing less than he did about the theatre,
could have the temerity to set up as a dramatic critic.
Now, informed as I am, I should know that if a
performance appeared to fall short of perfection it
would be by one of those circumstances for which
neither actors nor producers are conceivably to blame.
I am therefore doubtful whether I ought to recommend
The Fays of the Abbey Theatre to dramatic critics any
more than to Mr. Bridie himself. But I know that
every actor, amateur or professional, in the kingdom,
every producer and manager, will be the better for
reading what so closely concerns him. Nor is this
all. In another of our conversations Mr. Fay said,
" Life is in the living of it," and that saying is the
philosophy of his book, which is not merely a record
of the theatre by one of its most distinguished makers,
but the picture of a gay toiler who thought no labour
too great or too humble for the calling he had chosen
simply because he loved it.

CONTENTS
PART I

PAGE

BEFORE i

PART II
THE ABBEY 103

PART III
AFTER * 233

LIST OF FIRST PRODUCTIONS, WITH CASTS . . .298

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

W. G. FAY (A Self Portrait) . . . Frontispiece

FRANK FAY 3*

" W. G. F." RAMPANT (Laurie Carton) ... 60
THE ABBEY THEATRE (D. W. Fay) . . . .106

W. B. YEATS 118

W. G. FAY (The Tramp in "In the Shadow of the Glen ") 140

FIRST PERFORMANCE OF "HYACINTH HALVEY" AT THE

ABBEY THEATRE, 1906 164

SCENE FROM " SPREADING THE NEWS "... 172

Miss SARA ALLGOOD 178

ARTHUR SINCLAIR 184

MRS. W. G. FAY 210

J. M. SYNGE (J. B. Yeats) 222

SCENE FROM ACT HI " JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND," BY
BERNARD SHAW (Coronation performance at 10

Downing St.) 260

MAIRE O'NEILL AS AUNT ELLEN IN " WHITE-HEADED

BOY" 266

PRODUCING "THE SILVER Box," BIRMINGHAM REPER-
TORY THEATRE 288

CHAPTER I

NONE of my family on either side had any con-
nexion with the arts except a maternal uncle who, in
an evil moment,much against the wishes of his relatives,
became an engraver. It was looked upon as a frivolous
method of earning one's bread, not sounding enough
like work. This uncle of mine, I may say in passing,
went off to Birmingham and started to do jeweller's
enamel work, which was then a new invention and
special to that city, and afterwards he went to New
York, When I first went there myself with my Irish
Players a long time later, I made a point of looking
up the scapegrace, but all I could tell you about him
now is that he was working for Tiffany's, which meant
that he had climbed to the top of his particular
tree* Also he went every day to Sing Sing Prison
to chat with the prisoners, write letters for them and
cheer them up a bit. I couldn't tell you now what he
looked like.

But, as I said before, Uncle Frank was one of the
sports that you can't keep out of a long family, no
matter how god-fearing and well-doing, and I don't
know of any others at all till I come to myself and my
brother Frank, as I will presently, and Frank comes
first always.

The DowKngs, strong farmers from the Midlands
on the one side, were my mother's people; the O'Fahys,
tailor bodies from Gdway, my father's. Farmer
DowHng's son, my mother's father, was disinherited
for becoming a Roman Catholic, so he came up to

3

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

Dublin, where he was first a basket-maker and after-
wards an ironmonger. He opened a small shop in
Kevin Street, to which he later got a post-office
attached, and in time he managed, by working very
hard, to buy a fair lot of house property in the neigh-
bourhood. He worked, too, for the local charities
as well as teaching Sunday School at the Catholic
Church in Francis Street. Grandfather OTahy left
his home in Tuam to carry on his tailoring business
in the metropolis, and, reaching there during the
"No Irish Need Apply " period, he was shrewd
enough to change OTahy to the English "Fay."
Both my grandparents were Gaelic-speaking, and to
them English was a foreign though an exact tongue.
My OTahy grandfather I never set eyes on, but Grand-
father Dowling often shared his supper porridge with
me, each of us taking a spoonful until the big mug was
empty, while he told me stories. Nearly all his stories
began, " Be the powders of war I remember; " and
I remember he used to say, " There's roguery in all
trades, me boy, but in the basket-maker's/'

My father, when he grew up, became a teacher in
the Model School in Marlborough Street. By this
time O'Connell had forced the Catholic Emancipation
Act through Parliament, making it possible for
Catholics to enter the Civil Service, and a certain
number of the Marlborough Street teachers were
allowed to sit each year as candidates for Government
posts in Ireland. My father passed his examination
with little trouble. He was appointed to the Education
Office in Marlborough Street and worked there for

4

BEFORE

over forty years, most of the time in the one room.
To all boys that were ambitious this was put forward
as an ideal state of life. Allowing that it was very
hard for you to get into the Civil Service, it was still
harder to get you out, and the longer you lived the
larger salary you got. Thus it came naturally that
as we boys left school, whether we were that way
ambitious or not, we were expected to Follow in
Father's Footsteps. It couldn't be thought that any
boy would question the beauty of making himself
financially safe for life.

All the same, Frank, my eldest brother, dodged it,
though it cost him a bit of trouble. Starting to learn
shorthand and typewriting when he was still in school,
he became expert at both, and when he left school he
got the post of secretary to the director of one of the
largest firms of accountants in Dublin. Steadily
scorning the security of a Government job, he only
gave up his secretaryship to become a professional
actor. His employer was disgusted with him. But
never mind. Frank was the first of the Irish Players.

To-day, after giving much thought to the matter, I
cannot make my mind up what was the real reason that
induced me also to try and make a livelihood in the
most precarious of all the arts. It may have been
due to the fact that acting always seemed the most
natural thing for me to do. Whether I did it well or
ill it was always easy for me to impersonate other
people. But, of course, Frank's influence counted, and
if it hadn't been for Frank I daresay my acting would
never have got beyond the back drawing-room stage.

5

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

When it came to the time when I ought to be
leaving the model school where I was, it was decided
that I was to have a year or two at the Jesuit College.
This was the same college to which James Joyce a
little later went, and he has described it with accuracy
in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Conal
O'Riordan went there too, and has described it in
Adam of Dublin. In my case the place was chosen to
put a finish on me. It did, but not the kind that was
expected.

At that time nearly all the secondary schools in
Ireland devoted their teaching mainly to getting as
many boys as possible to pass the different grades of
the so-called Intermediate Examinations. These were
an educational test between school and university
entrance examinations. The type of boy these schools
were most keen on getting was the good " swot,"
who would show up well in the " honours list,"
earning high capitation grants as well as credit for his
school. Unfortunately I was not that kind of lad.
I could learn a lesson at home perfectly, if my brother
Harry would help me with it, and the next morning,
when the teacher demanded it in class, not remember
a line. Just to hear him say " Now, Fay " produced
in me a cataleptic condition that only disappeared after
a severe application of the " ferula " to the palms
of my hands, and not always then. The ferula was
a piece of leather about eighteen inches long and
half an inch thick, made, we believed, from a portion
of a horse's harness. As a general rule my allowance
of beatings was forty a day, but in a short while my

6

BEFORE

hands became so calloused that it did not matter very
much to me how many I got. I could remember the
plot and every detail of any penny-dreadful I read (and
many and various they were), but not the names and
dates of the Kings of England or of Ireland for the
matter of that. The masters, both cleric and lay, did
their best with me, but I was an outsize in ignorance.
It wasn't that I did not want to learn, it was just that I
could not. What I wanted to know I have always
found out about, no matter what it cost me in time
or trouble, but the subjects that formed the school
curriculum did not interest me, nor did I see what use,
having learned them, I should ever make of them.
If I was to remain in the school I must pass the Inter-
mediate Examinations. The teachers did their best to
drag me up to this standard, but I was beyond them.
In the end, giving me up as hopeless, they let me make
a class for myself alone. Here, to my great satisfaction,
I spent my days making full-size drawings of nuts,
bolts, and screws with the idea of one day becoming a
draughtsman. I never became a draughtsman, but
that practice in drawing helped me greatly when, later
in life, I had not only to design scenery, but also to
make the stage on which it was to be seen. It
came in well, too, when I had to be my own " clerk
of works " while the Abbey Theatre was being built
out of an old music-hall and a disused morgue.

The time of the year that I liked best was from the
end of June until September. This was the holiday
period that followed the examinations, for Irish schools
closed a month before English ones. There was a

7

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

glorious break for nearly ten weeks. I went for long
walks, right across the town from Rathmines up the
North Circular Road into the Phoenix Park, then along
the canal banks to the bridge at Rathmines again, and
home tired and hungry in the late afternoon. There
were long days, too, spent exploring the Dublin
mountains, out through Dundrum and on to the
Scalp, or, taking Rathfarnham as a starting-point,
up through Glen Dhu and on to Glen Cullen and home
over the Three Rock Mountain.

Some days I took to the sea-coast and walked from
Sandymount to Kingstown and, if I was not too tired,
on to Dalkey and Killiney, or, on the north side, by
Dollymount on the road to Howth. I always started
soon after breakfast, with some slices of bread and
butter and a sup of milk in a bottle with which to
cajole the pangs of hunger until six in the evening,
when it was wise to be home, as this was the hour for
the family dinner. When I had the money to hire a
bicycle I went on long journeys with my chum, who
was the proud owner of a tricycle with a very large
wheel on one side balanced by two very small ones on
the other. My first mount was one of the 48-inch
bicycles known as "penny-farthings." The saddle
was set behind the forks that carried the big wheel,
and there was a step on the tubing over the little wheel
to stand on while you scrambled up into it. If
you mounted too impetuously the little wheel went
up in the air, and you went Jiead-first over the big wheel
and scraped all the skin off your nose as you landed
still more impetuously on the ground. But the " high

8

BEFORE

bicycle " allowed you to have a great view of the country
as you rode along, so long, that is, as there was no
wind blowing abeam. If there was a wind, you were
kept too busy to notice the beauties of the landscape.
The first "safety" I rode had no frame. Its two
wheels were held together by a single tube brazed into
the forks of both wheels. One day as I came down the
mountains by Stillorgan at top speed to escape an
approaching thunderstorm this tube broke in the
middle and the front wheel made record time downhill,
while the other one ran up my back as I landed on the
road. It was a long walk home in the rain carrying
the two wheels instead of being carried by them.

By the time I left school I had a very good know-
ledge of the south side of Dublin as far as Greystones,
and northward as far as Skerries. I had a fund of
miscellaneous information picked up from casual
meetings with tramps, tinkers and other wanderers
on the roads of the world. Days spent on the quays
or the Ringsend basin enabled me to get news of the
sea from the mates of the schooners that voyaged up
and down the coast to Belfast or Cork, or from able
seamen, who knitted while they waited for a cargo of
timber from Norway to be pushed into the water
through the square opening in the bow of a great
four-masted windjammer or maybe a four-masted
barque with corn from the Argentine. I think it was
only my defective eyesight that prevented me from
going to sea.

CHAPTER H

THE school had a little theatre attached to it, and one
of the great events of the year was the production of a
play. It was an exciting time for everybody, but only
those boys who held a prominent place in their
forms or, I might add, in Dublin society had a
chance of being in it. If you were a barrister's son
you were sure of a part.

As in Shakespeare's time, all the female parts had
to be played by boys, and the sight of a useful half-
back or a crack bowler from the first eleven strolling
about the stage with a head of golden curls and a skirt
gave an added hilarity to the occasion. I, of course,
was never high enough in form or society to be invited
to take a part, and Fm sure if I had been, I should have
been much too frightened to accept it. Perhaps this
is one reason why it seemed to me a waste of time,
even if your relatives did turn up at the show as
mine would not have done anyway to be told how
marvellous you were as Juliet or Lady Macbeth.

My brother Frank had begun to take a serious
interest in the theatre some time before I left school
He used an old wardrobe in our bedroom to store the
second-hand copies of plays that he bought for a few
coppers off the book barrows that lined one side of
the quay near O'Connell Bridge. I have wondered
many times since where these beautiful calf-bound
volumes came from originally and who had sold them
into the degradation in which Frank found them.
They were nearly all printed and published in Dublin,

10

BEFORE

tooled in gold and with an engraving of some famous
actor, or a scene from the play, on the frontispiece.
I suppose at one time these volumes would have a
good sale among those who attended the performances
at the flourishing old Dublin theatres in Smock Alley
and Crow Street in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.

I read everything I could lay my hands on, and
Frank's plays were a welcome change when the last
edition of The Boys of London and New York was not up
to standard, or if I didn't want to read yet once more
Spring-heeled Jack, the Terror of London not to mention
Nicfal-plate Ned, the Terror of the Prairies. Before I
was eighteen I had read quite a lot of plays Beaumont
and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Dekker, and
Restoration comedies by Dryden, Congreve, and
Wycherley without the least idea that they were of
any great importance either as drama or literature.
I had never read any literary criticism, and at that time
plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had
no interest for those connected with the theatre. It
was the London Stage Society that was to revive the
public interest in them as practical theatre stuff.

By degrees Frank nearly filled the old wardrobe with
his library of drama, and before going to bed he would
take a last browse over some favourite author by the
light of a candle stuck to one of the shelves by a few
drops of its own grease. This secrecy had to be
observed, but I always expected to see the whole lot
go up in flames some night when he would be too
engrossed in reading to notice the scorching of the

ii

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

shelf under which the candle stood. The room in
which we slept was called a " return room." Al-
though it stood about twenty-five feet from the yard
below, Frank always felt that unless the snib was on
the window we were in danger of attack from burglars.
I pointed out that to reach us they would need a twenty-
foot ladder, and then the only thing they could steal
was his library of second-hand plays, but this made no
difference to Frank's fears.

I am inclined to think that those editions of plays
and our talks about them were in a great measure
responsible for awakening in me a desire to know
more about the theatre. There was a cousin of mine
several times removed he was a nephew of my
mother's stepmother, if that is any kind of a relation
called James McCormack, and I felt that he could
give me all the information I wanted. When he was
not selling timber, which was how he earned his living,
all his spare time was devoted to the theatre. He not
only acted, but he had written several one-act plays
and sketches. Sometimes he helped the professionals
at the Queen's Theatre by playing small parts for them.
His favourite parts were " heavies " like Simon Legree
and Salem Scudder " I bid ten thousand dollars for
the octoroon." In a Christy Minstrel show he was an
expert "Corner Man/' playing the "bones" with
great skill. He could sing a comic song, or dance a
step dance at need. I brought the wrath of the
household on my head by chanting excerpts from one
of his songs called " The Cruise of the Calabar." It
went something like this :

12

BEFORE

The Calabar was a clipper flat,
Copper-bottomed fore and aft,
Her rudder it stuck out away behind
And her wheel was a great big shaft.
And with half a gale to swell her sail
She made three knots an hour,
Being the fastest craft on the whole canal
Though only the one horse-power.

Her Captain he was a strapping youth,

His height was four foot two,

His eyes was black and his nose was red

And his cheeks were a Prussian blue.

He wore a leather medal that he won in the Crimea war,

And his wife she was pilot and passenger's cook

On board of the Calabar.

And so on for a dozen verses or more. It was
forthwith forbidden as a vulgar street song. Neither
slang nor vulgarity was allowed in our home. An-
other favourite song of mine was entitled the " Corner .
Boy."

What does your mother say, Johnnie me lad ?
Has she been roundin' upon your ould dad ?
Slip in an* see if she's vexed with me
And 1*11 wait for ye just round the corner.

I once was a rattlin' fine man for me size,

Me cheeks white an red like the roses,

But 'the hardest of words, yes, and much harder blows

Has made crooked the straightest of noses.

Or Jimmie Masterson's great song :

May the gurnets in the Liffey
Swally up the ould Turk
For leavin' me so lonely,
Poor Mary Ann McGurk.

There were plenty of song-writers in Dublin and
plenty of good comedians to sing their songs. Later

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

on one of our Irish Players, J, M. Kerrigan, made a
wonderful collection of street songs and ballads. I
hope this still exists, and that some of them, at least,
have been or will be printed for the joy of future
generations.

At James McCormack's house anyone who was
interested in " the Boards/ 5 as he liked to call it, was
made welcome. It was over his parlour fire, when the
children were in bed and his wife was trying to overtake
the huge family mending, that he told me, with
illustrations, the story of his triumphs. He had made
an astonishingly varied collection of wigs and costumes
by means of which he demonstrated each achievement
in his narration. And James was generous. He
presented me with a gorgeous suit. It was made of
bathing-tent calico, red and white striped fine
upstanding stuff with buttons two inches across and
tails that came down to my never very distant heels.
And he threw in with this a black horsehair wig. In
secrecy I wore these things, strutting my little hour
on the boards of my bedroom to my profound satis-
faction. To have been caught doing so would have
been serious. I might have been turned out from
under the paternal roof, and I knew it. Never shall
I forget the prickly joys of that suit and that wig.

The arrival in Dublin of the famous " thought-
reader," Irving Bishop, caused a tremendous sensation
in the city. He professed to be able to find any
hidden article, no matter where, if he was allowed to
hold oneend of a piano wire, the other end of which was
grasped by someone that knew the location of the

BEFORE

concealed object, which was generally a pin. The
result of his visit was that " pin-finding " became a
popular indoor sport. Everybody in Dublin began
trying to find hidden pins. With a little practice
and with the help of my chum, John Kelly, to hold
my hand for the first few experiments, I became a
champion " pin-finder," I discovered, in fact, that
I could quite easily find any hidden object so long as
I could hold the hand of someone that knew where
it was. As the result of this brilliant accomplishment
John and I became very popular as an inexpensive
addition to the success of any party. My most
historic achievement was at our church at a beanfeast
given by the Bishop, when I found a pin stuck into an
apple tree in his great long garden.

The fame thus gained encouraged us to try our hand
at something more ambitious. This was the opening
of " The Theatre Roja/ 'Back Drawing-room At Home,
with an Entertainment of Songs, Recitations and
Exhibitions of * Pin-Finding.' " After a show or two
Frank was drawn into the venture. He contributed
some recitations and suggested that we ought to
produce a play. John and I were very doubtful of
our ability even to act the smallest parts in a pky, but
Frank's knowledge of the theatre he had long been
a faithful galleryite gave us confidence and we began
rehearsals. Our chosen pky was an old farce called
Turn Him Out, recommended to us by James McCor-
mack, who had often himself played the part of the
" windmill man." As soon as we began rehearsing
we discovered that if we wanted to produce pkys we

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

must have scenery. The idea of using curtains
instead did not please us at all. If the real theatre had
scenery, then so must " The Theatre Royal/' but how
to get any was the difficulty. The joint incomes of
John and myself were about two shillings a week.
Never mind; by miraculous economy we managed to
buy enough holland to make a back-cloth.

I began my first experiment in scene-painting by
borrowing from the local library the only book that, so
fat as I knew, had ever been published on the subject.
By the time I had done with it there was nothing in
that book that I hadn't at my finger ends. A yielding
aunt was persuaded to sew the lengths of holland
together until it was the right size for the scene. Then
I stealthily attached it to the wall of the little room
where I was supposed to spend my time studying for
the Civil Service. Having got some useful tips from
my cousin about the vagaries of distemper painting,
I mixed a bucket of whiting and primed the canvas
with it. But most of the whiting went on the floor,
and much of my time and energy in mopping it up.
When theprimingwas dtyl carefully laid on thecolours,
copying with all the faithfulness of which I was
master an illustration of a landscape from my book of
directions. At least I had that much help in a virgin
undertaking.

Never before had I held a paint-brush in my hand,
and little had I suspected the capacity of such an
implement for depositing material everywhere but in
the pkce where it is wanted. It did not occur to me
that, holland being a very porous material, paint would

16

BEFORE

go right through it so that the wall behind it should
be decorated with a unique design. When at last I
got the scene finished, however, it looked a lot better
than I had expected; a result due, I think, to the
slavishness with which I had stuck to the printed
directions instead of giving my original but untaught
genius full scope.

Frank and I, feeling not so bad, took down the
scene off the wall. But how did we feel then ? The
wall behind my masterpiece was truly a dreadful sight.
The only way to mend matters was to repaper, with
all possible speed, the whole of that room and to trust
to luck that its condition would not be discovered
before we had done.

Great and prolonged diplomacy was needed to get-
leave to turn the back drawing-room into a stage. It
meant disturbing the furniture and getting more
chairs into the front room. Carpets had to be taken
up and pictures down. A wooden frame had to be
put up to carry the scenery, and a row of candles with
tin shades behind them was stood on the floor to
act as footlights. The folding doors between the
two rooms were held open, one by each of my two
sisters during the play, and closed when it finished.

In spite of pains, pride and prejudice, the first
performance given to our rektives and their friends
was a great success, so much so that in a few months'
time we had another play ready. For this occasion
we chose that evergreen farce, Box and Cox. But this
finished our theatrical productions at home. The
word had gone forth from headquarters that the lease

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

of the " Theatre Royal Back Drawing-room " was to be
determined. Too much scene painting, too much
noise and cheering late at night, and finally and more
serious than the other offences, too much dislocation
of domestic routine, drove the budding company forth
to seek, in other houses, what chances there might be
for the display of their histrionic ability. We called
ourselves from the name of the road in which we
lived, " The Ormond Dramatic Company," Out of
us came the actors that formed first the " Irish National
Theatre Society " and later the " Irish Players." For
quite a long time our principal comedian was obliged
to appear on play-bills as W. G. Ormond, thus not
besmirching the family name by his dreadful per-
formances of unmentionable plays in unheard-of
pkces.

My first appearance before the public " on any
stage," as the old play-bills used to say, took place in a
small theatre attached to Portobello Barracks in
Rathmines. The officers and men occasionally or-
ganised plays or concerts here for the regimental
charities, and it was at one of the concerts that John
Kelly and I made our debut in a cross-talk scene
modelled on the work of the " Two Macs," who were
very popular at the time. The dialogue was the
result of the combined efforts of James McCormack
and ourselves, and it went very well considering our
inexperience, especially as we followed it up with a
burlesque boxing match. Soldiers make a useful
audience, as I was to learn again when, many years
later, I had to produce plays during the Great War for

18

BEFORE

fourteen camp theatres. They go to a show deter-
mined to enjoy it, and if they cannot laugh with you
they do the other thing, laugh at you. If you can
gain the sympathy of an audience of soldiers, then you
can face ordinary audiences in Glasgow, Edinburgh,
Manchester and even Sheffield, with confidence.

These sporadic performances were combined with
an intensive study of the drama from the sixpenny
gallery of the Gaiety Theatre, with an occasional
visit to the shilling pit at the Queen's. We managed
to get to one or the other at least once a week, except
during a week when there was a special "star"
actor, when, by hook or crook, we managed three or
even four nights. We saw Herbert Tree (I little
thinking that I should ever play with him), Osmond and
Edmund Tearle, Lewis Waller and Fred Terry. We
were lost in admiration of that great combination,
Mr. and Mrs. Kendal. I should think that Mrs.
Kendal, just then, was the most finished actress on
the English stage. There was Frank Benson too,
with Rodney and a company that all became stars in
later years. But our prime favourites were Edward
Compton and his charming wife, Virginia Bateman,
whose performance of Lady Teazle I have never seen
bettered.

When the " stars " came we never missed a per-
formance, no matter how difficult it might be to
find the necessary sixpence; and here I must mention
my mother. When it happened that our pockets were
in a perfectly desperate condition she could always
be relied on to produce a shilling for us from some-

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

where or other. I may as well explain our financial
position at this point. A plutocrat like Frank, who
earned solid coin of the realm each week, was entitled
to deduct therefrom sundry shillings for " expenses."
But the only resource that John, my theatre-loving
friend, and I had was the chance of earning a little
pocket-money by copying legal documents for his
father, who was managing clerk for a very busy firm
of solicitors. The typewriter was unknown to the law
in those days indeed there were only two machines
in all Dublin so every document had still to be
copied in manuscript and the staff of any solicitor
could earn extra money by scrivenery. There was
always plenty of home work, and many weary hours
we spent copying deeds and indentures to get the
wherewithal to see our favourites. Those were good
days for the theatre, for, except concerts, it was the
only kind of entertainment that "respectable"
people could patronise. The cinematograph was yet
to be and the " Music Hall " was out of bounds.
The two we had in Dublin were in back streets, like
the public-houses in Belfast, so that one could slip
in without causing any undue attention from those
whose sole occupation was minding their neighbours'
business.

The Dublin Music Hall that was best known
belonged to Dan Lowry, and was situated in a court
off Dame Street. Here, together with many others
of the lost and lapsed, we spent many pleasant even-
ings, careless of our condition and, of course, unknown
to our parents, listening to Tom Costello singing

20

BEFORE

" The Miner's Dream of Home/ 7 or rejoicing in the
great J. W. Ashcroft in song and dance. The " Brick
Came Down/' " We Had a Half a Day " or the song
about " Moving " :

McGovern carried the crockery-ware,

The cradle was handed to me;

Murphy he sat on top of the cart

Holdin' the clock on his knee.

The horse started off with a funeral trot,

Staggerin' under his load ;

He had much stayin* powers,

But it took us two hours

To travel a mile of the road.

This was always followed by his acrobatic step
dance. The ladies and the serio-comic in large hats
with feathers, tunic, trunks, and tights were always
with us. But Vesta Tilley came, great little artist
in all she ever did, and Lottie Collins in " Ta-ra-ra-
boom-de-ay," and Vesta Victoria singing

Down at the gate

I'll meet my darling Kate.

Ah yes, and darling Marie Lloyd in " She Sits among
the Cabbages/' and Harriet Vernon in

She only answered Ting-a-ling-a-ling
To all that I could say.

Not to speak of Little Tich, the White-eyed Kaffir,
and a whole gifted host of others.

The " star turn " was at 9 p.m. every night, and if
ever you had been unlucky during the day in finding
a man at his office, it was ten to one you could catch
him at the bar in " Dan's " when that turn was over.
There, mellowed by music-hall song and the wine of

21

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

the country, both patties could conduct subtle nego-
tiations about the sale of horses, timber, or hay to
the satisfaction of all concerned.

The other "Haunt of Harmony " was in the "palace"
of that famous Irish comedian, Pat Kinsella, actor and
singer of great ability. His particular song, " Here's
luck to me battered ould corkscrew," was sung far
and wide. Pat reigned in a court off Grafton Street,
and was everybody's friend. He advertised that
"Patrovski Kinsellavitch could always be found at
the c One Lamp ' in Grafton Street/' He kept a
special bottle of cordial from which he always drank
if anyone wanted to treat him. He would say to the
barmaid, "Mary, Mary me dear! I'll just have a
drop of that special gin the doctor ordered." His
" special " came from the water tap. If it hadn't,
Pat would have passed away in a year with all the
friends he had that were anxious he should never
suffer from drought. One of the " star " turns at
this house was Jimmie Masterson, who specialised
in topical balkds " The Man-o'-War from Guinness's
Brewery " or " The Cruise of the Bug-a-Boo."

Oh, from Aston Quay

The other day

A big square ship

She sailed away,

She was bound for a port

In Dublin Bay

And her cargo

It was mud ! !

The captain's nose
Was as red as a carrot,
It got that way from drinkin' claret.
22

BEFORE

And the boys often said,

Won't you bring us a parrot

When you're comin' from foreign parts ?

There was a rapport between the audience and the
stage that has been lost now the public ate offered
so many different kinds of entertainment. At that
time the audience were part of the performance, so
much so that I can remember a Shakespearean actor
having his text corrected for him from the gallery.
" You're wrong, Mr. . . . You should have said . . "
and he was given the proper line. There were no
" Early Doors," or queues lined up of people waiting
their turn to enter. To get into the gallery when
the doors opened was a case of the best man first
and the devil take the hindmost. The doors opened
at 7 p.m., and if you wanted to get into the front
row it was well to be leaning against the door by
6 p.m. at the latest. When it did open, if you were
cute or strong enough to keep your place, you were
swept up the stairs without having the trouble to
walk unless your weight was over fourteen stone
and you were hard to lift. There was a stout wooden
barrier in front of the pay-box to prevent the rush
extending too far, and you had to jam your knees
hard against it while you got your ticket or you
would be swept past it without one, when it was
quite hopeless to try to get back until everyone
else had gone in. Having breathlessly but success-
fully arrived down at the front row, you took off
your jacket and hung it over the iron rail placed
there to keep you from falling into the pit.

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

The great advantage, besides visibility, possessed
by the front row was that from it a raking fire of
abuse could be shot at the more moneyed late-
comers : " Will you sit down, you with the bald
head ? " or " Hurry, ma'am, I can't see the stage for
your big hat." A fat man was ever liable to be
asked " Who ate the dog's dinner ? " Fat men were
rare in Dublin those days. During the Opera season
the gallery performed a select concert between the
acts, the boys even going to the trouble of bringing
a portable piano to accompany the different items.
And heaven help anyone in another part of the
theatre that dared to interrupt the music of the gods !

CHAPTER III

WITH constant visits to the theatres and music-halls,
combined with such occasional shows as we could
give, I began to get a knowledge of the rudiments of
acting. Our repudiation by the home circle was
followed by a noticeable falling off of invitations to
perform in other houses. We were too much of a
bother, and our scenery, which we transferred from
house to house in the darkness of the night, caused
dirt to be carried all over the place, damaged the
walls, and created manifold disorder in well-managed
households. Yet, in spite of every sort of dis-
couragement, the Ormond Dramatic Society throve.
It felt it had a mission to perform and so refused
to be wiped out. When the demand for private
shows slackened, the society offered its services
to various temperance societies to enable them
to get funds to carry on their work; for Total
Abstinence had no great popularity in Ireland, so
that most of the organisations were much in need of
whatever monetary help they could get. The Tem-
perance Society attached to the church of St. Teresa
in Clarendon Street was one of the first to which
we offered our services. It had two large rooms
close to the church, one of which was used as a
stage, while the other provided seating accommo-
dation for the audience. We could always be sure
of a crowded house when we played there. They
wanted money to build a large hall for concerts and
lectures, and premises large enough to house the

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

various activities connected with their society. I
must say that anything that out performances brought
them was amply repaid later when I badly needed
help to carry on our own work. We visited the
Father Mathew Hall in Church Street, the Town
Hall, Dalkey, and, more than any other, " The Coffee
Palace " in Townsend Street. This was one of the
first " palaces *' built to combat the " gin palace " or
public-house, and was an early edition of the modern
tea-shop.

It had a very nice hall, with a proper stage, pros-
cenium, curtains and scenery. In return for our
performances the Committee allowed us to use it
for rehearsals if it was not otherwise engaged. Many
of our plays would never have had a public per-
formance if it had not been for this concession.
The hire of a room in which to rehearse was an
expense we could not afford. This need, both for
some kind of a workshop and for a place in which
to rehearse, is one of the big difficulties with amateurs,
but it must be supplied if they are to keep in exist-
ence. It is easier to find a free rehearsal room,
which can be as small as you please, than a place
to make and paint scenery, which requires space.
Our first lot of scenery we made and painted in an
old shed at the back of my chum John's house. It
had been intended only for storing garden tools,
but we managed to clear enough space in which to
make the small scenes designed for use in the rooms
of an ordinary suburban house.

When we gave our shows in the various halls

26

BEFORE

round the town, however, we required very much
larger and stronger frames to carry our scenery, and
the scenes themselves had to be designed at least
twice as large as those we had originally used. A
chance meeting with a man named Black, who
managed a very successful amateur operatic society,
brought me the workroom I wanted. His society
needed a new stock of scenery, and he promised me
the use of his big club room in the day-time to work
in if, in return, I would make and paint him whatever
scenes he wanted for his productions.

The house the club occupied was one of those old
family mansions built by the city traders when they
ceased to live over their shops and built houses
within walking distance of business. Like many
another such, it had elaborately decorated ceilings
and panelled walls, the work of craftsmen who had
fled to Dublin from France at the time of the Revolu-
tion. The room that I worked in was thirty feet
long by twenty wide, and sixteen feet high. One of
Mr. Black's company was a clever artist, who special-
ised in painting illuminated addresses for presentation
to members of Parliament on their election, or to
Lord Mayors on the occasion of their having at kst
achieved the highest civic distinction. He very
kindly gave me advice about composition in land-
scape painting, and the way to get harmony in the
use of the colours. But he knew nothing about the
handling of that tricky medium distemper. Here
I had to discover for myself, by trial and error, the
strength of size necessary to bind the colours so that

27

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

they would not flake off when the canvas came to
be rolled up. Among other things I taught myself
to remember that wet distemper is six shades darker
than it will be when it dries, and that under artificial
light lemon chrome becomes white, and Prussian
blue, black. Besides making and painting what
scenes my benefactor wanted, I managed to make a
frame-proscenium with landscape and wings to match,
and a couple of interior scenes. These were for our-
selves, but by hiring them to other clubs that had
none of their own I earned myself a few odd pounds
during the winter.

All this time I was still at school. When the time
came for me to leave it was decided that, if Frank
would not enter the Civil Service, then I must, and
so I was sent to take special tuition from a " coach "
whose business was to push you into the Service
whether you liked it or not. I attended his classes
for some time, but as I failed to understand about
half of his lessons and was afraid to say so, and the
other half, for which he used the blackboard, I
couldn't see from my seat, I did not make rapid
progress. I was none the less one of three thousand
candidates who competed for six posts in a Preliminary
Examination which was held all over the United
Kingdom for the purpose of getting rid of surplus
like myself. One paper I got was designed to test
one's ability to decipher bad handwriting. It looked
for all the world as if an inebriated hen had walked
all over the paper and left the marks of her claws
to be translated into the King's English. Examinees

28

BEFORE

were allowed twenty minutes to reduce this poultry-
yard calligraphy to legibility and sense. I couldn't
have done it in twenty years. I did not pass that
Preliminary Examination, and I was told that as it
was evident I should never be a shining light in the
Civil Service I had better find myself something useful
to do. I think this might have been easier if my
education had finished at the Model School. The
teaching there had been calculated to prepare us for
the ordinary requirements of a commercial life. But
my education had got badly mixed. The little I had
learned at the Model School had been overlaid at the
Jesuit College with a smattering of Latin and French,
and scraps of chemistry and natural philosophy, and
confounded by one or two limited excursions into
English literature. And although these might be
useful subjects if one could have followed them up,
and, passing Matriculation, gone on to a University,
they were the reverse of helpful in obtaining ordinary
employment, which demands efficiency in any required
line. It was my friend John Kelly's father who got
me my first job, which made no very heavy demand.
Mr. Kelly had a friend who was a chartered accountant
and kept a very small office in the city for seeing his
clients ; but as most of his time was spent travelling
through the country, auditing the books of various
business houses, it was necessary to have someone in
his town office to send on his letters and to answer
the inquiries of intending clients if any should come.
The duties were monotonous, for although there was
practically no work to do, one was supposed to be

29

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

always on the spot in case any caller arrived which
now and again happened. It might, of course,, have
been worse. The device of leaving a card pinned to
the door at 12 noon saying the office would be open
again at 3.30 p.m. gave me time to have lunch and
to digest it afterwards, and there was a salary of
five shillings a week. This may not be what you,
my reader, would call a large sum, but it was hard
cash which helped to pay expenses. Anyway, with
whatever copying work I managed to get, it was my
entire income, and glad I was to get it.

I still retained a hope that I might do something
with my little experience of painting, and when
chance brought me into touch with the wife of the
late owner of the Gaiety, Mrs. John Gunn, I managed
through her influence to get an interview with the
resident scenic artist. Every theatre at that time
had work for at least one artist, if not for two, chiefly
because they all produced each year a pantomime
which was locally designed, scened and dressed, and
this required continuous work in the paint room
from August until December. In addition there
were fairly constant renovations and novelties wanted
for the stock scenery, of which each theatre had a
great quantity, and there was the painting of any
special scene needed by a visiting company; for in
those days touring companies did not carry all their
scenes, as they do to-day, but used, to a great extent,
the stock scenery of the theatre, with the help of a
local artist to paint them any special bits that they
wanted. The Gaiety possessed one of the best

3

BEFORE

artists in any of the provincial theatres. His name
was Anderson, As he had the habit of a melan-
choly tone of voice, he was generally called " Crying
Anderson/* As a scenic artist he was decidedly in
advance of his time. His designs were broader and
more brilliant in colouring than was customary. His
landscapes looked like modern water-colour drawings,
and his interior scenes had none of the finicking
detail with which most artists then overloaded their
work. He liked plenty of colour and he used it
with the same skill that Charles Ricketts employed
long afterwards in his production of King Lear at the
Haymarket.

" Crying Anderson " received me in the paint
room over the stage, where long benches held rows
and rows of pots filled with paints of all colours,
while underneath them stood further supplies in
buckets and great clay jars. Two wooden frames,
twenty feet by thirty, filled either side of the
room with canvas stretched on them ready to re-
ceive a scene. On the one on the right he was
sketching a street scene for the Aladdin Pantomime
due the following Christmas. He had a piece of
charcoal fastened to a long cane, and was covering
this huge space with the same ease that I could have
filled an ordinary drawing pad, six inches by nine.
He was most kind and considerate to me. He asked
sadly what experience I had, and told me I should
have to go to an art school in the evenings if I came
to work for him. At the same time he promised to
apprentice me for three years for a fee of 25. I

3*

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

thanked him and went home walking upon air. The
fee was less than I had expected, and the Mecca of
my dreams seemed to be at last in sight. I waited
for an auspicious moment in which to lay my proposal
before my father. Choosing a time when he was in
the garden thinning out the chrysanthemums, in fear
and trembling I imparted the news. It was no use,
If I could not pass the Civil Service examinations I
must find what money I needed myself. Seeing I had
about as much chance of finding 25 elsewhere as
I had of coming upon 500, the advent of William
Fay, scenic artist, would appear to be postponed
indefinitely. Frank, meanwhile, had been making
progress. He was still at work, and the only exercise
he ever took was his walk there and back and, once
in a way, one on Sunday. Perhaps that was why I
was stronger than he, but he had never been robust
and, what he minded more, his voice wasn't strong.
But he was convinced that the basis of all good
acting was good speaking, and good speaking de-
pended on good voice production. He determined,
therefore, that he would produce a speaking voice
in himself, as the great Italian masters produce the
singing voice in their opera pupils. If Kean had
been able to cure what seemed an habitual stutter,
asked Frank, why couldn't an Irish actor make his
voice, originally small, into an artistic asset ? How
far he succeeded, those may know who heard him
speaking verse in a play by Yeats or reciting the
" Chronicles " in John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln.
When he was finished with himself if ever he was

3*

FRANK FAY

BEFORE

he could make himself audible to the back of great
theatres, like the Tyne in Newcastle, or the Coliseum
in London, and not raise his voice above a whisper.
At first he gave more attention to reciting than to
acting, and as it was easier to find a place in a pro-
gramme for a recitation than a play, he got far more
practice in individual speaking and entertaining than
he would if cast for a small part in a play. Recitation
was a popular form of amusement at the time, and
most young men could be relied on for "Kissing
Cup's Race," " The Life-boat " or " Christmas Day
in the Workhouse," if a party seemed to be going
dull from lack of ability amongst the hosts. Several
of the more promising of these young reciters later
went on the stage as professional actors. One of
them, after touring with Sir Frank Benson for some
years, went into management for himself with his
own Shakespearean Company, and I think, at this
moment of writing, the " Charles Doran Shake-
spearean Company " is touring India.

The step from amateur to professional raises some
difficult questions, especially in the art of the theatre,
where every man jack of us, in Dublin anyway,
started his promising career for the mere pleasure of
everybody concerned. That is to say, we were
amateurs all. Now, why it should be supposed that
every human being is born with an innate knowledge
of the stage and all connected with it is one of those
things that, as Lord Dundreary said, " no fellah could
understand." No one is ever suspected of being
born with a knowledge of the law or of medicine,

33

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

or, for that matter, of painting, music, plumbing or
the higher mathematics. But the stage is anybody's
and everybody's oyster. If any amateur actor any-
where or at any time has suffered from an inferiority
complex, it was not one of our Dubliners. The
modest violet was no use to them as an emblem.
All they asked was to be heard and seen. Hence,
the opening of the first school of acting in the
town caused some searching of heart. Was there
something to be learned about acting that we didn't
know ? Just in case there might be, when Maud
Randford opened her dramatic school in Westland
Row, most of us became her pupils. We soon found
that she knew some things we had never thought
about.

She was the wife of a well-known theatrical manager,
J. W. Lacy, who had toured the small towns of
Ireland for a number of years, and, getting tired of
continual travelling, they tried to settle down in
Dublin. In the " eighties " there were no theatres
in Ireland outside of Dublin, Belfast and Cork. The
small ones in Limerick and Waterford did not play
for consecutive weeks, but opened only occasionally,
and the rest of the country had to rely for its theatrical
entertainment on travelling companies, technically
called "fit-ups." These carried with them all the
scenery and other "props" that they needed for
their performances, and they fitted up a temporary
stage or platform in any town hall, market hall,
court house or other building at their disposal, in
which there was seating accommodation for an

34

BEFORE

audience. One of these companies is still touting
Ireland after forty years on the road. In those days
the " fit-up " companies devoted themselves mostly
to playing Irish dramas, performing again and yet
again The Colleen Bam, The Shaughraun, Arrah-na-
Pogue, Green Bushes, Kathleen Mavourneen, and other
favourites of the same kind. It was heavy work.
As a rule, the company changed town every day,
for there were not many towns that had a population
large enough to make a longer stay profitable; and
even when they were able to put in three nights in
the one place, it meant a change of programme each
night of the visit.

If Miss Randford never made a great name in her
business it was not because she did not know it.
She knew it because she had been in every kind of
play, from Shakespeare's tragedies to roaring farce,
and she was familiar with the particular technique
required for each kind of performance. She had,
moreover, the power that is essential to every- good
teacher, of imparting her knowledge to others. One
of her first pupils was Frank. By this time he had
taught himself all that it was possible to learn out of
books or from uninstructed practice, and he was
hungry for the help of a professional actor. He
wanted to be shown a further line of advance and to
come by a technique that was more subtle than the
one he had acquired by his own efforts. Miss Rand-
ford was the very teacher he wanted, and it was
largely to her experienced tuition that he owed the
acquisition of an English pronunciation with so little

35

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

in it of definite inflexion that it was impossible to tell
whether the user came from England, Ireland or
Scotland. Like all good teachers of acting, Miss
Randford relied on Shakespeare and the Old Comedies
as the best material on which to base her exercises
in the art, and through her Frank developed a passion
for Shakespeare that lasted all his life and made him
refuse otherwise good engagements if there was any
chance of being offered work in a company that
pkyed only his favourite dramatist.

If this school had never set up in Dublin, or if, by
chance, he had never joined it, I think it is unlikely
that either he or I would have become an actor.
The opportunities of doing so were remote under
the conditions then prevalent. The provincial theatres
were occupied week by week by companies that
came into the town on one Sunday and left it
on the following one, seldom returning, or, if they
did, it was a year before they came again. We had
no connexion with anyone knowledgable in the pro-
fessional theatre, and our people had the prejudice
of a middle-class family living in a small town against
anything like an unsettled life. The young man that
wanted to devote himself to an artistic career, whether
it was music, painting or the drama, was looked upon
as being more than a little foolish, if he was not a
thoroughly bad lot. Stones and moss were quoted
once more with a lot about " There's no place like
home " thrown in. Nowadays it would be " Safety
First." We had been introduced to the maxims as
copy-book headlines when we could barely toddle.

36

BEFORE

When one thinks of the " moss " gathered by the
" rolling " of Sit Hatty Laudet or Charlie Chaplin
it does not seem as if the copy-book headlines ate
wholly tellable guides in these uncertain days. Not
that Ftank ot I, I am bound to admit, evet managed
to collect much of the commodity about out petsons.
Anothet difficulty we had to ovetcome was that we
wete shy bitds, Ftank and L He had the mote
coutage, fot when he wanted anything badly he
would just go and tty to get it. Thtough his know-
ledge of shorthand tare at that time he obtained
odd jobs repotting fot the newspapets. This brought
him in touch with strange people and gave him
confidence, but in itself it would not have been
enough to make him break with tradition. My own
failure to pass the Civil Service examination, ot hold
down any tesponsible job, made me sadly chaty of
ttying new gtound ot adventuring among people
that I did not know. If Maud Randfotd had not
wished to test fot a while in Dublin, thete would
have been no Irish Playets and cettainly no Abbey
Theatte.

37

CHAPTER IV

AT the end of its second season the Dramatic School
gave a public performance in the Antient Concert
Rooms to show what they had learned, and as the
Lacys had no suitable scenery, Frank suggested
that I should lend them mine and fit it up for them.
I went to the hall and arranged everything for the
show, and it was only then that I met Mr. and Mrs.
Lacy for the first time. The performance was a
success, but what struck me beyond everything was
the difference it made to a familiar play to be pro-
duced by someone that knew, instead of guessing at
the "business," the required movements and the
essential characterisation of the various parts. With
all the plays I had seen and helped in, it will seem a
queer thing to say, or I will show up as a queerly
stupid fellow, yet it is a fact that I never knew before
this performance how much a play in presentation
can owe to good production. The Lacys, good souls,
were grateful to me for my help, and was I glad to
work with real professionals, if only for a couple of
nights ?

The School did not open the next season. One
reason for this was that the supply of possible students
in Dublin was limited. But there was another and a
truer explanation. The Lacys had begun to suffer
from that hunger which comes inevitably upon all
those who have ever travelled the open road. There
is no escape from this. We may shake it off for a
time. But sooner or later it comes back again twice

38

BEFORE

as strong as ever, and the only thing to do is to pack
up and be off.

The proprietor of the Queen's Theatre at that time
was J. W. Whitbread, and though most weeks in the
year he booked the famous dramas from Drury Lane
or the Surrey Theatre Hands across the Sea, Harbour
Lights, The Silver King and many others he would
sometimes produce plays written by himself. These
were manufactured on the Boucicault model, with
matter and story brought up to date, which renova-
tions concealed from the unobservant their inferiority
to the Boucicault melodrama in construction and
dialogue. Two of these plays The Irishman and
Shoulder to Shoulder had been produced while the
School was still open, Lacy playing parts in both of
them. So when his hour came upon him and he
was vanquished by his desire for the road, he got
the "fit-up" rights from Mr, Whitbread to play
them in the small towns.

He booked a tour in the south of Ireland and
engaged a company. Chalmers Mackay, a very
promising Irish comedian, was his leading man.
Since then Mackay has toured his own company
many a year, playing Irish plays all over the kingdom
with Miss Dorothy Coote, Lacy's leading lady, who
became his wife. Lacy also engaged a famous Irish
character actor, Frank Dalton, to play his " villains,
Fred Wilberforce for his juveniles, and a young
Dubliner, Pat Waddock, for his character and comedy
parts.

The closing of the School was a blow to Frank,

39

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

but he had learned enough there to go on by himself
with the perfecting of his elocution and voice pro-
duction. He was still secure in his secretarial job,
which now carried what we considered a good salary.
All the same he would gladly have gone with the
Lacys if they could have offered him suitable parts
and a reasonable chance of continuous employment.
Happily for us the plays were rehearsed in Dublin
at the School, and both Frank and I were allowed to
be present to watch, for the first time in our lives,
a real professional company at work.

I can hardly say which was the greater, the excite-
ment of this experience or the desire in me that I
might have had any part, however small, in either of
the plays, so to make my debut as a professional
actor. But the weeks of rehearsal fled by, and all
too soon for us the company left Dublin to open
their tour at Ennis in County Clare. Life seemed
desperately dull to us then. But the anti-moss gods
had put their heads together on our account. When
the Lacys had been gone about a fortnight, Frank
had a letter from Lacy, The " advance agent " he
had engaged had left him, and he needed someone to
do the work. He offered it to me, and promised to
teach me my business. The salary was to be i a
week. At last the chance had come. Although I
think I knew my fate from the first, Frank and I had
long debates on the advisability of accepting Lacy's
offer. What could a job of that kind with a " fit-up "
company lead to? Was it possible to live on a
pound a week ? More important still, what would

40

BEFORE

our parents have to say to a wild proposal of this
kind ? I was in a good position for recklessness. If
I stayed on in Dublin there was still no opening for
me, unless money or influence could make one, and
both of these were out of the question so far as I
could see at the moment. It was now or never for
me 5 said I. What I did not say, though I felt and
knew it, was that until I made a break from all my
surroundings I should not be able to rid myself of
my ever-present conviction of incompetence.

In those days parents had to be reckoned with.
Frank agreed to open the negotiations at home and I
was to follow this up by a personal interview. When
I faced my father I knew at once that I had nothing
to hope for in that quarter. " Traipse round the
country as a strolling player ! Certainly not ! "
When I asked what I should do instead, I got
Micawber's reply, " Wait for something to turn up/ 3
I then urged, what indeed I thought, that at the
age of eighteen one ought to be independent, especially
when there were three younger children still at school,
and that I couldn't agree to stay at home and be an
expense to them when it had been made possible
for me to keep myself by accepting Lacy's offer.
How far my father credited these worthy sentiments
I do not know, but his reply was clear enough.
" Very well," he said. " If you are determined to
go I'll not stop you. But you'll not come back
again. I don't approve, and if you go, it's good-
bye." I said, and it sounded flat enough, "I'm
sorry, but I must take this chance to learn some

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

business that will give me a livelihood." Sad as
the lack of approval was, I felt a glow from the flames
of my burning boats when I wrote that night to
Mr. Lacy agreeing to his terms. I was to join the
company the next week at Portadown to act as
" agent in advance " for Mr. J, W. Lacy's Irishman
and Shoulder to Shoulder Company.

The actor's life differs in one respect from that of
the inhabitant of heaven. It is full of partings.
Sometimes they don't last long, though. I have
many a time said tearful good-byes in Euston Station
on a Sunday at the end of a tour, with repeated
adjurations to " take care of yourself" and " be sure
and write," only to meet the company one by one
on the Monday at the agent's looking for more work.
In the case of my first setting forth, of course, we all
behaved as if I were going to New Zealand instead
of just to Portadown, and nobody took it more
seriously than myself. I had cut loose and I meant
to mark the solemn occasion. I did it chiefly by
insisting upon having a theatrical basket in which
to pack all my few worldly belongings. I don't
know for sure about the Continent, but in these
islands the basket is the sign and token of the touring
actor. Combined with its capacity and lightness, its
great strength enables it to withstand every assault
of those railway porters who daily seek its destruction ;
and does not the unsuccessful actor " get the basket "
when all else is denied to him? In my case, no
swell trunk, no portmanteau, no array of suitcases or
Gladstone bags could have given me the authentic

42

BEFORE

thrill I got from putting everything I owned into a
canvas-lined wicker hamper and sitting on the lid.

My notions of the work of an " agent in advance "
were less than sketchy. I knew that he had some-
thing to do with the bills not those representing
the expenses, but the printed advertisements dis-
played in shop windows or pasted on the walls of
the houses or hoardings in a town. I was aware
that all touring companies carried such an official,
and that he came to town before the company did,
to prepare for their reception. But how he did it
I had yet to learn. On my arrival at Portadown I
sought, out the Lacys and shared a meal with them
and their daughter, while Miss Randford advised
me about lodgings, the price of food and how to
buy it. She ended by giving me the address of a
house where they accommodated touring actors.
After tea I explored the town, found my rooms and
agreed with the landlady as to the terms I was to pay.
I then proceeded to sup for the first time by myself
in a room of my own with a landlady who called
me Mister. The umbilical cord was cut and no
mistake.

In the morning I went marketing and had another
new experience buying bread and butter, bacon and
eggs, and a bit of steak for my dinner. Coached by
Miss Randford, I left my landlady to find the vege-
tables, but I gave most particular directions as to
when and how my bit of steak was to be cooked.
I felt a great happiness. At home meals had always
appeared with a clock-like regularity and a clock-

43

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

like reproach if you were late. Not only this, but
you knew the day of the week by what you had for
dinner. It never varied. Now I could eat when I
liked, what I liked and as much, or as little, as I
liked. I could have sausages instead of cold meat
on Monday or steak instead of salt beef on Thursday,
I could have a new loaf of bread when I liked instead
of being bidden to " eat the stale first," and there
were no queries, even with eyebrows, as to the
amount of butter that smothered a slice. As for
jam, I was at liberty to treat it with all the careful
handling required, if you want to convey the maximum
quantity to your mouth without some falling off the
bread m route.

When I joined the company the towns we were
playing in had populations that made it worth while
to stay at least three nights in each place, and when
we came to larger ones, like Newry, it was possible
to do six nights and maybe a matinee for children
on the Saturday. We saw to it that our programme
was varied enough to attract the same people to
come twice during our stay. I went on to the next
town to be visited, and spent two days there arrang-
ing the posting of the bills. There were two kinds.
The first announced the coming of the company,
what they were playing, and the names of the artists.
These were put into the hands of the local bill-
poster. But the other sort the long kind called
" day-bills " I had to place myself in the windows
of every shop that would exhibit them. Other duties
were to interview the hall-keeper; to see that the

44

BEFORE

stage would be ready for the scenery when it came;
to take the dimensions for our stage carpenter, if he
had never been there before; and to make a list of
the various rooms that would take professionals, so
that the artists could write on ahead and have their
lodgings ready to go to as soon as they arrived.

When I had arranged all these and a dozen other
things I returned to help Mr. Lacy with the " front
of the house " that is, the auditorium to give a
hand to the stage manager behind the curtain, or to
play small parts if I was needed. In fact there were
no capacities in which I could not be of real, if
humble, use. After the show on Wednesday and
Saturday we would pull down the "fit-up/ 3 pack
up the scenery and wardrobe and take them to the
railway station, where we had them loaded on a truck
so that they could travel with the company in the
morning to the next town. I always went on a Thurs-
day to the town they would visit the following
Monday, and got back in time to help with the show
on Saturday night.

The last night of the week was invariably the
roughest house, and it took three of us planted by
the pay-box to prevent concerted rushes for the
cheaper seats that would otherwise have carried all
before them, including the night's takings up to that
time. Having had plenty of experience as to what
could happen in these circumstances, Mr. Lacy was
prepared. All the tickets used for the various parts
of the house were in rolls, and these ran on spindles
in a heavy wooden box, which also contained three

45

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

drawers to hold the money. The box was closed
by a heavy lid that shot into place by the action of
a spring. The minute there was any sign of danger
that lid was slammed into place, locking the box,
which was pushed out of sight into the pay office.
We were then free to deal as seemed best to us with
individuals that were looking for free seats. The
idea of making people stand in a queue had not
been thought of. Even if it had, it would have
needed a lot of courage to try it on a Saturday night
audience in a small Irish town. The halls we liked
best in which to deal with Saturday night conditions
were those which had the entrances up a flight of
stairs. Then any attempt to rush the pay-box was
easily defeated by pushing the people back down
the stairs. The most difficult kind of halls were those
that had the entrance doors on the level with the
street. In case you have never felt it, believe me a
compact mass of sixty or seventy human beings, all
moving together, has a momentum that is hard to
stop. In such halls it was only by using a stout
wooden barrier that would permit only one person
to pass at a time that we could hope to prevent an
organised rush from being successful.

One of the first things I had to learn was the
various kinds and sizes of printing used by theatres
and theatrical companies, and also the names of the
bills on which the printing was done. In the theatre
all kinds of advertisements of the show are " print-
ing." The size of sheet most often used, either by
itself or as a unit for larger ones, is the double-

46

BEFORE

crown, which is 30 by 20 inches. Large posters are
usually made up of six, eighteen or even twenty-four
sheets of double-crown paper. These, with the long
thin posters called " streamers/' make up the com-
monest types of theatrical printing. With the Lacys
we never used the larger posters, because in the
towns we visited none of that ske were ever put
up, with the exception of those declaring sales of
cattle or land, in which case the local bill-poster felt
himself fairly safe. Our main supply of printing was
travelled with the company, but I took from it what
I needed for each town when I went ahead, and I
used more " day-bills " than anything else. These long
bills, generally made of half a demy sheet, contained
all the particulars of the play. Here is a specimen.

The Town Hall

Nenagh

For Three Nights only
MR. J. W. LACY'S Famous Company

from
The Queen's Theatre, Dublin

in the great

Spectacular Irish Dramas
" The Irishman " and " Shoulder to Shoulder "

by
J. WHITBREAD

Then followed a list of acts and scenes, of characters
and the cast, of the days each play was to be performed

47

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

and of the prices of seats, with the name of a shop
where they could be bought beforehand.

In most of these small towns, as I have said, there
were no hoardings to exhibit posters, so we had to
rely on getting as big a window display as possible
to attract attention to our forthcoming visit. In the
larger towns there was a special man employed by
the theatre called a "bill inspector" to look after
the distribution and display of the " day-bills " or
" window bills." He placed them in the same shops
each week, and for showing them the shopkeeper
got a free pass about once a fortnight. But in the
small towns the agent had to do it himself. Very
often the doing called for a considerable exercise o
tact. I found by experience that if you walked into
a shop and said to the owner, " Do you mind if I
put this bill in your window ? " you were sure to
get a curt " No, you can't." The far better way was
to stroll in casually, admire the window-dressing,
have a chat about the weather and the chances of the
favourite for the big race, or, as a last desperate
resort, buy something. Then, if, as you turned to
go, you hesitated and said, " Oh, by the way, would
you mind very much if I put this little bill in your
window ? " sometimes it came off. A bit of play-
acting, as I've often found, is as useful off the stage
as on. Even so, some shops won't show a bill for
love, money or blarney. Drapers are the most
difficult, as they want the whole window for their
own display, and jewellers are nearly as bad, for, as
they dress the window only about once a month,

48

BEFORE

they object to having it disturbed. Butchers, green-
grocers, bakers, confectioners, provision shops and
plumbers are good, but best of all is the barber,
who inclines to welcome news of any sort that he
can discuss with his customers to occupy their minds
while he occupies his hands with the hair on their
heads or the beards on their chins. I found too
that a funny story was a great help in opening the
campaign. Soon I had a fund of reliable ones, and
if I only got a chance to tell them, the bill was in the
window before I finished. I grew pretty clever at
judging which story or how rude a one was suitable
to each of my victims.

The posting or pasting of the bills was a primitive
affair before the arrival of the great bill-posting
firms who had hoardings everywhere and would post
your bills for you at z\d. a sheet per week. That
easy method of making money had yet to be dis-
covered. Instead, during my novitiate, each town
had its own bill-poster. This benighted individual,
who was looked down upon by everybody, even by
the sweep, made a precarious living by sticking bills
wherever he could, or wherever he was let on
empty shops, deserted houses, forge doors, or even
rain-barrels, anywhere, indeed, that did not display
the warning " Stick No Bills/' Usually his cargo
consisted of advertisements of fairs, political meet-
ings, sales of land, houses or cattle, or sometimes of
the circus making its annual visit. When there were
no bills to post he would drive cattle to the market
or pigs home from it.

49

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

This artist in bill-posting used many different
kinds of brushes, from a two-tie whitewash one,
that spattered paste for a couple of yards on either
side of where he was supposed to be operating, to a
shaving brush. It is God's truth that an optimist
turned up one day with a gallipot full of paste and a
shaving brush, prepared, as he thought, to post any
kind of bill that ever was printed, even a twenty-
four sheet, for miles around. But if, by grace, he
had a brush and bucket or the equivalent, it was
seldom he had the money to buy flour to make the
paste. I taught myself to make a good paste by
watching the wife of such an one make it after I had
provided the flour. If you entrusted him with your
bills it was wise to follow him into the country and
see that he posted them. Otherwise, on your life
he would roll them into a ball and drop them into
the nearest river as he passed. Another important
point was to give him enough to post three miles
out of the town on every side. Again, if you did
not watch him, he would most likely do the north
and the south sides, and the east and west folk would
never see a sign of your printing.

The use of pictorial printing helped, I found, to
get the posting done properly, because pictures were
more interesting that is, if your deputy posted the
proper sections together, and did not put, as he
easily might, a man's head on top of a lady's costume.
Yes, I got a lot of inside information about Irish life
and things from my bill-posters as we wandered up
the roads and down the lanes of Ireland getting our

BEFORE

bills posted. I gathered, for example, that it was
practically certain that no company ever visited a
town on the right week.

"What on earth do you want comin' here on
Monday week? It's the worst week in the year.
There's a fair on the Tuesday, and it's the first week
in May, so there'll be devotions in the chapel every
evening. It's just only waste of good bills. You'll
do no good at all, at all."

Fairs, more than anything else, were fatal, because
the country people flocked into the town from early
morning and began to make for home in the early
afternoon. And the townspeople, after a very busy
day, were too tired to go anywhere except to bed.
Again, it was no use trying to do business with a
theatrical company in the South or West during the
seven weeks of Lent, the whole month of May, or
the three weeks preceding Christmas, for then every-
one was in church in the evenings. In hay-time and
harvest, on the other hand, everyone was in the
fields. Between those times you had to watch out
that you did not cross the path of a circus. Then
it would be " If you had only come next month ! "
or, " If you had only been here three weeks ago ! "
The solution of the problem was to keep to the
North of Ireland until the South was fit for touring.

All the same it was a pleasant life touring these
small towns, for the people loved the plays and the
players. They wanted to be entertained, and were
ready to help in any way they could to make the
performances successful. If the actors had any skill

5*

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

the play was certain to do good business during its
stay. Food was plentiful and cheap, and so were
lodgings. With my salary of a pound a week it was
possible to live comfortably, if I did not drink too
much or want to live in hotels. Those were the
days when, in the words of the late Sidney Morgan,
" One could get eatin' and drinkin' at twopence a
pint."

The fact that we were touring Irish plays made us
the more welcome. And we had a cast of all-Irish
players that were known all over the country. Chalmers
Mackay was the grand type of good-looking Irish
comedian, and Frank Dalton, I should think, the
best character actor of his time. His Danny Mann
in the Colleen Bam was equal to Charles Warner's
great performance in Drink. He loved his profession
and impressed on me, in case I didn't know it, what
a fine calling it was. He was certain that one should
study a part thoroughly before attempting to create
it. He told me many a thing as never to speak a
line that did not mean something to me personally,
always to think first of the audience, then of the
play and my comrades who were playing in it. He
showed me how to use inflexion when there was no
other way to get variety, how to hold the attention
of the audience when I was the speaker, and how to
fade out when it was someone else's turn. Above
all and everything he insisted that the audience had
paid to see us perform, and that therefore every
honest actor should see to it that they got value
for their money. I never forgot this and I never

5*

BEFORE

will. Frank Dalton had himself in a lesser degree
that great gift that Sir Charles Hawtrey in pre-
eminence possessed, of holding your attention every
second he was on the stage.

Amongst my many jobs I was general understudy,
and several times I had to go on to replace someone
who had fallen out on account of sickness. After
Mackay left us, I had to go on for his part, and
though my comedy might pass muster, my appear-
ance as a romantic juvenile left a lot to be desired.
I never had the legs for a romantic juvenile.

The tour which began at Ennis in the County of
Clare had worked its way up into the North of
Ireland before I joined it at Portadown. Then we
went to Warrenpoint, and from that to the Mackays'
home town Newry. We did very well there, but
after that he left us to join J. Pitt-Hardacre, who was
" starring " him as Conn in The Sbaugbraun. After
some more small towns, including Omagh and
Mullingar, Mr. Lacy took the company to the Queen's
Theatre, Dublin, where we produced Eileen Oge
with Pat Kinsella playing Brian O'Farrell, and I
made positively my first appearance in a real theatre
on a real stage. It was only a very small character
part, but any part, however small, in a play performed
in a regular theatre is better than playing " leads " in
a "fit-up/'

By the time our run at the Queen's Theatre came
to an end it was too near Lent, and too late in the
spring, to go touring in Ireland with safety, so it
was decided to try Scotland until later on in the

53

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

year. I was despatched to arrange the preliminaries.
The first town we were to visit was Girvan. I made
my way there by taking a boat from Dublin to Glas-
gow, and a returning Highlander and I shared the
little fire in the forecastle, he telling me of his adven-
tures in America, in the intervals of playing me jigs
and reels on his tin-whistle. This charmed away the
long, cold twelve-hour journey, and by the time we
reached Glasgow we felt very reluctant to part com-
pany, so we had a meal together before he started
on his way to Fort William and I on my way to
Girvan.

This was my first experience of being in a strange
land among strange people, and very queer it seemed
to me on my first visit in 1891. I had thought, if I
thought at all, that all English-speaking people spoke
as we did in Dublin. It had never dawned on me
that we had a " brogue." But in Scotland I found I
had to learn a new language, in which a butcher
was a "flesher," that "snell" meant cold, that a
" wee " thing was a small one, and many other words
and phrases that were new to me. It was in Girvan
that I first discovered the difference between Sunday
in Ireland and Sabbath in Scotland. Finding the
time pass very slowly on my first Sunday I took up
a melodeon that I found in my bed-sitting-room and
tried to solace myself with a few bars of " The Irish
Washerwoman." This tune was one of my star
pieces, whether on the jews' harp or the melodeon
the only two musical instruments that I can play
proficiently. On this occasion I hadn't got fairly

54

BEFORE

under way when my good landlady dashed into the
room and besought me to stop playing at once. I
thought at first it was my execution that afflicted her.
It was not. " What would her neighbours think to
hear tunes like that on the Sabbath ? " If she had
let rooms to " show folk/* a thing she had never
done before, it would be a long time before she
would do it again. " If I wanted to play the melodeon,
couldn't I play some nice hymn tunes on it ? " But
here, again, my education had been neglected. I
knew no hymn tunes except " I am a little Catholic/'
and so my musical evening was ruined.

Girvan seemed to me a busy little town that ought
to be safe for three nights' good business when the
company arrived. I billed the town in every possible
place, and did the " window billing " myself to be
sure it was well done. But our visit was not a
success. Either the people did not like Irish plays
or they did not like the ones that we were playing.
Whatever the reason was they did not come in. If
I had died just then I think the word Girvan would
have been found graven on my heart.

We tried two or three other towns with much the
same result. In the last of them, Johnstone, when
I came to the hall to arrange for the despatch of the
scenery, I found an official of the Court in charge,
for two members of the company had put a lien on
it for a portion of their salary that had not been
paid the previous night. In Scotland artists have
the first claim on the property of the manager. I
went back and got Mr. Lacy to come round. He

55

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

paid the claim, but it finished our tour, as he had
no money to book further towns or engage fresh
people to replace those who were leaving us. He
offered me my fare back to Dublin, and told me he
intended to go into partnership with a man named
Bronson, a travelling auctioneer. This man engaged
a hall in each town he visited, and sold from the
stage all kinds of goods that he had bought from
large manufacturing firms in the Midlands. They
were " remainders " or " throw outs " that the firms
were very glad to get rid of at a cheap rate. Neither
the sixpenny bazaar nor the penny one had been
thought of then, and it was a great opportunity for
the public to get real bargains even if they were
slightly flawed. This Bronson made a great parade
of his stock on stands at the back of the stage, and
when he had spoken for some time on the extra-
ordinary cheapness of the goods and their unique
quality, he proceeded to auction them for the best
price he could get. I was offered a job at this game
if I cared to take it on, and, as there was no very
pressing reason why I should return to Dublin, but
rather the contrary, I thought I might as well try
my hand at a new kind of entertainment. With the
Lacys taking part, a new method of working was
forthwith put into operation. The goods on their
stands were kept behind a curtain stretched across the
back of the stage, and in front of it we gave an enter-
tainment consisting of short sketches, songs and
dances. The songs that we sang on the stage were
printed on small sheets and sold to the audience in

56

BEFORE

envelopes containing six different ones, at sixpence
apiece. If the purchaser, on opening it, found the
name of some article stamped across the song he
could claim this when the distribution took place.
When a sketch and a couple of songs had been per-
formed, Mr, Bronson came on the stage and announced
that "in order to show that the whole thing was
genuine," he would distribute the prizes that had
been won up to that time. The curtains were drawn
back disclosing the goods. There were the pots and
pans, the lace curtains, the pipes, melodeons, vases,
silver-plated biscuit boxes, and the rest. He always
knew before each distribution what prizes had been
sold, and he took care that the first lot should contain
some of the showiest goods, such as a basin and
ewer or a pair of Nottingham lace curtains. This,
of course, sent up the next sale of envelopes, every
purchaser hoping that his luck would be in before
the next distribution. The Lacys and their daughter,
with myself, formed the strength of the company,
so the plays had to be drastically cut, both for time
and numbers. One of them was a version of Black-
eyed Susan, in which I played several parts, with a
song and a few steps of a dance. In all this no one
could have been more patient than Miss Randford.
That she managed to get me to sing and dance shows
her ability. I had never done either in my life
before. Many years afterwards, when I had to sing
ballads in the Irish plays, this trouble she had taken
with me made it easy for me to do my part. A
voice like mine, that has a range of about sk notes,

57

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

needs very careful handling, and I have always taken
care that during my vocal efforts there should never
be a band with which I had to keep time and tune.
The dancing was not so difficult, for John Kelly and
I had once mastered a few steps of a clog dance out
of a penny guide to " Step Dancing " that I expect
is now many years out of print.

The show, when we got it into shape, was a great
asset, for it made the goods sell so much quicker
than just auctioning them. It looked like some-
thing for nothing. The songs were worth the
money, and there was always the chance of winning
a big prize. It was good for me too, to get pro-
duction in a lot of short plays and to learn the business
that belonged to them. When I returned to Dublin
I taught them all to our little society, and each tour
I went out with enabled me to bring home more
material for Frank to work on.

The determination of Mr. Bronson to keep a
cracked jug and basin amongst the goods displayed
brought our tour to an unexpected close. It was a
very showy pair, covered with crimson tulips, and
made a splendid permanent dressing for the middle
of the stand. What we dreaded was that some
cranky member of an audience would claim it, dis-
cover that it was cracked, and complain that he had
been diddled. One Saturday night, in a mining
village in Lanarkshire, a miner who had had at least
two over the eight won "a jug and basin." The
tulips were what took his fancy, and he claimed
them for his own. In the end he got them after

58

BEFORE

refusing everything else, and as he was going to sit
down in his seat he discovered that he had four
pieces of china instead of two. With a yell of fury
he fired them back on the stage, where they went
into more pieces. The curtains closed and abandon-
ing everything we dashed through the stage door,
reached our wagon and galloped smartly out of town.
In the darkness of the night, the audience, who were
busy wrecking the hall, forgot to miss us till it was
too late. Thus terminated the Bazaar and our show.
As the Lacys were going back to England I took
my share of what money there was, reluctantly bade
them farewell, and returned to Dublin. Anyway, I
had picked up some miscellaneous knowledge on this
my first professional engagement.

59

CHAPTER V

MY return to Dublin did not in any way shorten the
life of the prodigal, though there was no visible fatted
calf. He continued to lead a cheerful existence. In
a short time I heard that J. W, Whitbread was sending
The Irishman on tour and, screwing up my courage,
I asked for a job and got it. Our company contained
the pick of the Irish actors, including Frank Breen, a
very fine actor of Irish " character parts."

We visited Liverpool, Manchester, Derby, Rochdale,
Portsmouth, Southampton, and many other towns
where the stage was large enough to take our big
" mill scene/' which was the principal feature of the
play. All plays of that period had a special scene
depicted on the posters in brilliant colours, like the
ones the cinema uses to-day. It might be a fire-engine,
a sawmill, or an express train about to run over a man
tied to the rails. Ours was a mill, with real water to
go over the wheel, and it showed two storeys, the
top one of which had a trap-door in the floor by which
people could be flung into the mill-race below. This
last consisted of 2,000 gallons of water in a tank. In
the third act the hero was attacked up in the loft by
the villain and his gang and the trap was opened to
throw him in, but, hero as he was, he fired them in
instead, and the curtain came down oji them splashing
around in the water while he jeered refinedly at them
through the trap-door. The wheel turned gaily
all the time, and the limelight, when it was free from
its usual occupation of following the hero all over the

60

BEFORE

stage, shone on the water. The mill-race tank was
made of heavy wood with a rubber lining. This,
with the rest of the mill, was fitted together each
Monday morning and wheeled into place, where it
remained for the rest of the week. On the right-hand
side of the tank was a large wooden chute, and the
fire-hose playing down this represented the water
coming in from the dam. Each night, during this
scene, the water poured down the chute until the tank
was about three-quarters full, and every morning the
staff had to bucket out the extra amount of water.
On Saturday nights, except for the odd theatres where
the whole contraption could be wheeled into the yard
and tipped over, the whole 2,000 gallons had to be
emptied, bucket by bucket, a job that took a couple
of hours. Tuesday morning was nearly always the
occasion for fierce rows with the local staff. It was
too easy to get a hole in the tank, so that the water
would leak through all night on to the stage, swell the
traps so that they would not work and, worst of all,
drip on to the scenery for the next pantomime which
was always stored at the back of the cellar. Nothing
will take water marks out of distemper paint, but if
language could do it, the local managers would have
not alone banished the water stains but the paint off
the canvas as well.

At Birmingham we had a strike of the men who had
to go into the tank on the Tuesday night. As they
waited until they were wanted on the scene they got
the extra money demanded, but when they came down
the trap into the water someone took the fire-hose out

61

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

of the chute and washed them round the tank with the
full power of the hose ! Each one thought his
neighbour was striking him, and the curtain came down
on a real fight that was fiercer in the tank than it had
ever been in the loft.

Derby I shall always remember because my dressing-
room was right at the top 180 steps from the stage.
As I had four changes during each performance, the
repeated journey prevented me from putting on weight
that week, if it did nothing else. Rochdale was the
first town I played in where a great number of people
wore clogs. I was awakened on Monday morning
by the sound, as I thought, of a violent hailstorm.
On going to the window to look out I could see no sign
of it. All I could see was a man going down the
street with a number of steel wires attached to a
bamboo pole, and this he rattled on the window-panes
as he passed. He was the " knocker up," and for
a trifling sum per week he woke up his clients so that
they would be in the mill at six o'clock. He woke me
and, I suspect, others, without exacting even a half-
penny. About half an hour later I was again aroused
by a noise as if the whole town was busy banging the
cobble-stones with pieces of wood. This sound was
produced by the passage of hundreds of men and
women on their way to work, all wearing clogs.
When they swarmed down the gallery steps of the
theatre it sounded like the beating of the surf on the
rocks when there is a great storm at sea. But they
were a most appreciative audience, and when a
thousand clogs stamp their applause one has no doubt

62

BEFORE

about one's reception. On the other hand, if they
did not like you it was not unusual for the clog to be
used as a swift signal of disapproval. But Rochdale
dearly loved a hero, and our " lead " was sure to
have a lot of presents left for him at the stage door
braces, slippers, smoking-caps or cigars. It was
chiefly the villain who was flattered with the order of
the clog.

At Birmingham we had trouble about the gallery
receipts, for our manager could always count more
people there than there were vouchers for, with the
checker on the money " returns." He watched very
carefully, but could not find out how the vouchers at
the gallery door could have got back to the money-
taker at the entrance. Yet the only way of accounting
for the extra people was that in some way the seats
were being sold twice. On Friday night he met a
boy coming down the gallery stairs with two beer
cans, one full and the other empty. He was thirsty,
so he stopped the boy and, offering to pay for it,
asked for the can of beer. The boy tried to slip past
him, saying it " was special beer he got each night for
the checker." The manager took the can out of his
hand saying, " Get him some fresh ; t I want this."
The can was full of metal vouchers covered with beer.
On Saturday night the money " returns " corre-
sponded exactly with the number of people in the
gallery.

I met a man once at a fancy fair in charge of the
" Rickety Wheel " who had been checker at the pit
door of a Dublin theatre. He told me that the money-

63

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

taker and he reckoned to make at least a couple of
pounds a week re-selling seats ; a newspaper boy
used to transfer them inside a copy of the evening
paper* The man who complained to Sir Augustus
Harris that he was admitted to the pit by the checker
at Drury Lane for a 6J. tip, was told that " it might be
so/ 3 but that checker had his house property bought
and a new one would have it to buy.

It was in Liverpool that I made my first and only
appearance at a police court, not, I am glad to say,
as a defendant but as a witness. We were playing at
Bootle, and on Saturday night, the last night of the
tour, the scenery, properties and baskets had to be
taken into Lime Street to be loaded on the trucks.
We were last in, for all the companies playing in
Liverpool had got there first, and it was about three
o'clock on Sunday morning when I got back to my
rooms at Bootle, to find a tall grim policeman waiting
my return. I wondered how I had come into the
clutches of the law. With note-book in hand the
constable wanted to know "Did I belong to the
Irish play ? " " Had we been playing at Bootle ? "
" Had we lost any of our baskets ? " " If so, where ? "
" What kind of a basket was it ? " " Could I give the
measurements fore and aft ? " I said that, to the
best of my knowledge, our baskets had all been loaded
into the van by the staff. Well, but he had a basket
with our label on it. Would I come back to Scotland
Road and identify it, and also the man who said he had
found it and that it was his basket ? This man had
been caught behind a hoarding trying to remove the

64

BEFORE

bar and padlock, I had to wait over until Monday
to give evidence at Dale Street, Never will I forget
the trouble that magistrate took, with each case
brought before him, to be understanding and as
merciful as possible, though very often it was quite
evident that the police had justice on their side. I
got back the basket and sent it on to the lady who
owned it and then returned to Dublin, a free man, to
look once more for a job.

At that time there were no theatrical agents in
Ireland I doubt if there have been any since so
that if you wanted agents to find you work it was
necessary to live where they were in Manchester,
Birmingham, or Glasgow. The salaries I had been
paid had not left any too much margin for saving,
and against I had kept myself in clothes and other
necessities I had no money to support me away from
home for any length of time while I was idle. I had
to rely on finding something in the " Wanted Artists "
column of the Stage and the "Era that I could " write
in " for, and hope to be engaged. In this procedure
you were always requested to send your last two
references. How you envied the "Jack Neville"
who was asked in print to " write in." Fancy being
Jack with a real live manager wanting him to return
and play for him ! Then there were advertisers who
wanted artists and stated as an inducement that the
theatre had a " wood roof." These were the pro-
prietors df booth theatres or " penny gaffs " of the
superior sort who could boast a wood roof instead of a
mere canvas one. Most of them were located in

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

queer out-of-the-way places like Hetton-le-Hole.

And since then whenever I've been lucky enough to

meet with any of them, like Pat Collins', that was

playing at Bromsgrove while I was in Birmingham, I

found them as well equipped as many a second-class

theatre. I saw them give a great performance of a

play entitled The Nun's Daughter at a matinee for

children. I should have learned something playing

six plays a week, with a repertoire of thirty, any of

which they could put on at a few hours' notice. One

of the ''penny gaff" managers, when advertising,

begged " actors who had played in Noah's Ark " to

save stamps by not writing to him. Another had no

vacancies for " bar counter polishers " and stipulated

that " all artists must parade " ! While there was a

general desire on the part of the managers that

" applicants should speak the Queen's English," one

wondered if they did this themselves or could recognise

it when spoken by others.

The " Wanted Artists " column made good reading,
for there was always the hope that, tucked away in a
corner, was a job that one could wire or write for, and
so get on the road again. When one has grown used
to changing town every Sunday it is depressing to
have to stay in one place, and the longing comes
for the stimulation of an audience that changes night
after night, week by week. The feeling comes that
life is very dull indeed.

During my absence the Ormond Dramatic
Society, under my brother Frank's able supervision,
had established itself as one of the most important

66

BEFORE

amateur societies in Dublin, and one of the actors
showed special promise of making a name for himself
if ever he became a professional He was the first
" juvenile man " we had Dudley Digges. Now
he is a star in New York and a prominent " character
actor" with the big corporations at Hollywood. I
wrote to him the other day to ask if he would tell me
what he could remember of the Ormond Dramatic
Society. Here are passages from his reply.

Your welcome letter reached me all right. It's
a great link with the past to hear from you, and as I
grow older I frequently find myself doddering into
memories of Manders Terrace and our happy days
in Dublin. I am glad to hear that you are con-
templating a book on certain early phases of the
Irish Theatre, and while the mention of the Irish
Drama sends me scurrying to cover, so many
books have been written on the subject from
Dublin to Walla Walla, if you know where that is,
I think and have always felt that the stories were
incomplete without some account of the days that
led Into the movement.

You and I and a few others know that if it had
not been for the presence of our group of enthusi-
astic young amateurs at that time it is a question if
the theatre would have come into being when it did.

The efforts of The Irish Literary Theatre closed
with the failure of Diarmuid and Crania by George
Moore. Yeats and Martyn admitted that without
Irish actors at hand it was impossible to go on.

67

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE
Don't you remember they wrote " The peculiar
rhvthm of Irish speech and its unusual idioms are
not suitable for English voices " ?-sentiments with
which one can easily imagine the actors of the Benson
Shakespearean Company thoroughly agreed. One
said, " It's what I was sayin' " and all that rot ; what
I mean, old chap, it's not English, not even grammar.

I have memories of a time many years later when a
certain New York actress, an Irish American I
believe, or at any rate one that had been prominently .
identified with Irish rdles, was handed the part of
Brigit in Kathleen ni Houlihan. Her comment on the
part was " What sort of gibberish is this ? " The
performance of The Escape ofReJHagb and The Harp
That Once (and only once, thank God)! You
remember.

As to the days before the inception of the Irish
National Theatre Sotiety, and our work in the
Ormond Dramatic Society (later W._ G. Fay's
Comedy Combination), I have most vivid recollec-
tions of those happy times, but I am sorry to say no
programs to refer to and I have forgotten the names
of the players.

My own introduction to the Fays came through
my being at a party at George O'Callaghan's where
I 'first met Ernest Vaughan. He recited " The
Uncle " with such thrilling effect on me that I told
him I had ambitions to be a reciter and inflicted on
him the first stanzas of that immortal poem " Christ-
mas Day in the Workhouse." He said immediately,
" Oh, you must meet Fay; you must meet Fay."

68

BEFORE

That was the first I heard of the Fays, and he pro-
mised to call for me and bring me round. A week
or two passed and I had forgotten all about the
incident, when, as I went down the road one foggy
night, a tall figure in a long black cloak and a large
Fedora hat suddenly emerged from the gloom.
It was Vaughan, looking like the embodiment of
Irving, Tree and Robertson, and he spoke of the
stage with such authority and elocutionary style that
I was transported. We called at Manders Terrace
(where the Society rehearsed) and met Frank, and I
remember so well my first meeting with that gently-
spoken inspiring spirit.

It was arranged that I should come to him for
elocution lessons twice a week at the ridiculous
figure of half-a-crown a month. There were times
when I could not scrape up even that much, but it
did not matter to Frank. He struggled on with me,
and I went through my " O's " and " A's " and my
final consonants and the " D's " and " T's " and
the ending in " ing." An exercise line that I
particularly remember was " The lecturer was full
of his subject/' How often have I had occasion
to recall it since, when listening to some after-dinner
speaker who was devoid of terminal facilities. After
about three months* study with Frank I was given a
part in The 'Boots at the Swan and invited to join the
Society at the same time, don't you remember ? I
played Henry Higgins, the man with the unfor-
tunate name, and my first line was " Another wet
day. St. Swithin seems determined to make the

69

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

most of his reign/' Gripes ! What a pun ! My
Wifis Dentist was in rehearsal at the same time, and
1 always remember my surprise when you walked
into the drawing-room at Manders Terrace and
Frank introduced you as his brother. You sat in
a corner smoking your old " dudeen " and saying
nothing. Vaughan was in the throes of the
" Dentist," and at the end of a scene of comic
jealousy you said, " That's very good, Mr. Vaughan/'
I marvelled at you having the audacity to open your
mouth at rehearsal Of that cast I can only
remember Mrs. Knowles, Vaughan, and Frank.
They all disappeared soon after Vaughan went on
tour, and I succeeded to his parts. We did Who
Speaks First ? and P. J. Kelly showed up about that
time. I remember Paddy Miles 9 Boy, That Rascal
Pat, The Irish Tutor and The Secret which you gave
us by word of mouth, Advice Gratis, Box and Cox
and His Last Legs.

Do you recall our Saturday nights at Dalkey and
your friend Mr. Beggs of the Medical Hall and Mr,
Wilson Fair at the Coffee Palace, Townsend Street ?
Ah, begob, they were great days 1 The extremities
that I was often driven to to get away from the
office and procure a Prince Albert or a Dress Suit
from Nagles in Marys Abbey, and the train leaving
Westland Row at six o'clock ! Sure we were past-
masters of the art of acting and sleight of hand
performance before Mr. Yeats and his little Irish
plays were ever heard of. Seasoned old Troupers
we were and no mistake/'

BEFORE

The little society was gradually making a certain
amount of reputation. As we never put on any plays
that took a full evening to perform, it was possible to
have always on hand a programme of short plays,
which demanded a minimum of rehearsal and gave us
a reasonable chance of replacing actors who moved on
to other things or left the town. As everybody knows,
one of the great afflictions of an amateur society is
that, being mostly composed of young people, it is
continually losing members, and even when it is not
difficult to replace them, there exists a state of flux,
which may be good for sports, dancing or card games,
but is bad for the play. Nothing so weakens a
repertory of plays as to be chopping and changing
artists all the time.

The next time I went on the road was in answer to
the advertisement of a manager, named R. B. Lewis,
who was looking for a complete company to play
Uncle Tom's Cabin. He was located at Belfast. I
wrote him, fixed myself up, packed the now well-
weathered basket, and set out for the North. Imagine
my astonishment upon meeting Mr. Lewis to find that
he was a coloured actor, who had been a slave in
Virginia and had come over to England in the first
company of Christy Minstrels to cross the Atlantic.
His present company consisted, when I arrived, of
himself, three girls and five male actors, but, so far,
I was the only white man in it. My employer
earnestly assured me that another was even now on
his way from England, and he asked would I help
him to find yet another in Belfast. This I readily

7*

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

promised to do. According to schedule, Esme, the
second white actor, turned up the next day to be our
juvenile man, and he and I visited all the likely and
some of the unlikely places in town, including theatres
and music-halls, to find our third musketeer
without success. Facing despair in a couple of pint
pots we heard somebody say, however, that there was
a booth theatre just outside the town. Thither we
repaired to find what we might find. Sure enough it
was a company under canvas playing pantomime
eight shows a day, beginning about i p.m. and
keeping at it until 1 1 p.m. Three wagons were put
together, two to form the wings of the stage, the centre
wagon being the " acting area/' The audience sat on
wooden benches on the earth or stood around on it,
and it was stipulated that ladies in the boxes should
wear boots. When we stooped our heads under
the flap the comedian had just been turned down by
the chambermaid. We watched intently while he
went into the wings and brought on to the stage a
large needle and a reel of thread. Having stuck the
needle grimly in one of the side wings, he proceeded
to fasten one end of a piece of thread to it and the other
end round his neck. Then mounting on a threepenny-
piece he jumped off it and was hanged. The suicide
was a great success with the audience and with us.
It was on a level with those turns by means of which
Pellissiet was later to make Londoners laugh year
after year. Here was acting with no frills on it, to be
appreciated by other actors as much as by the simplest
bumpkin there.

7*

BEFORE

The man who played the wicked uncle was mon-
strous tall and dark, and he too struck me as being a
fine actor. Accordingly, having seen the show
through, Esme and I went round to the back, invited
this gentleman' to come out for a little refreshment,
and put our proposition to him. By good luck he
was as free as bad air. He had been on tour with a
" ghost show " (this always meant " Pepper's
Ghost ") which had " dried up " in some out-of-the-
way spot, whereupon he had walked it to Belfast and
was now, he said, working at the booth only until
better things "transpired." He was overjoyed to
go with us, so we brought him right along and Lewis
fixed him up for the " heavies " on the spot. Our
new friend, who was, as I have said, tall for an actor
maybe six feet high wore the longest morning coat
I ever laid eyes on, and I've seen one or two. And
down the very centre of the long back of this long coat
was a long cut that had been done with a knife. This
cut the wearer had repaired with that peculiar form of
cross-stitch or is it herring-boning? which male
menders sometimes use because it covers a lot of
ground quickly, and never mind how it looks.

We found the " fit-up " down on the quay in one
of the steamer sheds. It seemed in need of repair,
so while we rehearsed Uncle Tom, George (our new
man in the coat) and I tried to make it look a bit more
decent in our spare time. We played a farce each
evening followed by five acts of Uncle Tom and finished
up the performance with variety turns. The boss
was a very good boss as good as any white one and

73

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

better than many. George did a "lightning
cartoon " turn, Esme was a " female impersonator "
in a long fair wig with curls, Little Eva gave a
song and stomach dance, Topsy sang comic songs,
and the coloured boys did all sorts of step dances.
Esme combined his juvenile stuff and female impersona-
tion with playing the piano in front of the curtain
between-whiles, as that was the only orchestra we
had. I played in all the farces, stage-managed the
whole entertainment and took the part of Marks the
Lawyer in Uncle Tom. If you think any of us had
much time on our hands you've guessed wrong.
We played a lot in court houses because, if the police
gave you leave to perform, there was no rent to pay.
A Judge's bench, augmented with planks laid across
the tops of w^hisky casks, and with coach candles
nailed to the front of it for footlights, makes a good
enough stage. In our company the coloured actors
did all the rough work and were most useful when we
had, as we sometimes did, to assemble our stage from
various points of the compass. It was no trouble to
any of them to walk half a mile with a full-sized whisky
cask on his head, serenely smoking a cigarette the while.
Our auditorium was that part of the seating accommo-
dation provided for the public when the Court was
sitting, but when audiences were good they overflowed
into the dock and round the solicitors' table. As a
rule we dressed on the stairs at the back, two steps to
each man, while the girls did the best they could with
the Judge's retiring room, from which a step ladder
took them on to the stage. Our company was the

74

BEFORE

first that ever toured Uncle Tom's Cabin in Ireland, and
in most of the towns we visited, the people had never
seen a coloured man or woman, still less a coloured
actor, so we had an attraction that no other touring
company ever possessed. I learned from these black
boys a thing worth knowing the difference between
" coloured gemtnen " and " black trash." They were
wonderful dancers too, with a genius for improvising
new steps and new harmonies for the plantation songs
they so beautifully sang. At all times they were full
of good-humour and were ready to make the best of all
events, good or bad. One song has stayed in my
mind, perhaps because to this day I don't know what it
means :

The old ark's a moverin', a moverin' along ;

Climb up, Sally, an* climb up, Joe,

The old ark's a moverin' along.

Climb up, Michael, and a climb up, Chloe,

The old ark's a moverin' along.

The old ark's a moverin', a moverin', a moverin',

The old ark's a moverin' along.

The secret of their step dancing, they told me, was
" due to de nerves in de foot, boh."

We got into Letterkenny on the day of the half-
yearly " Hiring Fair." It was the day on which the
farm servants came into the town to find new employ-
ment, and the farmers to look them over and hire
them, if suitable, for the next six months. It was like
a slave market except that the slaves had some say in
settling the price to be paid for their labour. Most
of them, when they left the town that day, would

75

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

never see even a village for the next six months or a
year, when they would again seek to change their
masters.

It was a bad day for us, being a combination of a
fair and a market, for country folk did their shopping
at the same time as they hired their servants. We
proposed having a matinee, but how to coax the people
out of the streets into the hall was a problem. If we
did not show until evening they would all be away
home and the shopkeepers too tired to come in.
However, we thought of a new plan.

When our " fit-up " was erected we gave two of the
boys two of the large bowie knives that were used in
the play, and instructed them to approach the centre of
the town from different sides. When they met they
were to start an argument, call each other " black
trash," or anything else they liked, and then make an
onslaught on each other with the knives and run as
hard as they could, one after one, down the main
street and into the hall. It took three of us all our
time to sell the tickets fast enough to the crowd that
followed them, and we played to a full house.

We drew our salaries each night before the curtain
went up. If we didn't draw it didn't go up. It
wasn't that we distrusted each other, but it prevented
accidents. It was a well-known fact that the boss went
to the post-office every morning to bank the last
night's takings, and once there nothing would ever get
them out again. George, by skilful borrowing
usually managed to keep a couple of weeks ahead with
his salary. "Subbing" was an art in those days,

BEFORE

and old-timers, like George, had brought the raising
of advances to a very fine art indeed.

Mr. Lewis had a dog, a huge St. Bernard, that was
his companion night and day. All the time I was with
him he never once bought a rail ticket for that animal.
There was a regular procedure. When we reached the
station we left the dog outside it, and we all took our
places in the train, except for the boss, who walked
up and down the platform, leaving the carriage door
open. As soon as the whistle went and the train
began to move, the boss stepped into the carriage and
called to his pet. It jumped the wall or the gate, or
what-not, and dashed in beside us just in time for us to
shut the door in the face of the authorities.

Of course they telephoned at once on to our
destination. But we were ready for that. When
we reached there the company passed out of the*
station, giving up their tickets, but leaving the boss
and his dog behind. Then the collector asked where
was the dog's ticket, and as there wasn't one, he said,
" All right : we'll retain the dog 1 " The boss said,
" All right, do," and passed himself through the
barrier, after which he called to the dog. There was
never a station staff in Ireland had the courage to hold
him while he was obeying the call.

Like the rest of us he was a bit of an actor, that dog.
He was trained to attack me as Marks the Lawyer,
and to tear from me the umbrella that was my badge of
beastliness, struggling with me until I fell over, when
he stood on me and growled. His cue for doing this
was a shot from a revolver. But we had to be

77

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

careful For if he heard the gun at any other time he
was liable to leave the boss at the door of the hall
and charge, ploughing right through the audience on
his way to the stage to do his turn. Never a human
actor obeyed the call to duty with less hesitation.

In Buncrana I fell sick and could not play, and Dolly,
one of our " gals," had to double Topsy and Marks
the Lawyer. I felt pretty bad, and if I had been in
funds I would have tried to get back to Dublin. The
local priest came in to see me one night and offered
me enough to take me home, but I decided to stick the
show. I was grateful, though. He had never seen
me before and show folk are not supposed to be the
safest people to lend money to, but when I pointed this
out he just said, " If you never send it back, sure
there will be more come to me from where this did."

We went on to Strabane and I managed to play the
first night by having a chair on each side of the stage
to sit on as I came off and wait on till my next entrance.
George and Esme helped me home, and the next
thing I remember was seeing my landlord busy tearing
the wall-paper off my room. I wondered had he or I
gone crazy, or both. Then two men in uniform came
and asked me to get up and come for a jaunt with them
and they would kindly take my mattress along for me
to lie on. Then I was in a bare room with the walls
washed bluish-white and a meagre fire trying to warm
them up, while a huge woman in a checked uniform
made the bed, uttering queer noises all the time she
did it. By a wonderful exercise of reason I concluded

that what little wits I ever had were now gone from

78

BEFORE

me, and that the fate predicted of all fools that go on
the stage had come upon me. I had dreams that my
father was come to the lunatic asylum to see me,
though I couldn't make out what had brought him . . .
dreams of being inveigled into a big barge on the canal
and put down into a hold full of heavy sacks which
began to squeeze me tighter and tighter . . . dreams
of being chased all through Strabane in my sark . . .
dreams the worst of all to the actor of being left
behind by the show. One evening I woke from it all
to find a pretty woman in a nurse's uniform sitting by
my bed. Why was she here ? Where was I ? What
did it all mean ?

I had been off my head for fourteen days with
typhoid. At first I wouldn't believe it. But she
showed me the chart that hung over the bed. I had
been out of it all right, but where ? The show had
certainly left me behind. I spent the next two months
in that infirmary. I was the only patient and they
made a fuss of me. Back again in Dublin my hair all
fell out. Then it grew in again, black instead of
brown, and curls 1 But, alas ! the curls were not
permanent. Those weren't invented yet. I had three
months without any solid food and wasn't able to
walk a hundred yards. I had no butter for a year.

But I got well and was ready for more trouble. I
tried hard to find Uncle TOM'S Cabin again, but the
house in Fermoy that Lewis was staying in had caught
fire one night. He saved the three girls that had
rooms there, and I daresay the dog would help. But
when he went back to rescue his money, the roof fell

79

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

on him and he was burned to death. He was the
only coloured man that toured Ireland playing Uncle
T^om a good actor, a beautiful singer and a kind
manager to his company. May he rest in peace in
Irish soil.

80

CHAPTER VI

OF all the many companies of actors touring these
islands I suppose the company that was at it longest was
the one called La Comedie Anglaise. It was managed
by Miss Maggie Morton and her partner Dobell. To
my own knowledge it has been on the road fot at
least forty years, and it may well have toured longer
than that. Playing the most successful dramas of the
time, up and down the country, La Comedie Anglaise
became what the advertisers call a household word.
And the name of Henry Chattell was a very good
second.

I mention it because my next engagement was with
one of Maggie Morton's leading men, who was going
into management on his own account, and proposed
touring Ireland to get some experience. When I
joined H. E. Bailey's Comedy Company I think it
was in Nenagh in Tipperary the plays he intended
to do were Mr. Barnes of New York (one of the earliest
thrillers), A Man's Shadow, East Lynne (the play every-
one toured because it was free of royalties) and The
Shaughraun.

H. E. Bailey was a fine upstanding man, six feet
high and built in proportion, and he thought that if
he had been a boxer instead of an actor he would
have been happier. One great trouble with him was,
that whenever we were doing badly with the plays,
he wanted to challenge anyone in the town to box him
for 5 a side. With all due respect to his prowess we
felt that if ever it came to business he would meet his

81

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

match and be knocked out; for you never know who
can fight in Ireland until you try. If he was put out
in a round or two we should have to pack up the show
and leave pretty fast, for in all likelihood such an
event would be followed by a general mlee with the
whole company, who might or might not be good at
the boxing, Bailey was a naturalistic actor, and
when playing he was dead in earnest. In Mr. Barnes
of New York I played a newspaper boy in a costume
that consisted of a ragged shirt and an old pair of
trousers and shoes. We had a struggle together in
one scene, and every time we played it, he managed to
tear my chest with his finger-nails. When we came off
the stage I drew his attention to the damage he had
caused to my cuticle, but this had no effect whatever.
It was not that he wanted to be rough, but when he
fought he fought, and the other fellow had just to
look out for himself. Now, all the fights I had on the
stage in other companies, we arranged them, counted
each move and then timed it, and I didn't like being
treated rough when there was no necessity. I gave
him a final warning that things would happen if he
did not mend his ways. It was useless. So the next
time we played Barms I made a pin-cushion of the front
of my shirt with the points of the pins outermost.
The language Bailey used in the struggle that night
had more realism than at any previous performance.
I had no scratches on my chest either.

He was himself a patient man, which was notable
at a time when most managers had shocking tempers
at rehearsal, and not only said things but did them as

82

BEFORE

well. We had a young man join us who had only
just left Trinity College, Dublin, and this was his first
job. His first part was Richard Hare in East Lynne.
Nobody was ever able to count the times he had to
say, " Ah, I see my sister Barbara standing at the gate,
but alas ! I cannot enter/' before H. E. B. would
pass it. But the sentence they had the worst time
with was out of The Shaughraun. It was "Take it
back, Kinsella, I will not buy my liberty at the price of
any man's life ; I will take my chance." The wretched
novice tried "TAKE IT BACK, KINSELLA. I
will not buy my LIBERTY at the price of any
man's LIFE ; I will take my chance." " TAKE it
back, KINSELLA. I WILL NOT BUY my liberty
at the price of ANY MAN'S LIFE; I will take my
chance." Then he tried " Take it back, Kinsella.
I will NOT buy my liberty at the PRICE OF ANY
MAN'S LIFE; I will take my chance." And so on
it went different each time, except only for the beginner's
love of dropping the end of each speech, until Bailey
gave it up in despair. It finally came over to the
audience as " TAKE it back, Kinsella. I will not
buy my liberty at the price of any MAN'S life ; I will
take MY CHANCE."

We left Ireland to avoid the approach of Christmas,
which is always a bad time. Indeed the last weeks of
November and the whole of December until after the
2jth are recognised times when poor houses are the
rule and not the exception, and this is true no matter
what kind of show you are offering.

We opened in Bangor with The Shattgbraun, in

83

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

which I always played Harvey Duff the informer.
He commits suicide in the last act rather than be
captured, by jumping off the cliffs into the sea. The
opening performance was spoiled, for when Harvey
rushed up the cliffs to jump over, he missed his
footing, landed in the middle of the back scene
representing the sea and disappeared behind the stage,
wrapped up in it. An accident like this brings a good
play to a sad and sudden end. There is nothing to do
but lower the curtain while the audience are still
laughing, and having got it down keep it down.
And so it was on our first night. In Carmarthen
we were unfortunate enough to arrive on the day of
the monthly fair. Things did not look very promis-
ing for our show in the evening. In an evil moment,
remembering our success with the black boys in
Letterkenny, I suggested we should try the same
experiment of a knife fight in the market square.
But I had not allowed for the difference in tempera-
ment between the Welsh and the Irish Celt. On the
Welsh occasion there was no great stir among the
spectators. They simply fetched the police, and
the two boys were arrested for disturbing the peace.
It took Bailey all his time and patience to convince
the inspector that this was merely a forlorn hope in
the publicity line. The Welsh police needed a lot of
coaching to perceive that there could be any con-
nexion between a fight in the street and a play that
was taking place at the Town Hall. Wales at that
time was not a home of the drama as it is to-day, when
there are dramatic societies all over the country

84

BEFORE

producing plays all the year round. We struggled on
to Criccieth and Corwen, doing a little worse business
in each town, until the week before Christmas found
us lost in the depths of the country at a place they
called Bala, Why we went there heaven knows, for
I don't think that a theatrical company ever came there
more than once in a couple of years, if that. At any
rate they did not want us or our plays for their Christ-
mas treat, and in the middle of the week H. E. B.
" shot the moon " for London, and my friend from
Trinity College and I made shift to get back to Dublin.
It was fortunately not an expensive journey. I
think ten shillings was all that was needed, and a few
judicious telegrams brought us the necessary relief.
Without any exaggerated regrets we left Bala behind
for all time, and we got back to Dublin punctually
for our own Christmas festivities.

After a brief spell at home, where I was now
received without being feted, I found rooms for
myself down town, as the journey to the suburbs
twice a day had become a bother. It seemed a waste
to go the double distance when it was only for a meal
and a bed. After that I never stayed at home again,
but lived in one place or another sometimes on the
south side of the river and sometimes on the north.
I helped Frank with his amateurs and played a part
myself when we had no one better to do it. Towards
the end of February I saw an advertisement from
Lloyd's Mexican Circus for someone to assist the
advance agent, and as that was a chance to get ex-
perience in a new line of work I wrote to the address

85

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

in Ballinasloe and offered my valuable services with
only the vaguest notions of the sort of work that was
required, for though I was familiar with the agent's
job for a theatrical company I had no other experience
of advance work. After a brief delay I had a letter
from the agent himself, a man named Stone, asking me
would I join him at Ballinasloe and stating that the
terms were thirty shillings a week and I was to do
what I was told. I got down to Ballinasloe and looked
him up. He was staying at a small hotel, which
impressed me, and here he explained to me the kind
of work the advance agent of a circus had to do.

We had a small covered van about the size of a
baker's van. It was fitted all round inside with
shelves to hold the printing of different sizes. We
carried a month's supply of all kinds, from double-
crowns, to put into shop windows, to twelve sheets
for barn doors and the like, and of course the
most of it was pictorial stuff with horses, clowns,
bare-back riders and acrobats. I was taken to a
stable behind the house and there introduced to the
horse that was to take us round, and told to give him
a good grooming, after which I could have the
evening off. His name was Mazeppa.

There was a brush, I was told, and a curry-comb
in the van. I looked carefully and found the brush,
but I could see nothing resembling what I called a
comb. There was only an iron thing in a wooden
handle that looked like a miniature rake, but not a
comb could I find. I politely asked one of the men
in the yard to lend me a curry-comb, and he walked

86

BEFORE

into the stable and fetched me the spit of the little
rake in the van. I then guessed what a curry-comb
looked like, but I still had not the remotest idea of
how to use one. I tried scraping Mazeppa's back with
it, but he evinced such violent objections to my method
of making his toilet that I judged there must be some-
thing wrong with it. I sat round for a bit, keeping a
respectful distance, until one of the yard men started
to groom one of the other steeds, and by watching
him I learned the proper way to groom a horse, which
is accomplished by emitting a hissing sound through
the groomer's teeth.

There was a fair in the town, and I never saw so
many horses and cattle together in one place before.
I discovered the true significance of the saying I had
often heard used sarcastically " Beef to the heel like
a Ballinasloe heifer."

In the morning I was told to harness up and bring
the van round to the front door, for we were to make
Athlone that day. I had gone driving behind horses
and had seen plenty of horses and plenty of harness,
but had never tried before to put the two together.
These are the little things in life that reveal us to
ourselves. My first effort was to get the collar on,
for I felt that this would be a move in the right direc-
tion. But I failed to divine that you had to get the
broad end over his head first and then turn the thing
round, and I spent a heap of time trying in vain to
squeeze the beast's head through the thin end without
any kind of success. Every time I thought I had
managed it Mazeppa would blink his eyes, shake his

8?

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

head and throw it off again. A young lad watched
my manoeuvres for a while before he came to the rescue
with " Bedad, it's easy seein' you don't know a great
deal about horses/' In the long run, with his help,
I marched Mazeppa round to the front door of the
hotel with all his trappings complete and the van
following well behind him. The agent emerged
with a bulldog which took a seat up beside him as we
spanked off, one on either side of the front bench of
the van. This it was to be with a circus.

We got under way for Athlone on the Shannon. I
learned that the daily journey was about ten miles and
on Sunday twenty. We did the same journeys that the
circus would do when it followed us a fortnight later,
preceded a week in advance by a second-hand fire-
engine that was one of our properties. Our business
was to post the bills, to arrange for the accommodation
of the principal artists, to hire the field, and to see that a
proper supply of fodder was on the ground what time
the show arrived there. We were not supposed to
get further in advance than fourteen days in case Mr.
Lloyd might change his mind and alter the route, a
thing he did once or twice while I was with the show.
The tenting season for circuses was from April until
they went into winter quarters in October. During
those six months it travelled steadily up and down the
country, playing a town a day except on Sundays.
Of course, big towns like Belfast or Cork, Limerick or
Waterford, got a week's performances, and this gave
us a rest. We put up bills anywhere they would
allow them to be posted, and this was my special job

88

BEFORE

on the way from one little town to the next. Any
empty cottage got one on the door and another on
the window. The forge door was always a safe place,
for the smith might get some work shoeing the
horses for the show when it arrived. Other chosen
spots were telegraph poles, rain-water barrels under
the eaves of cottages and either ends of bridges. As
we went we put bills into the hands of local bill-posters
on both sides of our route, with instructions to post
three miles out and wire us if there were any signs of
another circus coming the same way.

Soon I learned to distinguish the main road from a
by-road, to take the right turning by the way of the
traffic marks, to look for the church steeple as the first
indication that a town was near for in Ireland there
are no factory chimneys. It was little use asking
people about distances, for as they thought nothing of
walking ten miles, and always Irish miles, they were
not reliable guides as to how far we might be from
the next town. Stone had been over most of the route
many a time and he knew his way without much help,
but occasionally we got into difficulties. One evening
towards sundown we had not come in sight of our
town when we should, and he stopped a passing man
to ask his advice as to the road still to be travelled.
The man said, " Well, sir, I would say but you have
six good miles to go yet, but it may be only five, still
and all I think it's nearer to seven one way or another/ 5
When we reached the town we found it was only four.

Whether our spirits might be up or down, the bull-
dog enjoyed every minute of the drive each day, and

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

his appearance kept all sorts of stray folk from coming
too near the van, if, by chance, we both had to leave
it at the same time. He looked ferocious and growled
like a grizzly at any stranger. But he was the quietest,
most peaceable dog I ever met.

After a little practice I got so expert at fly-posting
that I could hop off the van, post a bill and be back
up on it again without Stone having to alter the pace
at which he was driving. In the country we never
drove at any great speed, or for a long time, because
we had to be sure that Mazeppa would be ready for
the road each day, and except on Sunday he never got
a long rest.

It was a fine change, after touring with a theatrical
company and changing towns once a week, to travel
every day instead, and without taking a train. To be
in the open country day after day was a precious
experience to one who would never have lived in a
town if he could have lived out of it. And Ireland
in the spring-time is something to see not at motor-
car but at van pace. If the day's journey was to be a
long one we pulled into the roadside at midday and
made a meal of some of the provisions we carried
along with the printing. Often we would share our
meal with tinkers or with tramps that would be
travelling the same road that we were going. It is the
unwritten law of the circus to be friendly with all other
travellers, for we could learn from them what rival
shows, if any, were on the road that season, and if
they were likely to cross our path on our way to the
south. No small town could stand visits from two

90

BEFORE

circuses within three months of each other, so we tried
as far as possible to keep off each other's routes.
Sometimes Mr. Lloyd would send instructions for us
to post eighteen towns in sets of six, each set being in
different directions. Then the circus would play the
middle six in hopes that the other postings would deter
a rival show from coming that way. Never mind the
disappointment of those who counted on the ckcus
coming and never saw the shade of it 1 We were
aware, of course, that other managers might be up to
the same tricks.

I learned and saw more of Ireland travelling with
Lloyd's Mexican Circus than I did with all the dramatic
companies I had toured with before put together.
Some, at least, of the knowledge I gathered was to be
of practical value to me afterwards, when I had to
produce, at the Abbey Theatre, plays written about
many different parts of the country from Galway to
Cork.

We drove from Ballinasloe right down south
through Banagher, Roscrea, Kilkenny, Carrick and
Waterford, to Tramore. Then we turned west,
through Dungarvan into County Cork. Then, by
Youghal and Middleton, to the city of Cork, and so
to Killarney, where we got a chance to visit the lakes
on our way to Cahirciveen in the west of Kerry. We
turned north here and worked our way north-west,
through Limerick and Clare, on to Galway. I
never properly saw the sun set until I watched it
sink into the Atlantic Ocean on a cloudy evening at
Kilkee.

9 1

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

One evening we stopped out day's journey at a
hamlet of about three houses and a public-house near
Tulla, and I was attending as usual to the comfort of
Mazeppa before starting my own meal It was in
the dusk, and as I came to the door the Man of the
House was greeted by someone passing, with " It's
a fine night, so it is, glory be to God." "It is,
Michael, it is surely," answered the landlord. When
the man had passed out of hearing I asked who he
was, and was told, " Why, he's a poor mountainy man,
God help him, from above at Knockeven." So I
found out that the people living in a village of four
houses think but poorly and pitifully of those who live
in the scattered cottages away on the hill-sides
" mountainy men, God help them ! "

One of the rarest things to get in this world is a
frank opinion of oneself from another person uttered
without flattery or spite, but I got it in Limerick.
There was a fair on the day we arrived, and it was
with difficulty that I managed to get a room to sleep
in, and when I did it was one with two beds in it. I
demurred at sleeping in a room with strangers, but
the landlady quieted my scruples by saying, " They
are only two slaters, decent boys, and they won't be
disturbing you at all. As quiet as lambs they are."
Having a long journey the next day and being very
tired, I got to bed at ten o'clock, but I was awakened
about an hour later by a loud argument between the
lamb-like " decent " boys who were disrobing at the
same time. "There's no team ever was bred in
Dublin could lick the Limerick boys, believe you me ! "

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BEFORE

one shouted. The other chimed in with " Will you
shut up and hould your whisht, Joe ? " "I will not,
and the divil a one can make me/ 5 said Joe, hopping
about in his shirt. " You'll wake the decent man in
the other bed, so you will. Let you get into bed and
be quiet," counselled the other lad. " Ah ! " said
Joe, " to hell wid him. Who's he anyway, but the
bloody bill-poster from Lloyd's Circus ? " Thus by
travelling one may learn a salutary humility and find
out where one stands in the social scale.

The principal posting station at Kanturk was on the
gable end of a house twenty feet from the ground,
which meant that all the posting must be done from
a ladder. The day I had to get a display on to it
there was heavy rain, and as fast as I got the sheets on
to the wall the rain washed them off again. Also, the
gutter to the roof was broken in two places, and, every
time I lifted my arms to coax a bill on to the wall, the
water from the gutters poured down my sleeves,
It would have been a good five-minutes' circus turn
and me the clown, but as a bill-poster it took me nearly
two hours to get a single twelve-sheets into place,
and when I did I was as wet as if I had spent the time
in the river. It was a wet place, Kanturk,

Before I came to work on a circus I had often
wondered what made country people so nervous when
they came into a town, but now that most of our
travelling took us over quiet country roads or through
little villages with only the one street, I found that
when it came to driving Mazeppa through Kilkenny
or Ennis or towns of that size I instinctively kept the

93

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

van close to the kerb, feeling that the traffic was
tremendous. These are not what you would call big
towns, and the motor-car had yet to add to the horrors
of town traffic. I expect that if I had to do the same
to-day I would get down as soon as we reached the
suburbs and lead Mazeppa until we were safely into
the country once more. The journey through Cork,
Kerry, Limerick and Clare took us into country unlike
that of the East Coast. It was wilder and more full
of colour, the blues and purples on the mountains
were deeper and stronger than they were on my side
of Ireland, and the spectacle of clouds seen across the
Atlantic from Kilkee had a splendour of design and of
colour beyond any skies I had ever seen before in all
my wanderings.

On the road outside Killorglin I passed an old man
driving a pig into the town with a sugan (hay rope)
tied to its leg. He was wearing a costume such as I
had always supposed never existed on land or sea but
only in the imaginations of theatrical costumiers or
in the fancy of carvers of those little figures out of bog
oak that we sell to tourists from the Isle of Man. In
the Abbey Theatre any wearer of it was known as
"The Stage Irishman." This real Irishman had a
tail-coat of frieze with two shiny brass buttons at the
waist, a double-breasted waistcoat, and a linen shirt
with a tucked front, the collar attached to the shirt
and a black cravat round it. His corduroy breeches
were buttoned below the knee, and he had home-
knitted stockings and brogues. The clothes were
green at the seams but clean and tidy, and there he

94

BEFORE

was walking the road with us, a living example of the
Irish peasant of the days of Lover and Lever.

I learned, too, with the circus that to " lope " was to
get down and walk, especially going uphill, when the
horses wanted as little weight as possible. To
" scarper " was to run, and your name was your
" monnicker." The band were " windjammers/' and
to play the piano was to " spank the dominoes/*
"Denari" was money, and when you heard the
danger cry, " Hey Rube 1 " you had best get to safety
with all speed. I have found since that most of those
are gipsy terms.

I stayed with Stone until we got to Galway, and
then there was some talk of the show going off the
road because of the bad weather. The future dates
he could manage without my help. So I went back
to Dublin with a bit of inside knowledge about a
kind of life that had been strange to me, and a personal
experience of the roads, the villages and the towns
that stood me in good stead later on, when, for seven
years, I scarcely produced any but peasant plays.

Things were not very busy theatrically when I got
home, so I spent some months helping an engineer
with his electrical work. He was one of the chief
engineers attached to the Corporation Electric Light
Station in Dublin, and he had a small workshop at
his house, where I picked up the rudiments of electrical
engineering, helping him to alter all the switches in
the arc lamps in the streets, from the boxwood
spindles, on which they had worked, to insulated
metal ones. In his free time he took on the job of

95

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

overhauling the electrical plant at one or two places.
One was the College of Surgeons, and another one of
our leading fishmongers, " Pile, Powell and Mooney's."
At the College of Surgeons the plant was in the base-
ment, in another part of which they stored the bodies
that were used for dissecting. They were gruesome
things to have to work near, but the old Scotsman
who had charge of them looked on them as we did
on our spanners.

In November I had a letter from Harry Lofting saying
he had joined a company that was going to tour The
Middleman, by Henry Arthur Jones, and would I
come if he could fix me up ? He had just finished with
a "ghost show/' I have said elsewhere that this
meant " Pepper's Ghost," and Harry's last company
had confined itself to plays involving a ghost scene for
which they used Professor Pepper's famous illusion.
These were the best ghosts in the theatre up to then,
for they could walk through the walls, the tables, and
even the other actors on the stage. But there was
always one trouble about " ghost shows." The illusion
was worked by means of a huge piece of plate-glass
suspended in front of the stage, filling nearly the
whole of the proscenium opening. Not to speak of
the care of travelling that property, it took actors with
the voices of bulls to get over the top of it to the
audience. Anybody playing in a " ghost show "
had to be like an actor a friend of mine in Omagh told
me about once. " He was a great and noble actor,
mister, for when he was speaking on the stage in the
Town Hall we could hear him beyond at the church-

96

BEFORE

yard, and there's a good quarter of a mile between
them."

As soon as I got Harry's letter, engineering went
by the switchboard, and in a week's time I was back
to trouble and grease-paint in Chelmsford. We did
some more dates in Essex, then crossing the river we
played through Kent. But the company was not a
strong one, nor the pky either, even if it was good
drama. At any rate we finished at Gravesend, and I
went up to London with the scenery and properties
and delivered them to the woman whose share of the
venture they were.

She lived at Croydon, and I spent some pleasant
enough winter weeks managing a roller-skating rink
there for her. But when the spring came in the skates
went out, and so did I back to the homeland again.
I had thought that I would stay in London a while
and see if it was not possible to find something to do.
An anxious relative (relatives were still anxious) had
written to me that there was always a shortage of
lighthouse-keepers, and as I was in London why not
apply for the job ? I thought the idea of getting
confined away at sea in a lighthouse where you were
relieved once a month had a sinister significance. But
I was willing to try anything once. So I made my
way into the city for the first time and investigated the
Mansion House, Fenchurch Street, Broad Street and
Lombard Street, However, I came to the conclusion
that I hadn't the courage to attack one of the great
office buildings in search of a lighthouse-keeper's
work, or any other. Those English commissionaires

97

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

alone frightened me nearly to death. People who
have lived in a big city all their lives can have no
suspicion of the loneliness that comes over you when
you think that there is nowhere you belong and
no one that wants you in all the fifty square miles of
houses that make up the town of London, It was
home for me.

In Dublin I found a letter from Stone saying he had
left the circus and he was going to get a company
together to tour Ireland, and what about it? I
joined him at Naas in Kildare and found that he was
trying to make all his own scenery, so I turned to and
we got it more or less ready by the time the rest of
the company arrived for rehearsal. Then I realised
that it was Stone's first theatrical management and he
did not know how to conduct his rehearsals, so I had
to do them as well. We opened our tour playing
Our Boys and Green Bushes. In the first play I was cast
for the dude part, Talbot Champneys, but the only
line of it I can remember now is that some place he
says "Life is too short for chess," a sentiment with
which I thoroughly agreed. When we came to stage
Green Bushes I found that Stone had not bought, as he
had meant to do, a cave scene, and as there was no
time to send for one to Dublin, I got six rolls of white
wall-paper, and cutting it into strips, pasted enough
together to make the scene. Spreading this on the
hall floor I painted the cave on it and, attaching it to
two battens, mounted it on the frame at the back. It
worked well until the leading lady one night, making
her big exit up stage, slipped and grabbed the scenery
to steady herself, when a piece of rock, seven feet by

98.

BEFORE

nine, came away in her hand and floated gracefully on
to the stage.

When I got back from this tour Frank wanted me
to stay in Dublin and work with him. He even
suggested that I ought to try to settle down. Now
I considered, and Frank urged, that electricity was a
new motive power that was sure to be used more and
more, and there was money in it for anyone who
knew the technical side. I was not making my
fortune as an actor, and I wanted to have some means
of living that would leave me free to devote more
time to the theatre. So I decided I would give it a
trial. I helped the same engineer as before with
several jobs, and then he got me the charge of a small
plant that illuminated the premises of the fishmonger
we had already overhauled. It had only to be kept
running from dusk until the shop closed at 6 p.m.
and, in consequence, was only a winter job. It has
been impressed on my mind that there is still daylight
at 6 p.m. in March, for it was then I got the sack.
But it was all right while it lasted. It wasn't what one
would call a strenuous job, for so long as the engine
behaved itself, and the brushes on the commutator of
the dynamo didn't try to have a firework display on
their own, there was little to do except throw spanners
at the rats that swarmed all over a place that was full
of titbits for them. I don't think I ever did more in
that way, though, than dislodge one occasionally from
doing a circus act along the water-pipes of the engine.

At Christmas time a swan was sent in by a customer
to be killed and dressed, and this was no nice easy work
like preparing a turkey for the table. The poulterer

99

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

stunned the bird to kill it in the usual way, and gave
it to one of the boys to pluck. The boy, having
plenty of experience with chickens, sat down on his
stool beside the big feather box, tucked the swan's
head under his arm and got well on with the plucking.
But it takes a heavy blow to stun a swan dead, and in
a few minutes this one came to itself, kicked the boy
under the chin and knocked him right into the box of
feathers. The boy, being game, took the bird with
him lashing out with its wings and feet and beak, and
there was a riot in that box that was fit for a Hollywood
film, until two of the men went to his rescue and killed
the bird.

While I was on this job, what time I could spare
from rehearsals and sleep was spent in reading books
on electricity. In a while I was able to apply to a
firm of electrical contractors as an improver, and
what I did not know about the practical side I picked
up by examining my mates' work while they were
away at meals. I drew my first wages on a pouring
wet Saturday and, money in hand, made a dash for the
tram. But before I reached it I stumbled, and away
went my week's earnings into the mud. When the
many kind friends that gathered round me had helped
to put it together again, about two-thirds of it was
missing. The next Saturday I put my takings away
safely before I left the shop.

It was while I was with this firm that I first had to
wear spectacles. Up to then I had managed, very
skilfully as I thought, to conceal the fact that I was
short-sighted, for I believed only soft kind of people
wore glasses. But I was given a job to erect a light

100

BEFORE

at the end of a long cellar, the steel tubing containing
the wires to be run along the centre of the ceiling all
the way. When I had it finished I was standing at the
entrance thinking what a good job it was, when the
boss came behind me and said, " What did you want
to put all those bends in it for ? "

" There are no bends in it. The tubing is quite
straight/' I replied, quite offended.

He looked at me for a moment, and then said, " Come
here beside me and look at it. Now, is it straight ? "

" Absolutely/' said I.

" What's wrong with you, my lad, is that you are
short-sighted and need specs/' said he, " and if you want
to stay on this job you'd better get them quick." I did.

I was sent to fix a lightning conductor on the
flagstaff of the central tower of a large drapery shop.
They had put up only just enough scaffolding to give
me working room, and as the day was blowy, this
kept swaying all the time I worked, making it very
difficult for me to keep my footing. I heard someone
tapping at the bottom of the long ladder, and peering
over I saw it was the boss ; we called him " Snuffers "
as he always had a cold in the nose. He signalled to
me that he wanted to come up, so I steadied the ladder
as well as I could by lying down flat on the scaffolding.
I've always been a light man, and I was lighter then
than I am now. He managed to crawl up and in on
to my shaky platform, grabbing a hold of my belt to
steady himself, and had a look at the copper strip
coming from the top of the pole.

" I think it will do," he said, getting a better grip of
my belt as the scaffold swayed gaily in a passing blast.

101

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

" Do you want to pull me off the scaffold ? " said L
" No, no, not at all/' he replied, " but if we're
going we may as well go together/'

And, still holding on to me, he crawled towards
the ladder and safety. It was cold up there, but my
shirt was wringing wet as I parted with the boss.

I left him shortly after to take up a job at the

Theatre Royal, then in process of building. It was

a Livetpool firm had the contract for the lighting,

and it all had to be completed by a fixed day, so we

worked every day from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m., Saturdays

and Sundays included. Our wages, instead of being

just one week's money, with the overtime we earned,

came to double that amount. I saved a tidy little bit

during that time, for we had no chance to spend it, and,

when the job was finished, I invested it with a friend

of mine in a small poultry farm and did not badly

out of it. I did not think then that this experiment

would lead her, later on, to run an intensive poultry

farm in the middle of Essex, with 4,000 birds and

incubators holding 1,000 eggs. With a means of

living as an electrician settled I was free to devote my

energy to what was my real interest the Ormond

Dramatic Society. Each day, from 8 a.m. till 6 p.m., I

spent at my electrical work. Then I returned, had

some food, and began rehearsals or whatever had to

be done for the next show. It was all preparing the

way for the Irish National Theatre Society of the future.

END OF PART I.

102

THE, .A.BBE.Y

CHAPTER I

BEFORE starting upon the history of the Abbey
Theatre, from which the whole of the great movement
now known as the " little theatre " and " community
drama " took its origin, there is one pojnt I want to
make perfectly clear. I find that

20hL4b^^ of a national,

or rather ,j^ionalist ^mpyemen^

expression in the work of men like W. B. Yeats and

4rt kint',.1 i" "' (Al " >'. "...,~^ _,j , s f 4 ,(.' i- , UL,,I'-.I,J ,>t, i ,4j j It ' ' -- .M, ,.,<, *, ,w %

" & " and was represented in politics by Sinn Fein.
They are apt to confuse it with the Irish Literary
l^tre^wW^wus^dead and buried before the Abbgr
fli^tre^dbeen conceived, much less born. The
onfy connexion between the two was the purely
personal one that Mr. Yeats was actively associated
with both. The Abbey Theatre's contacts with Sinn
Fein were equally slight. We had, it is true, the
nominal support of Arthur Griffith, but he was a
most uncomfortable ally, and was readier with dis-
paragement (or worse) than praise. He could never
forgive us for refusing to subordinate our art to his
politics. Another popular error identifies the name
of Lady Gregory with the Abbey Theatre in a manner
which she, I am sure, would have been the first to
disclaim. As an author and director Lady Gregory
rendered services of the greatest value, and for technical
reasons, as will appear, she was made the nominal
patentee; but the real sage-ftmme of the Abbey Theatre,
without whose aid it would have been still-born, was
Miss Horniman, an Englishwoman who had no concern

105

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

with Irish literature or politics but only an intense
love of the art of the drama. And here now is my
great point that can never be sufficiently emphasised.

first and foremost a theatrical,

not a Jiterarj movement. It was the creation not of
men of letters but of actors. It is true that it dis-
covered many dramatists of ability and at least one,
J. M. Synge, of genius, who, being men of letters,
appeal to other men of letters and so have received
their full meed of praise, which nobody grudges them.
But the playwrights were, so to speak, a supervening
phenomenon. It was the zeal of the players that
provided the conditions in which they were able to
emerge. From time to time I shall have occasion to
indicate some analogies between our work and Ibsen's,
but these are only incidental and superficial. Funda-
mentally there is no analogy. On the contrary, the
Irish experiment was the exact opposite of the
Norwegian. Ibsen made a theatre to suit his plays.
We of the Abbey made our theatre first and then got
plays to suit it, which, I venture to submit, is the
natural order at any rate it is what the Elizabethans
did. We were not literary men. Most of us were
humble folk who had to live by hard and humdrum
toil almost, I might say

rude mechanicals
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls.

What bound us together was enthusiasm for the art
of acting. If we had been limited by literary or
political considerations we might have done some

106

THE ABBEY

interesting work but we should have remained
parochial. We should never have created, as we did,
the " community drama/'
And now for my story.

In the year 1900, when English companies toured in
Ireland, they went only to Cork, Dublin and Belfast,
as a rule booking the theatres in that order, and crossing
from Belfast to Liverpool or Glasgow, to save on the
fares. Most of these tours were managed by star
actors like Edward Compton (who did it for thirty
years or more), Osmond and Edmund Tearle in
Shakespeare, the Kendals, Isabel Bateman and many
others. We saw these actor-managers in Dublin
generally once a year, and when the London theatres
closed we might also have visits from Sir Henry
Irving, Sir Herbert* Tree, Lewis Waller and those
great comedians, Edward Terry and J. L. Toole.

But, although we had thus fair opportunities of
seeing first-class acting, we who were enthusiasts
for the art of the drama knew its latest developments
and experiments only by hearsay. In this connexion
we owed much to William Archer, then dramatic
critic of the old Morning Leader, to whose articles
Frank always looked for news of anything important
that was happening in the theatre. In was from a
long article of Archer's in 1901 that we learned how
Ole Bull, the great Norwegian violinist, founded the
theatre at Bergen, where Bjornstjerne Bjomson and
Henrik Ibsen served their apprenticeship. This story
interested us very much, because there seemed to be a
great similarity between the Norway of 1850 and the

107

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

Ireland of 1900, both politically and culturally. From
Archer also we had news of Antoine's revolt against
the Parisian theatre and of his opening the Theatre
Libre in 1887 in Montmartre, where he staged the
plays of the moderns and gave the young French
writers a chance of being performed though their work
was unorthodox in style and useless to the commercial
theatre. Antoine's example proved of great service
and inspiration to us, for he was not a man of the
theatre when he began, but a man engaged in business,
and had to try his experiment without capital. He
and his company did all the work of production
themselves, both clerical and acting, without payment
of any kind. They even delivered the tickets by
hand to save postage. As the new movement got
nearer home, we heard how J. T. Grein and some
friends Miss Horniman was one initiated in London
the Independent Theatre in 1891. The Independent
Theatre produced the first Ibsen play to be performed
in England and also Bernard Shaw's Widowers' Houses,
George Moore's The Strike at Arlingford and W. B.
Yeats's The Land of Heart's Desire. A little later the
Stage Society was formed. Contemporary with and
cognate to these ventures was the Elizabethan Stage
Society, founded by Mr. William Poel.

But with only newspaper reports and articles to
help us we could not really find out how the new plays
differed from the old. Our first personal experience
came with the arrival in Dublin of Sir Herbert Tree
with Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. It was an
exciting first night. The theatre was full, and I have

108

THE ABBEY

never seen, before or since, an intelligent audience so
completely flabbergasted. They could make neither
head nor tail of it, " There were no love-scenes."
" There was no hero or heroine." " A play about baths
and sewerage." " The ridiculous suggestion that a
corporation would act against its own interests or that
of the town." " It wasn't a play at all." These were
some of the criticisms. But Frank and I were delighted,
for our knowledge of plays from the Restoration to
our own times enabled us to recognise that this great
dramatic genius had broken new ground and blazed a
trail that has been followed by every dramatist since his
time. We saw that Ibsen had discerned the dramatic
possibilities of the lives of every class in the com-
munity. In addition, he had invented a new method of
construction and had done away with asides and
soliloquies. Obviously this kind of play demanded
from the actor an entirely new technique. The
rhetorical method suited the old comedies, Shake-
speare or The Lady of luyons, but would be of as little
use in 'Pillars of Society as it would be in Maeterlinck's
Intruder.

While these changes were taking place in the
theatre in England and on the Continent, in Ireland
political agitation having lost a great deal of its appeal
to the young men after the death of Parnell a new
interest in Gaelic had sprung from the formation of the
Gaelic League in 1893 by a small group of scholars
that included Dr. Douglas Hyde, Father Eugene
O'Growney, Eoin MacNeill and T. O'Neill Russell.
As this league was both non-sectarian and non-
109

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

political, it attracted support from all classes, who
gathered together to learn Irish from O'Growney's
text-books and, where possible, with the assistance of a
native speaker as teacher. They also began to learn jigs
and reels and other Irish dances to the music of the
bagpipes. No body of this kind could remain in
existence in Ireland without sooner or later the
political element emerging; and when it did, Douglas
Hyde, as President, held the League to its rules, and
thereby caused the secession of those who wanted
it to be definitely national in the political sense of the
word. The secession was led by Arthur Griffith,
who formed Cumann na nGaedeal, from which came
the whole Sinn Fein movement. About the same
time there was also a movement to form societies to
foster the growth of an Irish literature that would use
English as a medium for those who had no Gaelic.
Two such societies were established, one in London
and one in Dublin, which attracted Irish writers of note
in both countries Lionel Johnson, Katharine Tynan,
Alice Milligan, John Todhunter, Stopford Brooke,
Standish O'Grady (sometimes called the father of the
Irish Literary Revival) and many more. Standish
O'Grady whole-heartedly supported them in his
periodical, the All-Inland Review. Both societies
owed their existence to the initiative and energy of
Mr. W. B. Yeats.

These literary activities did not affect humble people
like Frank and me very much beyond arousing our
interest in their possible influence upon the writing of
plays, and presently we were deeply stirred by the

no

THE ABBEY

announcement of the formation of an Irish Literary
Theatrewhichproposed to give performances inDublin
of Irish plays by Irish authors. The enterprise was to
be financed by a guarantee fund provided by sym-
pathisers. Liberal response came from people of
all shades of religion and politics, but the guarantors
were never called upon. The founders, Lady Gregory,
W. B. Yeats, Edward Martyn and George Moore,
managed to make the performances pay their way with
some help from the generosity of Martyn.

In those days in Dublin plays could not be per-
formed anywhere but in a theatre that held a patent
from the Lord Lieutenant. It was only after much
expenditure of time, discussion and badgering of
officials that Lady Gregory secured a temporary
licence for a play to be given at the Antient Concert
Rooms, and so enabled the Irish Literary Theatre
to give its first production. The play chosen was
The Countess Cathleen by W. B. Yeats. It was done by
a very efficient London company that included Miss
May Whitty (Dame May Webster) and Mr. Ben
Webster. The story it tells is how the Countess
Cathleen offered her soul to the demons to save her
people from famine. Its ethics aroused bitter theo-
logical arguments among the audience, which finally
became so heated that the police had to be called in.
A pamphlet entitled Souls for Gold had been printed
and circulated before the performance, and the young
men of Ireland were called upon to protest against
this " insult to their Faith/' They did, and from that
day every Irish play produced in Dublin had to pass

in

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

an acid test Was it " an insult to the Faith " or "^
slander on the*people' of Ireland " ? Plays generally"
failed to pass one or the other; sometimes, as in the
case of The Playboy of the Western World, both.

In the case of The Countess Cathleen the doubts cast
on its orthodoxy nearly caused the resignation from
the Irish Literary Theatre of Edward Martyn, who was
a very devout Roman Catholic; but being reassured
on this point he continued his support, and the next
production given was his play The Heather Field.
In the following year the Irish Literary Theatre pro-
duced at the Gaiety Theatre three plays Maeve by
Edward Martyn, The Last Feast of Fianna by Alice
Milligan, and The Bending of the Bough by George Moore,

The fact that The Countess Cathleen was the first Irish
play to be seen that was not a melodrama like The
Colleen Bam or The Shaughraun, and that it was written
by a poet, made Frank and me particularly keen on
seeing it. We liked it very much and thought the
company gave an excellent performance, one thing
being very noticeable the admirable delivery of Mr.
Yeats' verse, which was not so speakable then as in his
later plays, for he had had little experience of writing
for the stage. Later he had the Abbey company to
experiment with and made On Bailees Strand as easy to
speak as any play of Shakespeare's.

It was this performance of The Countess Cathleen
that first suggested the idea of the company that
eventually became known as the Irish Players. When
Frank and I left the hall we were enthusiastic about
what we had just seen. We had enough personal

112

THE ABBEY

experience to be able to allow for the loss the play
suffered through having its production on a " fit-up "
stage and in a hall that was not intended for dramatic
entertainment. Yet even so there seemed to be some-
thing missing. What was it? Then it suddenly
flashed upon me that what was wrong with the
performance was that, though the artists were most
efficient, they were not Irish. To get the full value of
this play one must have native actors. The atmo-
sphere it required could only be created by actors who
had a natural understanding and feeling for the theme.
Frank quite agreed with me, but he very pertinently
asked, " Where in Ireland could you get any company
of actors that could compete with those we have just
seen ? Those who had made reputations by playing
Boucicault and J. W. Whitbread would be useless in
a play like The Countess Catbken. It would need an
Irish company as capable as Edward Compton's or
F. R. Benson's English ones to give the interpretation
that such a play demands if it is to be a success."
To which I could only say, " Yes, and if there is ever
to be a real Irish theatre the first thing we need will
be a trained company of Irish actors. But where are
they to come from ? " It did not occur to either of us
just then that we had in the Ormond Dramatic
Society something like the nucleus of such a company.
Meanwhile Arthur Griffith's Cumann na nGaedeal,
was busy with propaganda for the Sinn Fein move-
ment which was to abolish and supersede the Irish
Parliamqntary Party in national politics. There was
a powerful women's section called Inginide na

113

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

hEireann (the daughters of Erin), under the presidency
of Maud Gonne with Maire T. Quinn as her able
first lieutenant. Frank became deeply interested in this
movement. We met Arthur Griffith and Miss Gonne,
and when they wanted some Irish plays produced at
one of their concerts I was asked if I would take the
matter in hand. I readily agreed and thus had the
honour of directing the first public performance of a
play in Gaelic. It was Tobar Draoidheachta (The Magic
Well) by Father Dineen. This experience was the
means of bringing me into intimate contact with the
Literary Theatre when, the following year, they again
took the Gaiety Theatre for the purpose of producing
Diarmuid and Crania by George Moore and W. B.
Yeats. It was to be played by F. R. Benson's company
and to be preceded by Douglas Hyde's Casad an Sugan
(The Twisting of the Rope) performed by Irish
amateurs the first Gaelic play ever seen on a regular
stage. Mr. Moore had intended to produce this play
himself, but he found his experience in dealing with
professional actors in London of little use in coaching
the Gaelic-speaking amateurs supplied by the League.
Indeed it was, if anything, a hindrance, and so he
finally sent for me to know if I would take over the
job, which I was very glad to do. My knowledge
of Gaelic was not extensive, but my experience of
producing amateurs was, and, with Dr. Hyde to help
me, I knew I could manage. I got all the actors to
speak their lines in English first while I gave them the
business and the positions. When they had got these
right we turned the play back into Gaelic and in this

114

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way put it together bit by bit. It was all a valuable
experience for me because it proved that, given the
good-will of the actors, I could get the same acting
value out of the play whether it was spoken in English
or in Gaelic. Apart from my own production I had
to give what help I could to the members of Mr.
Benson's company 5 who were sadly worried with
trying to find out who historically were the people in
Diarmuid and Graftia and how to pronounce the Gaelic
names. There were three or four different pronuncia-
tions of Diarmuid, and Grania developed into Graw-
niar or Grainyah. I told them what I knew of the
story of the elopement of Fergus' wife, but I don't
think they felt very happy about it. I came away from
the rehearsals more convinced than ever that these
plays, if they were to be successful, must be played by
Irish actors. Sir James Barrie's play What Every
Woman Knows becomes a new play when produced
with an entirely Scots company.

The event that was immediately responsible for the
formation of the first company of Irish actors was, as
often happens, something that at first sight seemed
to have no relation to it. One day Standish O'Grady's
All Ireland Review published two acts of a play called
Deirdre by a writer, signing himself "^E," which we
found afterwards was the signature under which
George Russell always wrote. A friend of Frank's,
James Cousins, drew his attention to it, and Frank
bought a copy and gave it to me. Deirdre was the
first play about the greatest story in The Three Sorrows
of Story-telling -the history of Deirdre and the sons of

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

Usna. It was beautifully written in a lyrical prose
that was easy to speak. I said to Frank, " Here is an
Irish play that I would not mind trying to produce
with our Ormond Dramatic Society." For there was
nothing very difficult about the acting, nothing that
teaching could not get over. The trouble was that
the play was unfinished. Where was the third act ?
Frank called on Mr. Russell and told him how anxious
we were to produce the play, if only we had the whole
of it. Mr. Russell was very amiable, but rather dis-
concerting. He said he was not greatly interested in
the theatre, and in writing Deirdre he had been actuated
only by curiosity to see what the great Irish epic would
look like in dramatic form. Having written two acts
he couldn't for the life of him think what the third was
to be. Frank was rather taken aback. However, he
suggested, and " JE " agreed, that I should be called in,
as I had some experience of acting and a good deal of
knowledge of play construction. This resulted in my
first meeting with the great poet and mystic at his
house at Rathgar. I confess I found him a backward
subject. He threw cold water on the idea of producing
Deirdre. He had no knowledge, he said, of the
technique of the playwright and had never dreamed of
writing with a view to production. But I was
pertinacious. I said, "We want to produce your
play if you will let us/' and I told him that we would
get together a company of Irish actors to play it. I
argued with immense earnestness and all the elo-
quence in my power and even the most halting Irish-
man has some eloquence that if he had enough

116

THE ABBEY

material for two good acts a man of his genius could
not fail to find enough for a scenario for a third act.

Whether it was my persuasions or his goodness of
heart I know not, but the interview ended with " M "
promising to think the matter over and see what
could be done. That was good enough for us. We
felt so confident that the play would be finished and
given to us that we -began forthwith to consider the
manner of production. It was quite a new style of
play for us to handle. For one thing it needed far
more staging than anything else we had done, and that
would cost money. Frank said he was good for five
pounds and I offered to find the same amount. So we
had a whole ten pounds with which to start producing
the first big Irish play with an all-Irish cast ! But
what is money, especially in Ireland ? A much more
serious question was where the play was to be per-
formed when it was ready. Frank had an idea that
the committee of St. Teresa's Temperance Society
would lend their hall, seeing that we had given a good
many shows from time to time to help them to get the
funds to build it. He wrote to them accordingly.
The St. Teresa's Temperance Society turned out to
be not ungrateful. They offered us the hall for
three nights gratis as well as the use of it for rehearsals.
This was a godsend, for I had no place where I could
make and paint the scenery, and I could not afford to
hire a room. We got our little company together.
We read the play to them and they were as enthusi-
astic as we were. But here another trouble arose.
The cast of Deirdre was a larger one than we had ever

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

had before. Hence I formed a new society ad hoc,
called W. G. Fay's Irish National Dramatic Company,
and, with Dudley Digges, P. J. Kelly, C. Caulfield,
Frank and myself, we managed to enlist Maire T. Quinn,
Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh, Padraic Colum, J. Cousins,
F. Ryan and Brian Callender to make up the
tale.

While waiting for the third act to be brought forth
in the fullness of time by " M" we went on with Acts
I and II, rehearsing them at the Coffee Palace in Towns-
end Street. There we had the advantage of a stage,
which is always better than a mere floor. In a week or
two "JSL " came along with the last act written, which
was every bit as good as the others. Our joy was
complete. From then onwards he often came down to
rehearsals, sitting away back in the hall wrapped up in
a brown greatcoat, smoking his pipe, and helping us
with useful suggestions all the time. When I had a
half-hour to spare I bought timber and canvas and
began at the St. Teresa's hall to build the scenery.
While the first rehearsals were in progress Frank met
Lady Gregory, Mr. Yeats and Miss Gonne, and told
them what we were trying to do. When Mr. Yeats
heard of it he kindly promised that if Deirdre was not
long enough he would give us a new one-act play he
had just finished, called Kathleen m Houlihan, which he
had first written for Miss Gonne. When Deirdre
had settled down enough for the playing time to be
judged, it turned out to be, as Mr. Yeats had antici-
pated, much too short for a full evening's programme.
And so Mr. Yeats not only let us have Kathleen ni

118

I* -

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

thoto Topical Pros

THE ABBEY

Houlihan but persuaded Miss Gonne to take the
title part as well Our cup now ran over, for, as
president of Inginide na hEireann, Miss Gonne was in
fact what Kathleen ni Houlihan was in symbol
Never again will there be such a splendid Kathleen as
she ; a beautiful tall woman with her great masses of
golden hair and her voice that would charm the birds
off the bough. Her promised appearance assured us
of the support not only of her own society but of
Cumann na nGaedeal as well. It was under the
auspices of Miss Gonne' s society that our performance
was formally given.

The scenery for Kathleen did not present any great
difficulty, but when it came to Deirdre it was far out of
my line. I saw "^E" and left the design for the
scenes and costumes entirely in his hands. Like all
very busy men he always had time. He said if I
would get the scenery made and show him how to use
distemper he would do the painting himself. His
friend, Miss Helen Laird, undertook to see his designs
for the costumes carried out, provided we supplied
the material and the labour. An application to Maire
T. Quinn put the strength of the Daughters of Erin
at our disposal until the costumes were finished.
" M " and I painted scenery as hard as two men could,
at the hall in Clarendon Street, I thanking my stars
that it was all being done on the stage where it was to
be used, so that there would be no time lost in making
alterations at the dress-rehearsal.

At last everything was ready. We gave three
performances of both plays. Here is the programme :

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

INGINIDE NA H-EIREANN

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Evenings,
2nd, 3rd and 4th April, 1902.

Mr* W. G. Fay's Irish National Dramatic Company

will produce at
the Hall of St. Teresa's Total Abstinence Association,

Clarendon Street,
for the first time on any stage,

DEIRDRE
a play in three acts by " JE "

and

KATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN
a play in one act by W. B. YEATS.

Scenery by & " and W. G. Fay.

Dresses made by Inginide na hfiireann from designs by
M."

Orchestra String band of the Workmen's Club, 41 York
Street.

And here are the casts :

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE .... Maire T. Quinn
LAVARCAM .... Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh
FERGUS . . . . P. J. Kelly
BUINNE\ r /. T- fP. Colum

\C. Caulfield

rp. Ryan

AINLE Sons of Usna . . \ H. Sproule (J. Cousins)
NAISI J IJ. Dudley Digges

MESSENGER .... Brian Callender
CONCOBAR ARDRIE of Ulla . F. J. Fay

1 20

THE ABBEY

Act L The Dun of Deirdre's Captivity at Emain Macha.
Act II. In Alba, Naisi's Dun on the banks of Loch Ettive.
Act IIL The House of the Red Branch at Emain Macha.

KATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN

KATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN . . Miss Maud Gonne

DELIA CAHEL .... Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh

BRIDGET GILLAN . . . Maire T. Quinn

PATRICK GILLAN . . . C Caulfield

MICHAEL GILLAN . . . J. Dudley Digges

PETER GILLAN . . . . Wl G. Fay

Scene. A Farmer's kitchen close to Killala in 1798.

This production of Deirdre was the beginning of a
movement that not only created a native drama in
Ireland, but afterwards stimulated both Scotland and
Wales to follow our example. It gave to the Ga el
that which had never before existed in the history of
the race a means of expressing the national conscious-
ness through the medium of the drama.

121

CHAPTER II

THE success of the plays was instantaneous. Nothing
like them had ever been seen in Dublin. We could
have played to the capacity of the hall for another week
if circumstances, financial and otherwise, had per-
mitted. Our audiences were drawn largely from the
working classes (who in every country make the best
theatrical audiences because they come to the theatre
to be entertained and not to digest their dinners).
They were enthusiastic. Their joy was a delight to
see. They loved the patriotic sentiment of Kathleen,
while the romance of Deirdre was so beautiful and
novel that they hardly knew how to express their
feelings. All this was as surprising as it was gratifying,
for we had assumed that our audiences would be
entirely composed of those who had always supported
us, instead of which we discovered a public, and a
large public, that wanted what we could give them
plays about Ireland written by Irishmen and performed
by Irishmen. The thought was so encouraging that
Frank suggested we should try to keep the little
company together and rehearse during the summer
months. Our main difficulty was the usual one. We
had no funds. The example of Antoine was quoted.
If he could manage it in Paris surely we could do the
same in Dublin by pooling our resources. A meeting
was called of all those that were interested in trying
to form an Irish National Theatre. The activities
of the Irish Literary Theatre Society had recently
come to an end, so there was nobody in the field but

122

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ourselves. If we did nothing the whole idea would
have to wait for a more favourable opportunity which
might never come. After some more meetings had
been held and the whole subject discussed from every
angle it was decided to form a society to be called the
Irish National Theatre Society, with "JE" as our
president and Miss Gonne and Dr. Douglas Hyde as
vice-presidents. But " M " shrank from the position
we proposed for him. He repeated that he had but
little interest in the theatre, and urged us to approach
Mr, Yeats as the only man who stood for anything that
mattered in connexion with Irish plays, Mr. Yeats
agreed to be our president, and hence, from the first
production of the Irish Literary Theatre down to the
present day, he has been the head and guiding influence
of the Irish Theatre. Our society was accordingly
constituted as follows : President : W. B. Yeats ;
Vice-presidents : Maud Gonne, George Russell and
Douglas Hyde; Stage Manager : W. G, Fay; Secre-
tary: Fred Ryan. The members were Maire T.
Quinn, Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh, Helen Laird, F. J. Fay,
J. Dudley Digges, P. J. Kelly, Seumas O'Sulilvan,
George Roberts, T. Keohlei, J. H. Cousins, Padraic
Colum, Harry Norman and Frank Walker. Later
Miss Gonne's political work became so exacting that
in September 1903 she regretfully retired.

It is a fairly easy thing to form a society, especially
in Ireland, but much more difficult to find it a home
when the only rent one can afford is a nominal one. I
searched Dublin north, south, east and west, and at
last found in Lower Camden Street a very small hall

iz 3

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

in a woeful state of dilapidation which the landlord
was prepared to let for 40 a year. I took it there and
then, making myself personally responsible for the
rent without any means of paying it beyond a pious
hope that it would materialise from some unknown
quarter when it became due. The place was just four
bae walls and a roof, without platform or seats.
It was our job to make what we needed. With the aid
of a carpenter and of any members who were anxious
for a little hard work in the evenings, we set to. We
built a stage and some scenery of a very primitive kind
which I painted myself on Sundays. The seating was
a sore worry, because seating is very expensive.
However, someone remembered a foundry where they
made the castings for school benches. We bought
five dozen of these, and with thick flooring boards for
the seats and thin ones for the backs, by expending
much labour and time we provided enough seating to
accommodate the audiences of our hopes. The hall
became a great meeting-place for all sorts of people
interested in any of the Irish revival societies. They
came, sometimes to lend a hand with the work, but
more often to sit round and talk among themselves
and when they thought of it tell us how to do it.
Anyhow we never suffered from lonesomeness. The
stage was an even worse problem than the seating,
because I could not make it any more than nine feet
deep by sixteen feet wide from wall to wall, out of
which, as there were no dressing-rooms, I had to
leave room at the sides for the actors to make up
one side for the women and the other for the men.

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Heating at the time was quite out of the question. All
we could hope for was that by the time the weather
grew really cold we might be able to afford a gas-
stove. While the hall was being put into order we
rehearsed the plays for the opening performance,
either at the Coffee Palace or at the hall if it happened
to be free.

In December 1902 we opened for three nights with
a play on municipal politics. The 'Laying of the Founda-
tions., by our secretary , Fred Ryan; a new one-act
comedy, A Pot of Broth, by Mr. Yeats (which was for a
long time the stand-by of the society); The Ratwg
Lug, by James Cousins; and 'a play in Gaelic by
P. T. McGinley called Ei/is agus an bean deirce (Ellis and
the Beggar Woman).

It was not a very successful opening. After the
reception of Deirdre we expected more than we got.
The hall was cold and so was the audience, if you
could call the few that turned up an audience. The
roof leaked. The stage was so small that you couldn't
swing a kitten, let alone a cat. On the Saturday night
we had trouble in getting our audience into the hall.
The shops on either side of our entrance were a
provision dealer on the left and a butcher on the right.
Saturday being their busy day, large boxes of eggs
encroached upon our entrance on the one side, while
the butcher crowded the other with the half of a large
cow that nearly touched the egg boxes. The result
was that those members of the public who were
courageous enough to support us had to get in by
slipping sideways between the eggs and the beef.

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

One lady remarked to her escort as she slithered past
the carcase : " Well, ye told me that Mr. Yeats was
queer, but this is the queerest theatre that ever I saw."
The Press was rough and rude. One man wrote to the
newspapers complaining that we did not give him
upholstered fauteuils ! " Why/' he exclaimed in-
dignantly, " should the Muse of Irish Drama hold her
levee in surroundings that would spell bankruptcy
for a penny gaff? Why should she declaim from a
stage which is not a stage, surrounded with scenery
which is not scenery (one for me who had painted it 1),
to an audience that is cultivating rheumatism or pains
in the spinal column on seats that have no backs ?
I may be told it is classic simplicity. I answer it is
merely downright commonplace discomfort, which
not even a red-hot enthusiast would endure for long.
... If simplicity of scenery and dress be the object
they should endeavour to follow the example set in the
production of Everyman. [William Poel had spent
2,000 on this " simplicity/'] To put it plainly, Sir,
if there is ever to be a national theatre, its promoters
must remember the dignity of dramatic literature and
the comfort of the playgoing public." And so on
for a column and a half, but it all boiled down to
" Can any good come out of Lower Camden Street ? "
At the time I thought the man was right, and I would
have given him comfort if I could. Now I think
he was wrong and we were right; for, instead of
waiting until time and circumstances brought us proper
conditions, we were content to suffer all manner of
inconvenience and abuse provided we got on with the

126

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work, which was what mattered. In England there
is a periodical agitation for a national theatre, but it
always includes a plan for a house costing about a
hundred thousand pounds and an endowment of about
the same amount. Yet if ever the money is sub-
scribed it will not make a national theatre. Such
institutions are the result of growth and tradition that
no money can buy any more than it can buy an Oxford
or a Cambridge.

Early in January (1903) we did the same programme
at Rathmines for Cumann na nGaedeal at their
Samhain festival, where we also gave a revival of
Deirdre and Kathleen ni Houlihan. This occasion,
though we little dreamed it at the time, was to be the
turning-point of our fortunes, as I shall tell presently.
We tried only one more production at Camden Street
The Sleep of the King, by James H. Cousins, an inter-
esting play and the last we had from him. It was clear
that we could make no progress without larger premises
and better equipment. Neither actors nor plays had
a chance in such a cramped space. And so we
decided to hire the Molesworth Hall for our pro-
ductions. We hoped to take enough at each pro-
duction to cover the expenses of the next and also the
rent of the Camden Street premises, which we kept on
for meetings and rehearsals.

It was just about the same time that one of our
staunchest supporters, the late Lord Monteagle,
asked if we could bring a one-act play to his place at
Foynes, Co. Limerick, where the Social Improvement
Society was giving an entertainment. The only play I

127

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

could think of as suitable was A^PotpjBroth. For one
thing, I could not find more than three people free to
go down to the country at that time of year, and in
any case the Pot was straight, farcical comedy, a
regular side-splitter such as a village audience might be
counted upon to enjoy. So one Saturday afternoon
Maire T, Quinn, P. J. Kelly and myself got to Fojnes.
The village, hall was crowded. Our bosoms swelled
with pride, patriotic and artistic. Dublin had been
all very well, but it was . only a metropolitan mbb~
whereas now we were making our debut before the
real Irish people, the people of the land. It was a
great occasion. The entertainment began with a
couple of songs, which were enthusiastically applauded,
and then came our Pot of 'Broth. It is a very little
piece, playing only fifteen minutes, but_ those fifteen
minutes at Foynes felt like the hideous eternity of a
bad dream. From start to finish stony silence not
a murmur, not even the ghost of a smile. There was
no curtain call. We were holding an inquest to find
out how the play had been killed (our gloom deepened
by the sound of the applause that greeted the singers
who followed us), when in comes my Lord Monteagle
to ask could we do another turn, as the night was still
young.

"We've only the one play," I said, "and they
didn't like it."

" What do you mean ? " said he.
" They never laughed," said L
" Oh, is that all ? " said his Lordship. " Don't
you know that probably not one of them ever saw a

128

THE ABBEY

play before ? And besides, they'd be thinking it was
disrespectful to laugh at the swell actors from Dublin,"

At that I had an idea. I asked how it would be if I
went in front of the curtain and told them the plot
the story of the foolish woman who bought a stone to
make broth with then we would play it all over again.
Lord Monteagle thought that was splendid. They
would just love it, he said. So I went out and told
them, and up went the curtain again. This time we
had no cause for complaint. They laughed at every
line, whether it was funny or not. The scene at the
fall of the curtain was tremendous. I felt like
Napoleon at Marengo, when he lost in the morning
and won in the afternoon. How many actors can
boast of having played the same play to the same
audience twice in the same night and the second time
after getting the bird at the first ?

We opened at the Molesworth Hall in March,
presenting for the first time Mr. Yeats's mo'rality, The
Hour-glass, and Lady Gregory's first play, Tiventy-
five. To make up a full evening's programme Mr.
Yeats expounded our dramatic theories in a lecture on
" The Reform of the Theatre " between the two plays.
The Hour-glass was the first modern morality play,
and for simplicity, dignity and dramatic force it can
bear comparison with any of the Chester or Coventry
Mysteries. It is easy to stage. The only problem
we had was how to dress Miss Nic Shiubhlaigh for
the part of the Angel. As an Irishman I may be
forgiven for saying that angels on the stage are the
very devil. They are so apt to look like pantomime

129

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

fairies. Mr. Yeats finally decided to have her dressed
like a Botticelli angel, with a golden halo round her
head quite frankly a picture angel. I arranged an
entrance that enabled her to reduce her movements to
a minimum, and she played the part with a sincerity
that suited her austere beauty. Dudley Digges had
the requisite power and detachment needed for the
Wise Man, and Frank gave the Fool all the whimsicality
that made him so fine in that kind of part. As the
Wise Man's Wife Maire Quinn had an unsympathetic
part but played it well. The pupils were Seumas
O'Sullivan, Padraic Colum, P. J. Kelly and P. Mac
Shiubhlaigh (Frank Walker), and the Wise Man's
children were played by Eithne and Padragan Nic
Shiubhlaigh.

Twenty-five, in which Miss Dora Hackett made her
first appearance, is a valiant attempt to get a mixture
of sentiment and comedy into a very short play. It
was the first of its kind that we did, and it was very
successful. Mr. Yeats's lecture was a plea for
simplification in everything connected with the
theatre and for concentration upon clear elocution.
I wish he would give that lecture again. It is badly
needed to-day, when nobody seems to mind whether
actors are audible or not. There are a few of the
older actors who can speak both intelligently and
intelligibly, but apart from them one seldom hears
the lines of a play spoken with any knowledge or
appreciation of the psychological background of the
spoken word.

Our move to a better hall had an immediate result
in, I will not say a more sympathetic, but a more

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THE ABBEY

respectful attitude on the part of the Press. Now the
newspapers began to take our work seriously. It is
true that most of the critics were anxious that we should
drop all new methods of play-acting and play-writing
and make a point of appealing to the man in the
street by copying what had been found successful in
the ordinary theatre in other words, that we should
go on grinding out the good old tunes. None the
less they helped to make the public aware of our
existence,

I now come to the unforeseen and fateful result
of our performance for Cumann na nGaedeal. The
Secretary of the London Irish Literary Society,
Mr. Stephen Gwynn (then M.P. for Galway City),
happened to be in Dublin at the time, and came to
see our show. He was so impressed that when he
returned to London he persuaded his Society to offer
to provide a hall in London for a performance and
pay all our expenses. Had it not been for this chance,
which we eagerly took, we shotild not have been seen
in London for another ten years or more. The
Irish Theatre owes an eternal debt of gratitude
to Mr. Gwynn. But it was one thing to say we
would go to London and another to be able to go.
Not many of us could get free to travel at that time of
year. We had our jobs, and it was far too early for
holidays. The most we could hope for was to get
a whole Saturday off, and that in the end was how the
great affair was managed. It was arranged that on
Saturday, May 2nd, 1903, we should give an afternoon
and an evening performance at the Queen's Gate
Hall, South Kensington. The news of our forth-

131

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

coming adventure caused some wagging of tongues in
Dublin. It was not a conspicuously friendly wagging
either. Much of it was facetious and not a little of it
malicious. Arthur Griffith in his journal was at pains
to pontificate that he could " assure Mr. W, G. Fay
that the fact of his taking his company to London would
not make the slightest difference to our opinion of
him and them." On Friday night, May ist, by
considerable exercise of tact we managed to get the
whole company down to the mail-boat at Kingstown,
and we reached London very tired and sleepy on the
Saturday morning. Never in my life have I had to
work so hard and at such frantic speed. The rest of
us did have time to draw a few breaths before the
matinee, but for me there was not much dallying over
breakfast. I had to be off to the Queen's Gate Hall
to see that everything was in order, and also, mark you,
to rehearse two strange actors ! True, they were very
little ones little Miss Gwynn and Master Geoffrey
Dearmer,. who were to play the children's parts in
The Hour-glass, for it was impossible to bring our own
children over from Dublin but it was important to
have them right. However, the two performances
went swimmingly. (I might say the same about our
heads when all was over.) At the matinee we gave
The Hour-glass^ Twenty-five and Kathleen ni Houlihan,
and in the evening The Laying of the Foundations,, A Pot
of Broth and Kathleen again. On both occasions the
audiences were large and seemed to like us, but that
was all we knew when our weary bodies got back to
Dublin on the Sunday night.
It was not until the London newspapers arrived on

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Monday night and Tuesday morning that the dazzling,
the unimaginable truth was revealed. We had
achieved the most signal dramatic success that London
had known for many a year. We had hoped for an
appreciative paragraph here and there. Instead we
found our performances described and discussed by
the column in every London daily paper, morning
and evening. Not one but had sent its critic to the
Queen's Gate Hall, and there wasn't a discordant voice
in the full chorus of praise. Different writers, of
course, had different points of view, and sometimes
they were a little bit at sea about what we were after;
but they were unanimous that our work marked. an
epoch in the history of the English-speaking theatre,
if not indeed of the European theatre. That William
Archer should appreciate us was not, on the whole,
surprising ; but, cordial as he was, it was not his voice
but A. B. Walkley's that led the service of praise, and
it did so with an emphasis that was staggering. In
particular he was impressed by the power of our
people " to stand still and not do any fussy movements
when they are not speaking. They just stay where
they are and listen. When they move it is without
premeditation, at haphazard, and even with a little
natural clumsiness as of people who are not conscious
of being stared at in public. Hence a delightful effect
of spontaneity ; and in their demeanour they have the
artless impulsiveness of children." Generous as the
other critics were, Waikley, I think, was the only one
who had the wit to see immediately what Frank and I
were driving at not, of course, in the purely peasant
.pieces but in the serious and poetic plays, viz. to enforce

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the most rigid economy of gesture and movement, to
make the speaking quite abstract, and at the same
time to keep a music in it by having all the voices
harmonised.

At the end of the week the English weekly reviews
and in those spacious days there were a good many of
them took up the tale, (Jotting the i's and crossing
the t's of the daily Press. And hardly less than the
Press opinions did we value the enthusiastic letters
that came to us from writers like " Michael Field "
and Arthur Symons. The latter wrote : " I admired
and enjoyed the performance of your company. . . .
I need not tell you how entirely I sympathise with your
general principles. The quietude and simplicity of
the whole thing; the beautiful speaking and, in the
case of your brother, a real genius for acting which
seems rather an instinct than an art. That means,
of course, that he is a fine artist ... it seems
almost the first time I have ever seen a company
ih love with the words they spoke. There is no
doubt you are doing the right thing in the right
way/ 7

The hardest of all life's hard tasks is to persevere in
some work that you believe to be right and true, while
all the time you are surrounded by people who despise,
even hate it, and try by every means in their power to
hinder you. And then, perhaps from the quarter you
least expect it, you find not only sympathy but what
is better, understanding of what you are trying to do.
That is the stuff to hearten you to go on to the end
against every obstacle. Our visit to London showed

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Frank and me that at least we were on the right road,
however long it might prove to be.

The Irish National Theatre now had its tail up
properly, and the discomfiture of the Dublin newspaper
men and other local wiseacres at finding they could
no longer patronise or sneer was an amusing spectacle
very soothing, as Mr. Pecksniff would say. During
that auspicious summer we were given two interesting
country engagements both by people who, like our-
selves, were trying ' to do honest cultural work for
Ireland. The first was Miss Gleeson, of Dun Emer,
Dundrum, who, assisted by Mr. Yeats's sisters, was
making a gallant attempt to establish home industries
and fine book-printing. It was in the paddock at
Dun Emer that we gave our first open-air performance.
Deirdre was the play. It proved to be peculiarly
suitable for open-air performance, and luckily we had
fine weather. Our other invitation came from the
Administrator of Loughrea Cathedral, Father O'Dono-
van. He badly needed funds for the completion of
the Cathedral, which it was his ambition to make as
completely a native creation as possible, instead of the
usual rubbishy product imported from Germany.
He took endless pains to get native craftsmen and
native sculptors for the furnishings, and in the end
produced the first really Irish church that has been
built in the land for centuries. Poor man, he got little
enough thanks nothing but sour words from the
clergy and sour looks from the laity. I am glad to
think that with our new prestige we were able to draw
a house packed to every corner and so made a sub-
stantial contribution to his building fund.

135

CHAPTER III

LOOKING back on it all, I can hardly believe how
quickly events marched in 1903. It was truly our
annus miraUlis. We had begun it in a dire poverty
that made us the laughing-stocks of Dublin, and you
have to be a Dubliner to know how cruel that was.
In those first days we were made to feel the force of the
ancient sage's words that the hardest thing about
poverty is that it makes people laugh at you. Yet
within sh months of our beggarly beginnings we had
performed in London and been acclaimed as masters
and pioneers in our art by all the most eminent critics.
In the autumn we revealed an Irish dramatist, whose
work now belongs not to Ireland but to the world,
and discovered the greatest Irish actress since Peg
Woffington ; and, to crown all, Miss Horniman paid
her first visit to Dublin.

The actress was Sara Allgood, then a mere girl,
who came to us to play the Princess Buan in Mr.
Yeats's new play, The King's Threshold, which was to
be part of our autumn programme. We had one
other new item, called In the Shadow of the Glen. The
author's name, John Millington Synge, conveyed
nothing to us or anybody else at that time. All we
knew was that he was a Wiqklow man, a graduate of
Trinity College, whom Mr. Yeats had discovered a
few years before in Paris, living pretty miserably by
odds and ends of reviewing and now and then fiddling
in an orchestra. Mr. Yeats had told him that he
would never do any good in Paris. If he wanted to

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make a name in letters, as he apparently did, let him
pack off to the Aran Islands and study the stuff of life
there; and with surprising docility off Synge packed.
Thenceforward Aran was his home. He seems to
have found life there interesting rather than enjoyable,
and it is doubtful if either his spirit or his body could
have borne it had he not been able to spend a sub-
stantial part of each year in Paris. However, it was
in Aran that he found his metier, as Mr. Yeats had
prophesied. In the Shadow of the Glen was his first
effort, but it showed little sign of the 'prentice hand.
It was a peasant play, but oh, how different from any
of our other peasant pieces ! It was the first of the
modern Irish realistic plays. From beginning to end
there was not a syllable of sentiment. The dialect
used was entirely strange to us, which was hardly
surprising seeing that Synge had invented it himself.
His device was the simple enough one of translating
practically word for word from Gaelic. It has been
imitated often since notably by Mr. Caradoc Evans
for broad comic effects in his Welsh satires but it
was new then, and to me as producer it presented a
serious problem. I was quite at home with the
traditional " stage Irish " of the " arrah," " begob "
and " bedad " school, as well as the stage Irish of
O'Keefe, Boucicault and Whitbread. I knew the
Irish of Lever and Lover and, what is better and more
correct, the dialect used in Carleton's Traits and Stories
of the Irish Peasant. It was all the more disconcerting
for me to encounter an Irish dialect that I could not
speak " trippingly on the tongue/*

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The droll thing was that neither could Synge speak
it ! In time I mastered it, but he never did perhaps
partly because his years abroad had removed every
trace of brogue from his speech though he could
always check it when he heard it spoken. He came to
Dublin for the rehearsals a tawny, thick-set fellow
with the head of a lion and a terrifying moustache, and
looking at least forty though actually he was just
turned thirty-two. He and I soon got together and
experimented with the dialogue until, after much hard
practice, I got at how the speeches were built up, and
could say any of the lines exactly in the way he wanted.
They had what I call a balance of their own, and went
with a kind of lilt : " she had the lightest hand . . .
at making a cake ... or milking a cow . . . that
wouldn't be aisy." Once I had found out the proper
" tune " I never had any difficulty with the dialect
in any of his other plays.

Synge always finished a play in his mind to the last
detail before he started writing it down, and once it
was on paper he could not alter it. I remember asking
him once if he did not think that a certain speech
might be improved. He replied, " I quite agree, but
these were the words he used aad I only set them
down/' He told me that as the play came into being
in his imagination the characters took on a life of their
own and said and did things without consulting him
at all. It is a fact that you cannot cut a line in any of
his plays without damaging the whole structure.
His power of visualisation was perfect. I would
work out a scale plan of the stage and furniture, and

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he would say, " That is just the way I saw the room
as I was writing the play/* It was very lucky that
there seemed to be a sort of pre-established harmony
between my mind and his, for I always wanted to
produce his plays as nearly as possible as he saw them.
If I asked him, " Was Dan standing where he is on the
right, behind the table, when he said these lines ? "
he would say, " No, he was on the right-hand side of
the table with his hand on it." He was a great joy
to work with, for he had a keen sense of humour and
plenty of patience, and above all he knew what he
wanted, and when he got it said so which is a virtue
very rare in dramatic authors.

It was during his first visit to Inishmaan, the middle
island of Aran, that old Pat Dirane told him the story
of In the Shadoiv of the Gkn, relating it as if it had
happened to himself one dark night ten miles from
Dublin. Who can say where the story came from
originally? We afterwards discovered three other
versions of it in different parts of the country. Perhaps
it is not Irish at all in origin, but a mediaeval folk tale
wafted from the Continent to our shores for folk
tales are like thistledown for travelling during the
Middle Ages. This is suggested by the closing
passage of old Pat's version, which ran thus : " She
went into the bedroom, but the divil a bit of her came
back. Then the dead man got up and he took one
stick ; he gave me the other to myself. We went in
and saw them lying together with her head on his arm.
The dead man hit him a blow with his stick, so that
the blood of him leapt up and hit the gallery." Synge

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

and I were always puzzled to know how that word
gallery got into the story. You don't find galleries
in Irish cottages, but you might find something of the
sort in a peasant's house in the south of Europe. Is
the inference that the story came to us from, say,
Italy and was being told by the country folk in the
days of Boccaccio ?

In the Shadow of the Glen provoked a hurricane of
abuse which, bad as it was, was no more than a fore-
taste of what was in store for us and the author in later
days and was to attain the most extravagant heights
of foolishness and violence with the production of
The Playboy of the Western World. The treatment
meted out to Synge during his lifetime might well
have stirred the rest of the world to wonder if Irish-
men really had any sense of humour. A possible
explanation of this peculiar obtuseness, this complete
inability to appreciate satire except when it is directed
at other nations, is that, until our movement forced
one upon them, the Gaels never had a theatre of their
own and therefore little understanding of the functions
and values of the stage. They had not the needful
sophistication to accept a play as a play and leave it
at that. Instead of being convulsed with laughter at
the stark comedy of In the Shadow of the Glen they were
convulsed with what Oscar Wilde calls " the rage of
Caliban at seeing his own face in the glass." Of course,
as usual, Mr. Yeats had to bear the brunt of the attack,
for whatever we did he was sure to get the chief blame,
but the rest of us got our fair share. We were told
that there were no Irish people like those in Synge's

140

. G. FAY, the Tramp in " In the Shadow of the Glen "

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play, Arthur Griffith in the United Irishman played
us a peculiarly dirty trick. Somehow by whose
treachery or carelessness we never discovered he
managed to get hold of a script, and did not wait for
the play to be produced, but opened his attack before-
hand. The points of objection taken were " There
are no loveless marriages in Ireland." " No one could
be found in Ireland like the characters in this play."
" It is a crude version, pretending to be Irish, of the
famous or infamous story of the Widow of Ephesus."
There was a monotonous similarity about all the
comments, but I can't help giving one or two more.
" A Boccaccio story masquerading as an Irish play."
" Men and women in Ireland marry lacking love, and
live mostly on a dull level of amity. Sometimes the
woman dies of a broken heart, but she does not go
away with the tramp." " As will be seen, the play is
an evil compound of Ibsen and Boucicault."

It took many years for Ireland to learn if indeed
she has yet learned that in J. M. Synge she had pro-
duced a great dramatist. During all my time the
majority of the Irish Press were bitterly hostile and the
audiences were not much better.

As if things had not been bad enough, I must needs
make them worse by committing a frightsome political
gaffe and with no more intention than the babe unborn.
We had a message from Dublin Castle that the Chief
Secretary for Ireland, the late George Wyndham,
himself a man of letters of repute, was bringing a
party of six to the show, and would we kindly reserve
seats ? As the Molesworth Hall did not boast any

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

special accommodation for distinguished visitors, I
searched all the other rooms in the building for some
presentable armchairs, and got together a mixed lot
to the required number, which I placed in the front
row, quite pleased to think that we had done our
best to show due courtesy. Next day, to my horror,
I read in the Press that the chair I had allotted to the
Chief Secretary was upholstered in RED ! " Eng-
land's cruel red/* What a scandal, what an outrage !
The director of a so-called Irish National Theatre not
only ministering to the posterior comfort of " the base,
brutal and bloody Saxon," but also obsequiously and
abominably displaying an emblem of the vile tyranny
that he represented. My patriotic stock slumped at
once to nigh nothing, and I don't think it has ever
looked up much to this day.

I was so weighed down with my own woes that I
hadn't any sympathy to spare for the mishap that
befell poor George Roberts, who played the part of
old Dan Burke, and very well too. In fact I welcomed
it as comic relief. At that time we were still too poor
to afford such an expensive luxury as wigs, so aged
characters had to dust their heads well with cornflour
this being the cheapest way of imitating grey hair
before shampoo powder was invented. I instructed
George how to spread it well over his head with a
krge powder puff, and with the help of the other boys
he managed to get his reddish hair fairly disguised and
looked quite old and withered. Next day I met him
in the street looking very queer. When I looked at
Mm closer I saw he had had his head shaved. " What's

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the matter, George ? " said I. He told me. When
he had gone to remove his make-up he tried to get the
cornflour out of his hair with hot water an error of
judgment that obliged him to go to bed with a head
like an apple-dumpling. I had to buy him a wig after
that.

It was something to be thankful for that Mr. Yeats's
piece, The King's Threshold, was void of offence. It is a
long one-act play on the old story of the poet who goes
on hunger-strike to compel the king to grant a petition.
It was a noticeable advance upon The Cowtess Cathleen
in the art of writing verse that is to be spoken, and as
Seanchan, the chief poet of Ireland, Frank had one
of the best parts he ever had while we were with the
Society, as it gave him great opportunities alike as a
speaker of verse and a character actor. However, the
production of The King's Threshold 'is chiefly memorable
as the occasion that brought over to Dublin the lady
whose subsequent interest in our little Society made
it possible for an Irish theatre to be established in
Dublin on a permanent basis in a home of its own.
Miss Horniman had known Mr. Yeats in London,
where for some time she had acted as his secretary;
and it had been through her famous pioneer adventure
at the old Avenue Theatre that he had his first dramatic
production, The Land of Heart's Desire. She had seen
and admired our performances at the Queen's Gate
Hall, and on hearing that we were going to do The
King's Threshold, she generously offered not only to
design the costumes but to supply them as well.
This was a great piece of good fortune, because the

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

pky has a cast of seventeen and to find costumes for
so many would have been a severe strain on our
finances. Miss Homiman stayed with us until the
pky was produced, and personally supervised the
making of the costumes. It was her first visit to
Dublin and, accustomed as she was to queer folk at
home and abroad, we must have struck her as a pretty
crazy lot. She stayed at a quiet Temperance Hotel in
Harcourt Street, where the meals in the dining-room
were genteelly served at separate little tables. On her
first morning at breakfast she was incommoded by
her table having a short leg, so that it rocked every time
it was touched. She complained to the waitress, who
was most apologetic, " but Fll soon put it to rights,
Ma'am." The girl went to the sideboard, cut half a
slice of bread, slipped it under the short leg, remarking
cheerfully, " There, that will steady it now/' Some
months later, when Miss Horniman came back to
Dublin for the production of Shadowy Waters, she
went to the same hotel I asked her if the bread was
still under the table. " Yes," she said, " but they have
toasted it now/*

Our next production, in December, was a worthy
close to a memorable year. In the previous January,
when Frank and I first went to help the Cumann na
nGaedeal performances, Maire Quinn told me that after
one of them she had received part of a play from a
young writer who, she thought, showed great promise,
though his work was still rough owing to lack of
experience. As I had a high opinion of Maire Quinn's
judgment I sadly missed her help later on when

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things were going badly at the Abbey Theatre and we
had to face continual opposition I said I would like
to see him. And so, when we were working at our
production of Deirdre at St. Teresa's, she brought
along her young protege. That was my first meeting
with Padraic Colum. I took him into the cast as one
of the sons of Fergus. At that time he could have
been no more than twenty years of age at any rate
that is what he looked like of medium build and
height, with light brown hair and a perfect Grecian
profile. Altogether he was not unlike Rupert Brooke.
Colum was a clerk at the railway clearing house.
Office hours were long, and he had but little time for
literary work; but whenever the spirit moved him
he just dotted down at odd moments a poem or a
scrap of dialogue on the first bit of paper that came
handy the back of an invoice or an envelope or the
corner of some useless document. A lot of the first
script of Broken Soil, the play that he had sent to Maire
Quinn, arrived in that form. When we decided to
make Broken Soil the chief item in our December pro-
gramme, the ever-helpful Maire sorted out the scraps
for us and had them typed, while Colum was finishing
the play in the same casual fashion. He would come
into the hall at Camden Street, either before or after
rehearsal, and, coming up to my table, would empty
his pockets of pieces of paper of all shapes and colours
and sizes, saying, " Fve a lot more here, Will." Then
he would begin to shuffle the pack. " Here's the first
bit ... no, that's a bit of Act II, and that's another
bit of it." Then, taking, say, a blue triangular piece,

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

" Ah, yes, here's the bit to follow where we left off last
time. And this yellow bit is next. And then this
on the back of the envelope." It took a deal of
patience to get the jigsaw puzzle into shape, but he
learned dramatic technique very quickly, and I think
his playing with us helped him to understand very soon
the limitations imposed by a stage and proscenium.

Broken Soil was something of a novelty to us. It
was our most ambitious effort since Deirdre, being a
three-act play, though not such a very long one.
The scene is laid in a part of the country that we had
never represented before the borders of Longford
and Cavan. The story is told more by narrative than
by action, but there is plenty of scope for character
acting, of which full advantage was taken by a cast
consisting of Sara Allgood, Honor Lavelle, Make Nic
Shiubhkigh, P. J. Kelly and my brother Frank. Above
all it is (as the immortal Joxer Daly might have said)
" a darlin* play." The picture of the life of the old
travelling fiddler, Con Hourican, and his daughter
Maire has that combination of pathos and humour,
" the smile on the lips and the tear in the eye/' that is
always the playwright's winning hand, and nowhere
so much as in Ireland. 'Broken Soil, therefore, was
rapturously received. For the first time in our own
country we had not only enthusiastic audiences, but
an enthusiastic Press. There were, of course, some
kindly scribes who, knowing how young our author
was and never having written a play themselves, were
anxious to put him on the right lines with copious
hints upon construction and characterisation. But

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all were agreed that at last the Irish National Theatre
was delivering the genuine goods, that at last there
was a playwright untainted either by the mystical
notions that had made them dislike Yeats or the
unblinking realism that had made them hate Synge.
Let me quote a few of these Press opinions of Broken
Soil:

The sincerity and vitality of the dialogue invigorates one
from beginning to end. In representing the sacrifice of
love to a higher duty it is in sharp contrast to the cynical
sensualism of the Wicklow drama.

The audience felt that they were applauding the youngest
playwright that ever stood on a stage to receive die reward
of a well-deserved tribute for work that certainly entitles
him to the warmest congratulations.

Mr. F. J. Fay looked the country fiddler to the life. Miss
Nic Shiubhlaigh as Maire was excellent; hers was indeed
a vivid portrayal of the emotional and affectionate girl whose
love for her father and whose pity for his weakness triumph
over all other feelings.

Broken Soil is a national drama in a fuller sense perhaps
than any yet presented, not because its theme is Irish, but
because the play is built and the catastrophe produced from
circumstances arising out of the temperament, religion and
tradition peculiar to the Irish people.

The last extract, I may say, is from Arthur Griffith's
United Irishman which had behaved so scurvily over
Synge's play. The author of the notice was one whose
name is now nearly as weE known in England as in
Ireland Oliver St, John Gogarty.

This was all very gratifying, but it provoked one
bitter reflection what a contrast to the reception of

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In the Shadow of the Glen \ Columns work had un-
doubted charm and showed great promise, but com-
pared with Synge's it was as water is to wine, having
none of the spiritual drive or sureness of technique
that had proclaimed Synge a master. Now, it is true
that everywhere and always the Colums will be
preferred to the Synges, gifted work to work of genius
until, that is, the one and only infallible critic, old
Father Time, has his say. But in Ireland this general
frailty of mankind is apt to be aggravated by other
considerations. In the case in point Synge had the
misfortune to be not only a genius, but a Protestant
and a member of the " Ascendancy " class, whereas
Colum was a Catholic and of the people. In judging
their work these were the things that counted. Their
respective merits as artists were of minor importance.
It was a patriotic duty to howl down the one and cheer
the other to the echo.

We did no more productions in 1903, but we kept
on rehearsing at Camden Street in the intervals of
debating every subject under the sun, which seemed
to be our main occupation, especially if " JE " dropped
in to set us some problem. Some nights he would not
come in till very late, and then I would walk up to
his house in Rathgar with him, and he would invite
me in to sit at the fire. As we smoked our pipes he
would explain the fundamental truths of life, quoting
from the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita
and Pkto, giving me ideas that I'd never heard of until
I met him ideas that, if one believed them to be true,
meant a complete re-orientation of one's life. What

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patience he had ! Many times in the summer we sat
till the singing of the birds in the garden made us
aware that day had come, and with many apologies I
would rush off to my rooms at Mrs. Walker's in High
Street to snatch a couple of hours' sleep and be at my
work, with breakfast over, at 8 a.m. I have never met
anyone with a memory or knowledge like his. He
could quote long passages from things he had written
twenty years before and never miss a word. He was a
Hght to all of us. Young writers gathered at his house
on Sunday nights to hear him talk about the technique
of their art. The room would be packed, the air
thick with tobacco smoke, and you would hear more
good things said in that room in an hour than you
would find written in 4 dozen books. There was one
young poet, a friend of Oliver Gogarty and Seumas
O' Sullivan, who was so very shy that it was a long time
before he could be persuaded to come. When he did,
he brought with him some poems written in tiny
characters in the middle of foKo sheets of parchment.
Very fine and very delicate were these first poems of
James Joyce, author of Ulysses.

On Saturday afternoons or on Sundays "M"
painted his pictures, and once a year he had a one-man
show of them at which he disposed of them all at
extremely low prices. They were wonderful draw-
ings, brilliant in colour and design. His advice to me
was, " If you want to paint, paint. If you want to
write, write. It's in the doing of things that one
learns how they should be done." I have always tried
to follow it.

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With the idea of keeping our company together as
much as possible -we used to take Sunday walks into
the mountains up to Glen Dhu. We carried our
lunches in paper bags and had tea at the little post-
office just below the glen, where new-laid eggs,
home-baked bread and vast pots of tea would make a
satisfactory end to the day. These walks gave us a
great opportunity for airing our views on all sorts of
subjects, some of which we knew a lot about, and
others of which we knew nothing to mention. But
lack of knowledge in Ireland or anywhere else is never
any bar to talking plenty at any time. On some
Sundays rehearsals or other work brought us back to
town early; on others, as evening came on we would
turn off at Dundrum and walk along to J. B. Yeats's
house, where there was always a welcome for us, and
over a cup or two, or maybe three, of coffee a fresh
debate would start, the last play would be criticised or
the prospects of the next one discussed. All the time
our host would be busy in a corner with his sketch
book, rapidly pencilling one of those delightful
portraits that he was always creating whenever he had
the chance.

150

CHAPTER IV

OUR spring season of 1904 opened with a purely
artistic experiment. We produced Mr. Yeats's
Shadowy Waters, not for its dramatic value, but for the
sake of the verse, which, considered as a medium for
fine speaking, is among the best he has written. The
result satisfied us that it was possible to make a
company of verse speakers and to gather an audience
that would get the same pleasure from listening to
beautiful speaking as those who like singing get from
listening to an opera. We never got a chance to
perfect the idea before we left the theatre, but in Miss
NIC Shiubhlaigh and Miss Allgood we had two artists
whom we had chosen for their special gifts in this
regard, and Miss Allgood since then has brilliantly
shown that our judgment was right. 1 Mr, Yeats and
the young poets and everybody else who liked poetry
were delighted, but as usual they were in a minority.
The majority detested the whole thing and said so.
When they didn't abuse Mr, Yeats they abused us.
For example: "All this atmosphere of mystery,
passion and beauty so powerful in the poem could not
be represented without an exquisite setting such,
perhaps, as Beerbohm Tree could give it . . . Except
to arrange a beautiful scene of colouring, little or no
attempt was made to give any representation of the
ship or the surrounding sea and sky/' This sapient

1 Mr. Clark of Falkirk has recently succeeded where we failed.
His verse-speaking company, when they came to London with
Gordon Bottomley's play ArdvorlicWs Wife> won the first prize
in the Drama League Festival.

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soul wanted a real ship on a stage fifteen feet by ten !
(I wonder if he would have liked the elaborate one
built for Tree's production of The Tempest at His
Majesty's Theatre.) On the other hand, in New
Ireland Tom Kettle, a poet himself, got our point of
view exactly : " On the whole it may be doubted if it
was wise to take the piece in hand just now, but
personally, as I have said, I will endure any scenic
deficiency for the delight of hearing Make Nic Shiubh-
laigh and Frank Fay deliver verse/*

Once more we had invaluable help from Miss
Horniman, who made all our costumes to designs
supplied by the author, and very beautiful they were
when the full cast was seen on the stage at the end of
the play. Just as she was leaving Dublin she said to
me, " I have had some spare money by me lately, and
I have been advised to put it into Hudson Bay shares.
If by some chance they do anything very exciting, I
shall have enough money to buy the society a little
theatre in Dublin, In the meantime keep on working
hard/* Now if there was one part of the daily paper
that I never dreamed of looking at it was the markets
page. Bulls and bears, contangoes, gilt-edged and
short-term money meant nothing at all to me. But
after what Miss Horniman had said I watched the
daily quotations of Hudson Bays with all the
feverish excitement of a punter. The Hudson
Bay shares rose. The Hudson Bay shares kept on
rising slowly but surely, while I kept saying a
handful of prayers that they might rise for ever
that is, until I should hear from Miss Horniman that

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the deal was so good that it was safe to look out for
a place.

In February, with a revival of Deirdre, we gave
Synge's second play, Aiders to the Sea, the most perfect
one-act play that has come out of the Irish Theatre
whether at the Molesworth Hall or the Abbey. It
has all the austere strength of a Greek tragedy. From
beginning to end there is not a superfluous word. It
never fails to make the audience accept its inevitable-
ness, and it plays just as well with actors that are not
Irish. I have seen it performed by English and by
Scottish players, and not a grain of its dramatic quality
was lost. C. E. Montagu, in his Dramatic Values^
says well of it that " it takes you straight info black
tragedy. You step through one door into darkness/*
And yet George Moore could not see much in it.
" An experiment in language rather than a work of
art," he said; "a painful rather than a dramatic
story/' Even in masterpieces there's no pleasing
everybody.

Meanwhile I was always wondering and considering
what Miss Horniman would do if her Hudson Bays
came up to expectation. About this time there was a
bad enough fire in an English theatre, closely followed
by a shocking one involving great loss of life at the
Iroquois Theatre, Chicago. Local authorities through-
out the United Kingdom began to tighten up the
theatre regulations, with the result that one of the
oldest houses in Dublin had to close down. Attached
to a mechanics' institute, and hence commonly known
as " The Mechanics," this was at one time under the

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

management of that great character actress, Mrs.
Glenville, mother of Shaun Glenville. The institute
occupied the site of the old Theatre Royal Opera
House, built by "Buck" Jones in 1820 and burnt
down some years later. The trustees of the Mechanics'
Institute in Capel Street had taken over the ruins, and
rebuilt the place as a new Mechanics' Institute with a
little theatre attached. For many years this little
theatre was officially called "The People's Music
Hall "; but the last lessees, Mr. J. B. Carrickford and
Madame Louise Grafton, of the well-known Irish
touring management, changed the name to " The
National Theatre/' This was prophetic. The
" National " had no patent from the Lord Lieutenant,
hence the management could not perform stage plays
of more than one act, and all the dramas had to be cut
down and altered accordingly. Even so the other
theatres complained that Mr. Carrickford was infring-
ing their patents ; and, being threatened with a fine
of 100 a night, he was obliged to return to
vaudeville, which he ran most successfully until the
Corporation Fire Department insisted upon structural
alterations that would have cost much more than he
or the Trustees were prepared to pay.

As soon as I heard that the theatre was closed I made
it my business to examine it for necessary alterations
and to inquire into what money these would cost.
This done, I sent full particulars to Miss Horniman,
suggesting that here was our chance. Her answer
told us that our luck was in* Hudson Bays having
risen well above what she required of them, she came

154

THE ABBEY

ovet to Dublin at once. We had among our staunch-
est supporters an experienced architect, Mr. Joseph
Holloway, who made a thorough survey of the theatre,
Miss Horniman and I assisting. In itself it proved to
be incapable of alteration in accordance with the
Corporation schedule, which included, not only new
exits, but a new stage and new dressing-rooms. But
by a happy chance there were certain premises adjoin-
ing (at one time used as a morgue) that were to let,
and these, Mr. Holloway decided after inspection, if
combined with the theatre, would provide the accom-
modation we needed. Miss Horniman accepted on
the spot Holloway's estimate for the alterations the
figure worked out at 1300 and instructed Messrs.
Whitney and Moore, solicitors, to make all legal
arrangements, including an application for a patent.

We were^near crazy with excitement at the prospect
of having a theatre of our own, when, to'put the feather
in our hat, the London Irish Literary Society again
invited us to London. And this time we were to
perform in style. It was to be a real West End
theatre. Of course we went. Miss Horniman, good
angel, helped the Literary Society with the publicity
side, circularising everywhere north, south, east
and west to such effect that, when we appeared at
the Royalty Theatre on March 26, the house was
packed at both performances. Among those who came
to see and applaud us were George Wyndham, Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Lord Aberdeen, Leonard
(not yet Lord) Courtney, Sir Frederick Pollock, Dr.
Stopford Brooke and J. M. Barrie. At the matinee

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

we gave the two Synge plays and The King's Threshold,
repeating the latter in the evening along with A Pot of
Rrotb and Broken Soil The English Press was as
flattering as ever and was particularly impressed by
the work of Synge and Colum. Of all the critics none
was more sympathetic or understanding than C. E.
Montagu. To Flank and me he was particularly
kind, not only then, but for many a year afterwards
through all our varying fortunes. Writing in the
Manchester Guardian he made the same point that
Walkley had made in The Tims the year before :
" They know how to let things alone, how to stand
still when there is nothing to be done in the way of
enhanced artistic effect by moving . . . how to fade
into the background when attention has to be con-
centrated on a single other character."

And then, just at this handsome moment, along came
misfortune. In i^o^ America was preparing one of
her big stunts, the International Exposition to be held
at S^Louis in the Tollowing yeaS TRe organisers
of the Irish section had the idea of adding us to their
list of attractions, and made us an offer that left nothing
to be desired in liberality. We were sorely tempted,
but we refused. There were too many difficulties.
For one thing, it was doubtful if we could muster
enough members prepared to throw up their jobs and
provide a representative company. But even if that
could have been managed, we still had to consider
whether it was worth our while to interrupt our work
in Dublin for the best part of a year in order to be an
exhibition side-show at St. Louis and with no assurance

I5 6

THE ABBEY

that the Americans would like us when they saw us.
Although we refused to go to America as a society,
we could not prevent individual members from going ;
and so presently I lost the three players I could least
spare Dudley Digges, Maire T. Quinn (afterwards
Mrs. Digges) and P. J. Kelly. Dudley was a loss
I was never able to repair. I suppose the Irish actor
most like him is Fred O'Donovan, but I had left
Dublin before he joined the Abbey Theatre. Dudley
was the best juvenile man and character actor I have
ever had to work with. Our loss has been America's
gain, for he rose rapidly to the first rank, playing with
George Arliss and creating part after part for the
famous New York Theatre Guild. He is now making
character garts in star flimsy ^rJlymnofl-,..,- ?;>. j
Kelly and Maire Quinn have also done well on the
other side.

This was the first break in the original team, and
very vexing it was, for apart from the loss of personnel
it meant recasting all the departed players' parts in our
repertory and rehearsing them anew.

To return to Miss Homitnan. In the month of
April she wrote to Mr. W. B. Yeats a formal letter
announcing that she was taking over the " Mechanics'
Institute Theatre " in Abbey Street and an adjoining
building in Marlborough Street to convert them into
a small theatre for the use of the National Theatre
Society. She proceeded : " As the company will not
require the hall constantly Ipropose to let it for lectures,
entertainments, etc., at a rental proportionate to its
seating capacity. . . The prices of the seats can be

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

raised, of course, but not lowered either by the
National Theatre Society or by anyone who may hire
the hall. ... I can only afford to make a very little
theatre and it must be quite simple. You all must do
the rest to make it a powerful and prosperous theatre
with a high artistic ideal."

The society replied thanking her and undertaking
to abide by her conditions. With this letter the
Society became responsible for the theatre, and re-
mained so until the following year, when it was turned
into a limited liability company owing to the increased
responsibility arising from the payment of regular
salaries to the .artists. 1

In August, m spite of the strenuous opposition of
the existing patent theatres, a patent for the new
theatre was granted. As Miss Horniman was not
resident in Ireland and was therefore ineligible as a
patentee, it was made out in the name of Lady Gregory.

of "pla^^

selected by the Irish

National Theatre So^tyTbr such works of foreign
authors as woul^lH^to interest the public in the
higher forms of dramatic art/'
It was now possible to make a beginning with the

1 The letter was signed by W. B. Yeats, F. J. Fay, William G.
Fay, James G. Starkey, Frank Walker, Thomas G. Keohler,
Henry F. Norman, Helen Laird, George Russell, Marie Walker
(Make Nic Shiubhlaigh), Adolphus Wright, Maire Garvey, Vera
Esposito, Dora L, Annesley, George Roberts, Douglas Hyde,
J. M. Synge, Sara Allgood, Frederick Ryan, Padraic Colum,
Stephen Gwynn and Augusta Gregory.

158

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work of reconstruction, whereupon the question arose,
Who was to oversee the work on Miss Horniman's
behalf? It was not an easy post to fill; for, while
on the one hand the overseer would have to watch
all Miss Horniman's interests in a businesslike way,
he must also have enough practical knowledge of
theatre construction and equipment to see that the
building was a complete working proposition when
the contractors handed it over. The architect could
not be expected to give decisions on technical matters
concerned with the mechanical side of the stage and
the lighting apparatus. I was the only person avail-
able with the necessary qualifications, but I was busy
at my own work from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., and whoever
took on the job of overseer would have to be at the
theatre all day. We put the difficulty before Miss
Horniman. She said that she was spending so much
on the work already that she could not afford to give
more than 70 a year as a salary for someone to look
after the place. (I may here observe that the common
notion that Miss Horniman was an extremely wealthy
woman, to whom the venture was a mere bagatelle, is
a complete error. I have reason to know that her
income at that time barely touched four figures, and
to give us the theatre meant considerable sacrifice on
her part.)

I, was doing fairly well at my electrical work, and
had enough experience and knowledge to hold down a
foreman's job ; but when I was faced with the alter-
native of giving it up for a small salary or letting the
theatre be reconstructed without proper technical

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

supervision I did not hesitate. The theatre stood for
everything in life that was of importance to Frank and
me. All my friends and relations said I was mad,
consoling themselves and me with the reflection that
I had always been more or less cracked. " To throw
away a good business to work in a theatre that no one
wanted and that couldn't last a year 1 " " If it even
played what the public wanted itself! " "Having
wasted years roaming up and down the country, then
to settle down to a respectable life, and then to begin
play-acting all over again! Well, what could you
expect? A rolling stone gathers no moss." But
who wants to be mossy anyway ?

And so I spent my days for the next few months
watching the building grow into a model little theatre.
I was able to explain to the various contractors exactly
what we wanted. Here my experience as an electrician
stood me in good stead. As far as possible Miss
Horniman employed Irish firms. The stained glass
was designed and made by Miss Purser and her
assistants at the Tower of Glass. The copper-framed
mirrors came from a home industry at Youghal, and
on the wall opposite the mirrors were hung some
beautiful designs of hand embroidery, the work of
Miss Lily Yeats, whose father, Mr. J. B. Yeats, painted
the large portrait of Miss Horniman on the north wall.
Before we opened Miss Horniman commissioned
Mr. J. B. Yeats to paint a portrait of me also. Sunday
was my only free day, so I sat to him Sunday after
Sunday until he was finished. He was a peculiarly
restless worker. He walked back and forward all the

1 60

THE ABBEY

time, only halting now and again to use a tiny mirror
from his pocket to see by reflection how the picture
was getting on. Also he talked all the time, and it
was the most entertaining talk I have ever listened to,
as anyone who has read his book of reminiscences can
guess. He knew or had known everybody of interest
both in London and in Dublin, and had an immense
fund of stories about them. There never was such
a man for walking and talking. He lived at Dundrum
and used to ^alk the five miles to his studio every day,
walk miles up and down and round about it all day
while he was painting, and then for exercise walk
home again in the evening. He was one of the first
Irish landlords to sell out to his tenants, and then,
rather late in life, he went to London to take up
painting. His portraits were full of recognition of
the quality of his sitters, and his pencil drawings were
a joy to look at delicate in workmanship, brimful of
character, and so like 1

One Sunday we were talking about telegraph poles,
and he told me how the Pigott forgeries were dis-
covered. There was a very strong supporter of
Parnell who was a telegraphist at the cable station at
Valentia, and there passed through his hands a number
of code messages from Pigott to an address in New
York. The telegraphist became suspicious and took
copies which he sent to the Irish Parliamentary party
in London, but no one could decode them. They
were shown to the Archbishop of Dublin, who hap-
pened to be on a visit to -London. He deciphered
them without difficulty, for the code turned out to be

161

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

the very elementary one used by Edgar Allen Poe in
Ik Gold Bug. Another time we were discussing
astrology, about which he did not fail to have a
curious anecdote. When his son, W. B. Yeats, was
paying a visit to an uncle in Sligo, he had with him a
set of tarot cards from which he was learning divina-
tion. The uncle, a prominent shipowner and business
man in the town, became very much interested and,
after mastering the tarot cards, proceeded to the study
of astrology, in which he was now reputed to be an
adept. I thought it would be amusing to test his
alleged powers and suggested that he should be sent
some particulars about some member of our company
and see what he would say. Mr. Yeats was agreeable,
provided that no more information was sent beyond
the date and hour of birth- So we sent the date and
birth hour of one of the girls, and in a few days had a
reply which gave an accurate description of her. The
astrologer identified the " native " as a girl, and went
on to say that she had brown eyes, shiny brown hair
and Grecian features, with a host of other details even
to her way of walking. He ended by saying that she
had great histrionic ability but probably not enough
vitality to carry it to success against opposition. He
was right.

Work at the theatre went on quickly and smoothly,
and by December all was ready. It was certainly a
very little place. The auditorium, with ifi o^ qycfe.
had a seating capacity of 500 only, and the acting area
was aboutzot'b:! But it i^

jasj:o perfection. It was now
162

THE ABBEY THEATRE

THE ABBEY

called the Abbey Theatre, a name that has become
famous throughout the civilised world. It was the
first modern repertory theatre in the true sense of the
word,, with^a repertory -of over ^^ forty .^kys. any of
wh^^ It was

destined to be the parent of over-six hundred little
theatres all over the UnitecLStates. QnjDecember 27,
1904, the curtain was rung up for the first time.

CHAPTER V

THAT was a great evening. Our cosy little house was
crowded. All that was best in Dublin life, of whatever
colour in religion or politics, was represented political
Nationalism by John Dillon and Stephen Gwynn,
literature by W. B. Yeats, ^E" and Edward Martyn
and art by J. B. Yeats and Hugh Lane. The Man-
chester Guardian took the occasion so seriously that it
sent its most promising young man, a Mr. John Mase-
field (who has done well since then if one can believe
the newspapers) to report on our doings. The only
flaw in the proceedings was that neither of the two
ladies who were doing so much for us was able to be
present Miss Horniman because she had had to
return to England, and Lady Gregory because she was
on a bed of sickness.

According to our custom at that time we gave a
quadruple bill, consisting of two revivals and two new
plays. The revivals were Kathleen ni Houlihan and
In the Shadow of the Glen. The novelties were Mr.
Yeats's one-act blank verse tragedy, On Bat7e's Strand,
and Spreading the News, the first and most uproarious
of the many delicious half-hours of fooling with which
Lady Gregory was to enrich the repertory of the
Abbey Theatre. Speaking for myself I maintain that
Hyacinth Halvey is her masterpiece in that kind, but
Spreading the News has always been the most popular.
It has the simple universal appeal the "Russian
Scandal " motive that makes it what the Americans
call " sure fire/' and it goes with a bang from the first

164

THE ABBEY

line to the fall of the curtain. We got a tremendous
pace into it, the pace of a hard football match, so fast
that, when later we played it in England as we had
played it in Dublin, there were complaints from the
front of the house that hardly a word could be under-
stood. Years afterwards I felt the same grievance
myself over the Devonshire dialect of The Farmer's
Wife, when that had to be played up to the full pitch
of speed.

Considered purely as drama On Bai/e's Strand may
not be Mr. Yeats's best play though the theme is
effective enough, being the Irish version of a world-
wide folk tale. The epic hero Cuchulain does single
combat with his own son, not knowing who is his
adversary until he has struck the mortal blow. A very
elementary tragedy, but Matthew Arnold put it into
fine veise in Sohrab and Rjtstum and Mr. Yeats did the
like in On Baile's Strand, which, as actor and producer,
1 venture to say is the most brilliant achievement in
theatrical blank verse of our time. As Cuchulain
Frank got the best part he ever had up till then.
An epic hero, it is true, should properly be played by a
big man, and Frank was far from that; but on the
stage he had the power of making you forget his lack
of inches, even as Henry Irving could make you forget
his excess of them. His delivery of the verse gave a
quality to his impersonation that made up for all
physical deficiencies. The part of Daire, one of the
kings, was played by a young man who since then has
proved himself to be the greatest natural comedian
and the only one of his kind that the Irish theatre has

165

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

produced up to the present time. His comedy from
the first had all the ease and directness that in England
belongs supereminently to George Robey. If ever
actors are born comedians, Arthur Sinclair is one.
Comedy comes as easy to him as breathing, and both
here and in America he has set a pattern that would be
hard to improve upon.

And now the Abbey Theatre was launched on its
voyage of fame. It was not a rich adventure. We
had only a matter of forty pounds in cash in hand to
keep us afloat, but, thanks to Miss Horniman, we were
worthily housed and free from debt, and could fairly
boast of being the only endowed theatre in the English-
speaking world. We faced the future with confidence,
not to say hardihood, and the measure of it was that
for our very next production (Februar^i^Sj) we trailed

^

full-length ]f^J^J tt ^SSSfn- This was The Well of the
Saints, in my opinion his best play. He gave himself
a large enough canvas on which to paint the picture
in his mind. He had felt what all writers of one-act
plays must feel sooner or later, that the concentration
demanded by a short play allows one to give only the
headings and suggestions of what ought to be full
scenes, if truthfully developed. As for the story, a
great deal of research has gone in trying to find out
the source of it ; but to me this has always seemed to
be a waste of time, though it may be interesting. All
good dramatists have taken their plots from where they
could find them. Shakespeare used Italian novellei
Wilde got the theme of Lady Windermen's Fan from

166

THE ABBEY

The Family Herald; and Arnold Bennett, as he once
told me, had a box full of old Spanish plays that he
dipped into now and again when he was short of ideas.
Whether the idea of The Well of the Saints came from
The Maid of Malines or Marianiela is immaterial. In
any case those who knew Synge knew that in his
travels through the back mountains of Wicklow and
Kerry, as well as during his sojourn in the Aran
Islands, he had collected enough stories for many
plays without having recourse to foreign soil.

When one is producing a difficult play like this it
is not easy to remain objective, to see it from the point
of view the audience will take on the first night. It
is only after years of experience with all kinds of plays
and all kinds of audiences that one acquires the work-
ing knowledge of crowd psychology that enables one
to tell, while a play is still in rehearsal, whether it is
likely to offend or not. That is the most one can do.
There is no way of foretelling success. The most
experienced producers and actors can be deceived, and
are so every day. But one can at least discern any
factor that will militate against success and try to
eliminate it before the public sees the play. Here, I
believe, the author has to be consulted, and authors
are notoriously obstinate. I never could get either
Yeats or Synge to understand that if you write plays
to be acted, not read by the fireside, there are certain
rules that you cannot break without destroying the
sympathy between the stage and auditorium. The
rules I refer to are not technical but psychological.
For example, as The Well of the Saints took shape, I

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

realised that every character in the play from the
Saint to Timmy the Smith was bad-tempered right
through the play, hence, as I pointed out to Synge,
all this bad temper would inevitably infect the audience
and make them bad-tempered too. I suggested that
the Saint anyway might be made into a good-natured
easy-going man, or that Molly Byrne might be made a
lovable young girl, but Synge would not budge. He
said he wanted to write " like a monochrome painting,
all in shades of the one colour/' I argued that all
drama depended on contrast and on tension. All in
vain. We had to agree to differ.

One technical trouble we Jiadjt^^
that ^yngeThadji^

without which
actors to get pace. Many of
his speeches were very long. They took a cruel lot
of practice before we could get them spoken at a
reasonably good pace and without at the same time
losing the lovely lilt of his idiom. Take, for example,
the Saint* s speech at the end of the first act. " May
the Lord who has given you sight send a little
sense into your head the way it won't be on you two
selves you'll be looking," etc. Worse still for the
actors is Martin's speech in Act III when he enters
blind. "The divil mend Mary Doul for putting
lies on me and letting on she was grand. The divil
mend the ould saint for letting me see it was lies," etc.

The Well of the Saints had very much the same
reception as In the Shadow of the Glen. As before, few
of our public knew what to jfftake jof k^ Was it a

THE ABBEY,

piece of harsh reaUsmjar was there something else
behind It?" The lyrical sp^^^^Se^Beyond them,
and there was the old suspicion that most of the plays
we produced were intended in some way to debunk
the J'saindj; jrish^s^aact^- Who, for example, would
be trusting Mr. Yeats ? Hadn't he always something
up his sleeve ? If it wasn't the birds of Angus Oge
it might be a political rabbit of some kind. Then,
Synge, of course, had heard of a man called Boccaccio
and a story about the Widow of Ephesus. In short
the play was admired and enjoyed by those .who were
capable of regarding it simply as a play without reading
into it a criticism of the Irish people or an attack
on their religion. But these were too few* The
great majority, thinking of religion and themselves,
abominated the play on both counts. It had a bad
Press and we lost money and audience over it.

However, we enjoyed doing it, not only because it
gave us excellent scope for acting, but also because a
three-act play was less of a strain than our usual bill of
four one-act plays. Every actor will understand what
it means to have to play four short parts in the same
evening involving four changes of costume and make-
up in addition to the necessity for rapid emotional
readjustment. By the time we had been two years
at the Abbey I had tried every kind of beard and
moustache that had ever been seen on a human face
and some that hadn't. Ultimately I gave up wearing
face moss of any kind and trusted that our kind
friends in the front would be sufficiently amused by
the face I had started life with. Luckily by that time

169

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

Arthur Sinclair was able to take over most of the
comedy parts, and then it was he who had to bother
with the crepe hair. Unless one is a Sir Herbert Tree,
one cannot keep on finding new make-ups for ever.

In March we broke entirely new ground with a
three-act play by Lady Gregory, which was particularly
welcome because it dealt with a popular subject in-
historical legend the life of Brian Boru, or " Brian
of all the talents." You see that made it a safe
proposition, and it had the further advantage of being
long enough to fill the whole evening without a fore-
piece. Special scenery and costumes were designed
by Lady Gregory's son Robert and painted and made
in the theatre. In the case of the scenery it was
Robert Gregory's first experience of having to enlarge
a finished design to something many times the size of
the original. But he was eager to learn and worked
hard with me in the paint room. When the last
scene, "The Wood of Clontarf," was finished it
provided a new sensation for Dublin in those days;
for, instead of the orthodox wood scene showing
dozens of trees with every leaf stippled on to them,
it was just a pattern of boles of trees with a leaf design
applied in one colour, the whole giving a rhythmic
effect of greens and greys.

On the first night the theatre was completely filled
for the first time since our opening night, and the play
met with unqualified approval. The Press for once
was most friendly. Even The United Irishman agreed
that the pky was worth producing. Lady Gregory
certainly showed great skill in combining historical

170

THE ABBEY

accuracy with dramatic quality, by no means always an
easy matter. The play was further notable for being
one of the earliest attempts to get rid of the " tushery "
which has always been the bane of period drama.
By the time she wrote Devorgilla she had perfected her
method so that there is not a trace of incongruity in
the modern diction of her characters. Recently in
Tobias and the Angel Mr. James Bridie has brilliantly
shown how the same method can be applied to a
Biblical subject.

As soon as the production and the plaudits were
over, Robert Gregory returned to London to resume
his work at the Slade School. A few weeks kter
Lady Gregory casually mentioned to me that she had
just had a letter from her son to say that he had been
in bed with a cold but was now better and at work
again. However, as is the nature of anxious mothers,
she seemed to worry a bit, and presently she said,
" You won't want me here for a day or two, so I
think I'll run over to London to see how he is myself.
I should feel easier. Don't tell anyone where I have
gone or they will be making a fuss. I will be back by
Friday." And so she went forthwith. Next morn-
ing, when I came down town, the first person I met
greeted me with, " Have you heard the news about
Robert Gregory ? " I said no. " Oh, he has been
taken very ill and rushed off to hospital." I said I
hoped it was nothing serious, and passed on, only to
encounter another who was bursting with news.
" Have you heard about Robert Gregory ? " he said.
" He is so ill his mother has been wired for and she

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

has rushed off by the night boat for London." Half

an hour later I was informed by somebody else that

Robert had been run down by a bus, then that he had

been run over by a taxi, presently that one of his legs

would have to be amputated below the knee, and

finally that both his legs were so mangled that he

would have to go about on crutches for the rest of

his life. By the time Lady Gregory got back to

Dublin there wasn't much left of Robert. The truth,

of course, was that, as he had said, he had only had a

slight cold and she might have save'3 herself her

trouble. When I told her what a fine story Dublin

had made of it all she laughed heartily and replied,

"And people said that Spreading the News was an

improbable play ! "

172

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CHAPTER VI

VERY early in our new career it was in April 1905
we introduced to our public an author who became a
great favourite, William Boyle. He was from the
Dundalk neighbourhood, where his people had been
farmers for generations in fact he was the first of
the family to leave the land. He was in London in
the Inland Revenue. He had already been known a
good many years as a prolific writer of poems and short
stories of peasant life, and now he took the opportunity
offered by the Abbey Theatre of showing his quality
as a playwright. His first effort was a satirical comedy
called The Building Fund. Though thoroughly Irish,
it was in general character much nearer the ordinary
play of the commercial theatre than anything we had
done up to that time. Boyle had lived in London and
other large towns for half a lifetime and had seen every
actor and actress of note* Hence he had a " theatre
sense " that none of our other authors had had
experience enough to develop that power of fellow-
feeling with an audience that has made Sir James
Barrie the greatest dramatist of our time, and the lack
of which always prevented Arnold Bennett from being
successful in the theatre except when in collaboration.
In The Building Fund Boyle had a very good story which
gave us two new types of character in Mrs. Grogan,
a miserly, cranky old woman, and her skinflint son
Shaun.

The play was modern in the sense that the fun
was not with the actors but against them. The

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

straighter they played their parts the funnier they
were. From one point of view the Grogans are as
nasty a pair as you could meet in a day's walk, but as
characters in an Irish peasant comedy they are ex-
tremely amusing. The butt of every comedy is a
tragic figure if taken seriously, but the cussedness of
human nature pounces on a joyous moment when
the stout middle-aged gentleman slips on a banana
skin or chases his hat ineffectually as the wind blows
it from gutter to gutter. While his play was running
Boyle came over from London and went down to
Dundalk to see his people. On returning to Dublin
he brought the original of Shan Grogan with him
to see the show. The man enjoyed it very much, but
was puzzled to know whom Boyle could have had in
mind when he created Shan ! The other characters
he could recognise at once as soon as they came upon
the stage, and he gave them their real Dundalk names,
but Shan was beyond him.

" Oh, wad some Power the giftie gie us." . . .
But perhaps for the novelist and dramatist it is well
that the Powers withhold the gift.

The Building Fund helped to popularise us with the
ordinary public, for it was a bridge between the fare
they got at the other theatres and the plays of Synge
and Yeats, To the actors it was welcome because it
pkyed well over an hour and saved us the necessity
of giving eight short plays when we had matinee
and evening performances, with the consequent labour
of changing costume and make-up. Our spring
season came to an end in June with the production

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of Columns second play, The Land. Strange to say
this was, and as far as I know still is, the only play
written by an Irishman dealing with the land hunger
of the small farmer. As a study of Irish character in
the Irish Midlands it was the best play the society
received during all the time I was producing for it.
It was also the last play that Colum gave us in my time,
though in 1910 his third and last Irish play, Thomas
Musketry, was produced at the Abbey. It was a great
pity that he did not follow up his undoubted success
as a dramatist. He had as much sense of atmosphere
on the stage as Maeterlinck, and with it an instinct for
character and drama of a kind that none of our other
playwrights had. Like so many of our best Irish
artists he has made his home in America.

Our enterprise was now developing so rapidly that
before the end of the year we were faced with the
necessity of putting it upon a new basis without delay.
As an organisation uiider the Friendly Societies Act,
the Irish National Theatre Society had been able to
bear the cost of running the theatre and paying one or
two essential members of the staff, such as the stage-
carpenter and the housekeeper, but that was the utmost
it could do. It was quite incapable of undertaking
the steadily growing financial responsibility incidental
to the evolution of the Abbey Theatre as a national
institution. If we were to progress at all it was
essential that the company should produce pkys for
more than one week in each month, which is what
we were doing. We felt that we ought always to
be trying to reach the condition of the ordinary

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

theatte with a stock company, and of every other
theatre, in being open for six nights every week and
one matinee. I was the only person free during the
day to devote all my energies to the theatre. The
rehearsals had to be done at night, and if the per-
formance of each play was to be a clean one, that
meant every night. Now, the actors were all amateurs,
and no amateurs are keen enough to want to rehearse
as often as that, for it means they have no free time at all
except Sunday. Obviously we had come as far as was
possible with voluntary help only. We had as good
tools to work with as any body of actors could need,
but a theatre must be managed as a theatre that is,
like any other business. The time had. come when we
must have at least the principal players free to rehearse
during the day, and this meant that they would have
to give up their other jobs, turn professional actors
and receive salaries.

As the support we got from our audiences was not
enough to cover the running expenses and upkeep of
the theatre, we had to add to our revenue by letting
it whenever it was not being used by the society.
There was no margin out of which we could pay more
salaries. As it was, I managed the theatre, produced
all the plays, played the principal comedy parts, helped
to make the scenery (doing all the- painting) and in
my spare time, mostly on Sunday, tried (not very
effectively) to keep the accounts. I remember there
was a floating half-crown that could never be satis-
factorily traced. I could never make up my mind
whether it was mine or belonged to the theatre. I

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also watched over the staff and paid them their wages*
With the best will in the world I could do no more
indeed how I managed to do so much without any
help I cannot now understand.

There was one way that offered a fair prospect of
making a little money, and that was by going on tour
in England, But if the company were kept on the
road week after week they would need not only their
expenses but salaries as well Miss Horniman was as
anxious as we were that the plays should be seen in
many places, and when she was consulted on the
problem of paying the artists she offered to guarantee
a salary list not exceeding 600 a year. This allowed
us to make -arrangements to pay our company up to a
total sum of 12 a week not an extravagant amount,
you will admit. I am glad to be able to say that down
to the day I left the Abbey, through good times and
bad and there were plenty of the latter we never
had to touch a penny of the guarantee, but always
managed to make ends meet somehow on our own
account. In giving the guarantee Miss Horniman
very naturally made it a condition that we on our
side should assure her of the stability of our organisa-
tions and of our desire to do all in our power to prevent
her actually being called upon. As our members
were all poor folk, quite unable to assume any financial
liability, there was nothing for it but to dissolve the
Irish National Theatre Society as such, and replace it
by a limited liability company, called the National
Theatre Company, formed under the provisions of the
Friendly Societies Act dealing with artistic associa-

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

tions not for profit-making. The directors of the new
company were Lady Gregory, W. B. Yeats and J. M,
Synge, who held the bulk of the shares, while Miss
Allgood, Miss Esposito, U. Wright, Frank and
myself had, I think, one share each. The directors
could in no circumstances make any profit out of the
theatre, though of course they were entitled to the
usual royalties when their plays were produced.

The new arrangement was inevitable, but it was
carried out at a heavy cost. A large number of our
members were violently opposed to the abandonment
of our amateur status. They had come into the move-
ment con amore> and resented its conversion into what
in their view was a commercial undertaking. By
going on to a professional basis, they argued, we had
destroyed the special character of the movement, and
they were no longer interested. Hence came about
the second exodus from the company, and it was much
more serious than the first, for all the voluntary help
ceased and less than a third of the members of the
Society remained on with the company. A few, while
disapproving altogether of the new policy, continued
to play until the end of the year rather than leave me
in difficulties with my cast. For this respite I was very
grateful, for it saved Frank and me from at once
having to coach new people in the whole repertoire,
which by this time was very considerable.

We planned our visit to London for the end of
November, and this time it was decided that we should
go on our own account and not under the auspices
of any outside body. The advance arrangements and

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publicity were once more in Miss Horniman's capable
hands, and she suggested that it would be advisable
to take in Oxford and Cambridge on our way to
London, as University opinion on our pkys and acting
might be a valuable asset later. Accordingly I wrote
to the manager of the Oxford theatre asking if he
could offer us a date with Cambridge to precede or
follow, for at that time the same management con-
trolled the theatres at both places. I had a very curt
refusal saying that he did not want to book any Irish
plays. I expect he thought we were touring The
Shaughraun and The Colleen Bawn, or some new Irish
melodrama by Hubert O'Grady. Anyway he didn't
want us. I told Miss Horniman of our bad luck.
Now, Miss Horniman is not easily beaten, and she had
made up her mind that Oxford and Cambridge were to
see us. She wasted no time in regrets, but went down
to Oxford herself and booked the Corn Exchange
Hall for two performances on November 23rd, and
then went on to Cambridge, where she took the
Victoria Assembly Rooms for the evening of November
24th and the small Guildhall for a matinee on the
same day.

Having taken the job in hand, she did it with her
usual thoroughness. After booking the Corn Ex-
change for us, for which she had to get special leave
from the Vice-Chancellor and the Mayor, she took up
her quarters at Oxford and set the local concert agent
to work circularising everybody that mattered and
some that didn't. She interviewed dons and told
them what wonderful plays we had and what wonder-

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

ful actors and actresses we were. She arranged for
some of our artists to have hospitality from heads of
colleges for their mutual improvement. I was too old
a bird to be caught by that, though, and asked her to
book me rooms at an inn, pleading my uncertain hours
as an excuse. If I had not, heaven alone knows
what "dazzling light of learning" I might have
inconvenienced at his meals for a couple of days, with
me trying to accommodate my Irish brogue to his
Oxford drawl. One of our boys was billeted on a
very important person who had a large staff of servants.
When he went to his room to wash his hands and
make his hair lie down, he found that his bag had
been opened for him and his one shirt, single pair of
socks and two collars were distributed all over a
roomy chest of drawers. His pyjamas, more holy than
righteous, lay spread-eagled and lonesome-like on the
bed, while two empty beer bottles from which he had
been quenching his thirst on board the train stood
looking as if suffering from an inferiority complex on
the mantelpiece. When he told me his adventure I
thanked the Lord that I was staying at a pub. The
Corn Exchange had no fittings of any sort, either
stage or seating accommodation, so we had to bring
our own scenery and curtain and fit them up, and hire
seating for the performance. We had a busy morning
getting everything ready for the matinee, and the
stage did not look as well as we could have wished.
We played On Bai/e's Strand, In the Shadow of the Glen
and Spreading the New at the matinee, and The Well
of the Saints and Kathleen ni Houlihan in the evening.

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The reception was amazing. Down to the Corn
Exchange came everyone of note in Oxford from all
the colleges. We had an audience such as the local
theatre had never been able to draw, most of whom
rarely went to see a play, and the undergraduates
were in the minority. It was the first time we had
played to a cultured audience of this kind, who could
see that our authors were writing plays with ideas
that at that time were far in advance of what the
ordinary theatre was supplying. The colour and
atmosphere produced by having an entirely Irish cast
was something wholly new to them. For the first
time in our experience no subtle point in any of the
plays went unnoticed, and The Well of the Saints in
particular was appreciated in a way that was in striking
contrast with its reception in Dublin. Everybody
was most hospitable, too. We were shown the
principal sights, and tasted the very best from college
cellars. Both artistically and financially the players
came through with flying colours.

At Cambridge, whither Miss Horn i man had pre-
ceded us as advance agent, we did just as well, though
the conditions under which we had to work were even
more inconvenient than those at Oxford, especially
in that we had to play the matinee in one hall and the
night show at another. As at Oxford, the audiences
were thoroughly representative. They filled both
halls in every part and there was once more the under-
standing and sympathy that made it a delight to pky
to them. Perhaps there is something to be said for
English education after all. The undergraduates

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

were most enthusiastic, for the modern drama was
then just beginning to interest young men. The
pkys of Yeats they had heard about and read, but the
Synge play with its strange dialect and originality of
outlook aroused genuine excitement. His vitality
and freshness took their breath away. It is true that
we missed the heartiness of like or dislike that one
always gets from Irish audiences, but it was more than
compensated for by the quickness of intellectual
apprehension, and the gay and lively discussion that
took place in various rooms after the performance
and lasted into the early hours of the morning.

We went on to London in high spirits. On
Monday, November zyth, we opened with our Irish
magic in the home of Maskelyne, the St. George's
Hall, Langham Place, giving matinees and evening
performances for two days. We gave the same pro-
gramme as at Oxford and Cambridge. With the
exception of In the Shadow of the Glen they were all
plays that had not been seen in London before; and
this, too, was the first occasion on which Arthur
Sinclair, U. Wright, A. Power, E. Keegan and
J. Dunne had appeared before a London audience.
The fact that there were four performances on two
successive days gave variety to the Press notices,
because each critic could only see one set of plays.
However, they were all full of praise for what they did
see, and they were the more discriminating perhaps
now that they were seeing our work for the third time.
1h Times thought that the acting all round was rather
more robust than on our previous visits though its

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peculiar charm was unditninished. The Sunday Times
discovered the importance of Synge. " Both from the
literary and dramatic point of view/' it said, " The
Well of the Saints is an affair of European importance "
a prophecy in 1905 that has been amply verified
in the course of thirty years. George Moore was
especially pleased with Synge's play : " The interpre-
tation partakes of the literary quality, it is original and
it is like itself. Mr. Fay in his love scene with Molly
Byrne seemed to me to give a little triumph of dis-
tinguished acting. Mr. Frank Fay gave the ecclesiasti-
cal note to the Saint in a way that might not have been
caught by another actor. The part is a difficult one.
The part of the beggar-woman is so well played by
Miss Vernon that I shall regret having spoken of it,
for I shall not find words wherewith to praise it enough.
Above all I admired her reticence. The age of the
old woman is portrayed in every gesture, the walk and
the bodily stiffness, and something of the mind of an
old woman, for in her voice there is a certain mental
stiffness. Her elocution was faultless. . . . Mr. Synge
has discovered great literature in barbarous idiom as
gold is discovered in quartz, and to do such a thing
is surely a rare literary achievement. . . /*

It was only Miss Horniman's astuteness that made
it possible for us to have four performances at the
St. George's Hall, for Mr. Maskelyne was not particu-
larly anxious to have outsiders using his stage, which
is full of contraptions that are necessary for his own
branch of magic. Not that these were in evidence
when we got there or that we found out how it was

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

all done, for a clause in our agreement stated that no
one was to go on the stage at any time unless accom-
panied by one of the St. George's Hall staff. Between
the performances I had an opportunity of meeting
Mr. Maskelyne, and I found him a most interesting
person and an expert electrical engineer with a lot of
peculiar knowledge. He was working on the plans
of a system of wireless telegraphy that he thought
could hold its own with Marconi's. He told me that
the smallest telephone ever made had a transmitter
to fit into a signet ring and the receiver was made into
an ear-ring. The owner of the ring could walk up
and down a theatre where they were used, collecting
questions from members of the audience to which a
lady sitting blindfold on the stage gave replies. She
wore ear-rings.

184

CHAPTER VII

THANKS to our English tour we reopened our Christ-
mas season at the Abbey with a nice little balance in
hand. The new play chosen for production was
The White Cockade^ a romantic comedy by Lady
Gregory about King James II and the Battle of the
Boyne. It was not intended to be historically accurate,
but was made from material collected from popular
songs and ballads composed after the battle. It is not
as good a play as Kincora, for it lacks dramatic move-
ment and the character of James is not well conceived,
being neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. More-
over, when a play is a mixture of fact and fiction the
actors are likely to suffer from having to play a series
of short scenes none of which has enough emotional
scope for anyone to show his quality. In spite of his
poor part, the success of the evening was Arthur
Sinclair, who played King James in a make-up that
was a triumph in its resemblance to the original, if we
may judge by the portraits.

After The White Cockade we lost some more of our
players, the dissidents referred to before, who had only
stayed to see this play through. Our greatest loss was
our leading lady, Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh. With her
went Miss Lavelle, Miss Vernon, Miss Garvey, Frank
Walker, Seumas O'Sullivan and George Roberts.
This deprived every play in the repertoire of some of
its cast, and in many cases it is doubtful if we ever had
the parts so well played afterwards. It meant months
of work for Frank and me, but in the circumstances

185

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

there was nothing to be done but to begin all over
again. I had a lot of sympathy with those who had
left us. They had taken up acting with no intention
of making a business of it. They did not wish to
devote their whole time to it, and they were suspicious
of the commercial element that was bound to creep
in once the artists were on salary. They did not agree
that the choice of plays should be left with the three
directors and myself. They wanted to retain the
freedom of members to choose both the plays and the
parts they wanted to play in them. Next year they
started a new voluntary society, the Theatre of Ireland,
which was carried on for some years with tolerable
success. With us the places of Miss Nic Shiubhlaigh
and Miss Vernon were filled by two new recruits to
our stage Miss Brigit O'Dempsey, whom I have
already mentioned, and Miss Allgood's sister, Make
O'Neill. The latter became one of the stars of the
Irish players, and when she left them she played with
Sir George Alexander at the St. James's Theatre in
Turandot and later with Tree at His Majesty's as
Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice. She went with
George Tyler to New York to play Mary Ellen in
General John Regan. Since then she has been starring
in New York and London. Everybody who has seen
Mr. Lennox Robinson's joyful comedy, The White-
beaded Boy, will remember her richly diverting rendering
of Aunt Ellen.

A constant source of worry was combining the
necessary publicity with our strictly limited means.
It meant among other things that we had to make as

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THE ABBEY

many friends as we could among those who were
interested in our project. Here we were helped by
Lady Gregory's genius for entertainment. She was
able to bring all sorts of people to the theatre to see
the plays and to keep them afterwards to have supper
on the stage with us, and this became the regular
custom on all first nights. Our guests got to know
the actors behind the footlights as well as in front of
them, and gave us valuable hints by listening to the
impressions made by each new play and by hearing
remarks, expressions and criticisms not intended for
repetition which had been overheard by those in front.
Some proportion, at least, of these remarks- were
friendly or flattering, and this with the social occasion
increased our confidence. A new sympathy grew up
between us and our audiences.

Another scheme of Lady Gregory's that we liked
even better than the first night suppers was the
company's own private party after the dress-rehearsal,
when she would arrive at the theatre laden with heavy
parcels containing cooked chickens, pies and, among
other dainties, the mainstay of these parties, a barm
brack. No common barm brack this, from a Dublin
shop, but one from her home at Gort, a special brand
weighing about 10 Ibs. and packed thick with raisins,
currants and lemon-peel. A single slice of one of
these Gort barm bracks was as good as a meal. For
the Gort barm brack was the father and mother of a
brack. Porter was in it too. The famous Miss
Houligan's Christmas Cake could not hold a candle to
it. You had to be very intimate with the company

187

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

to get invited to the party when there was a Gort
barm brack in the centre of the table.

Our financial position at this time did not permit
of us having a theatre orchestra. The directors
thought that in time the audiences would adopt the
Continental practice and move about the auditorium
and vestibule between the acts; but, though the
occupants of the stalls did so to some extent, the circle
and the pit would never leave their seats. When we
played four plays with the most rapid changes of
scenery we could manage, the intervals were never less
than ten minutes each, so that during the whole
evening the audience had to amuse themselves for
thirty minutes or more, which is much too long for
any audience to be left to its own devices. And so
we had to get some music. An orchestra was out of
the question. Even a string quartet was beyond our
means, but a single instrumentalist we could manage,
and so we engaged Arthur Darley to play for us.
He was a well-known Dublin violinist, who had a
great collection of Irish airs, many of them noted down
by himself in various parts of the country and never
printed. In fact Darley did for the folk music of
Ireland much the same kind of work that Mrs. Kennedy
Fraser did for the folk music of the Hebrides. At
our opening performance he played in front of the
curtain before "Riders to the Sea and during the intervals.
He was an instantaneous success, and he was very
skilful in his choice of items suitable to the action
which was to follow when the curtain rose.

The Eloquent Dempsej, William Boyle's second play,

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THE ABBEY

came most opportunely. It was a political satire on a
theme that everybody knew and everybody was eager
to see dramatised. Dempsey is one of a class that was
only too prominent in Irish public life at that time
the political publican who has a finger in every pie and
is ready at any moment to run with the hare and hunt
with the hounds. At the opening of the play he is
wondering whether he ought to be a Nationalist or a
Unionist, but cannot make up his mind. There is so
much to be said for both sides. All his customers
are, of course, Nationalists, but he is ambitious and
doubts if the Nationalists can give him as much as the
other people. It is true that the Nationalists offer to
make him a County Councillor, but the Unionists
tempt him with the noble prospect of becoming a
Justice of the Peace provided only he will present an
address of welcome to the Chief Secretary, who is
about to pay an official visit to the town. He plays off
one side against the other, and presently, finding him-
self in difficulties with both, he goes to bed and
pretends that he is ill. Of course at the end of the
play he is found out and spurned by both sides. It
makes good comedy, but is rather too topical for the
present day. The conditions to which it refers no
longer exist.

All the leading Irish members of Parliament, both
Nationalist and Unionist, came to see The TLloqutnt
Dempsey, eager to find out who it was in particular that
Boyle had taken for his model Each one of the
Nationalists was quite sure that it must be his neigh-
bour, never himself, though really it might almost

189

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

have been any of them. All through the play Demp-
sey uses the stock phrases that were the sacred
commonplaces of the Nationalist platform. There
were references to " the Irish wolf-dog " and to " the
round tower at sunset," but the one that aroused most
laughter was " the day is not far distant when Home
Rule shall/* etc. a phrase that used to be invariably
trotted out at every Nationalist meeting. A coun-
cillor at Dundalk the next week happened to start his
oration with it, and the unfortunate man couldn't
understand the hilarious shouts of "Eloquent
Dempsey" with which it was greeted or why his
effort was ruined. One effect of the play, was that the
politicians had to set to work and invent themselves a
new set of clichts.

The fact that nearly all our players were now free
in the daytime Frank had decided to turn pro-
fessional as well made it possible for me to get ready
the plays much more rapidly. Not only was there
more time, but the actors were always fresh for
rehearsal instead of tired out after a day's work, which
made them work much faster. By the middle of
February, in spite of all the changes in the cast, we
had five plays ready, including a new one by Lady
Gregory called Hyacinth Halvey, which, as I have said
before, I shall always maintain is the best of her one-
act pieces. It is about the same length as Spreading
the News, but there is more in it and the characterisa-
tion is subtler. The post-mistress at Clune and the
priest's housekeeper were played by Sara Allgood and
Brigit OT>empsey, and it is much to their credit that,

190

THE ABBEY

though neither of them was yet twenty years of age,
they looked the parts of middle-aged women to
perfection Miss Allgood in a cape she had borrowed
from her aunt, and Miss O'Dempsey in a beaded
dolman with a bonnet to match. Fardy Farrell, the
telegraph boy, gave Arthur Sinclair an opportunity
for his easy comedy of which he took full advantage.
Frank played to perfection an innocent Hyacinth who
is a " softy " but has his share of cunning. It was a new
type for our players. I had the part of Mr. Quirke,
the purveyor of meat that is locally described as of
" God's own killing/' and Walter McGee played the
police sergeant.

In February we managed to let Wexford and
Dundalk see something of our work. In Wexford
we played for two nights at the old Theatre Royal,
which, I should think, was one of the last theatres to
retain an apron stage with practical doors on either side
of the proscenium. Our programme was Riders to
the Sea, Kathleen ni Houlihan and, as the meat in the
sandwich, The Eloquent Dempsey. We did not badly
either from the artistic or financial point of view, and
ensured for ourselves a hearty welcome for the next
time. On St. Patrick's night we gave the same pro-
gramme at Dundalk, William Boyle's own town,
where the house was crammed with people eager to
spot if they could the original of Dempsey. We had
no reason there to complain of lack of enthusiasm,
and Boyle had had the happy thought of putting in a
few local touches which meant nothing to us but were
rapturously applauded by the audience. These visits

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

to Wexford and Dundalk satisfied us that there was a
future for a specially trained company that would
tour the country, playing a repertoire of Irish plays of
the modern kind. This had always been part of our
plan for the Irish Players. We were also looking
forward to the time when there would be little theatres
in Belfast, Cork, Limerick and Galway. There
actually was one in Belfast, the Ulster Literary Theatre,
which had been inspired by our example and had made
such progress that at that time it was a good runner-up
to the Abbey, and later indeed almost looked like
winning the race. With Rutherford Mayne and the
Morrow brothers, the Belfast productions were on a
level with our own, but we had the better acting team
and the finer playwrights* Playwrights were the
Ulster Theatre's weak point. Up to the present their
only dramatist of any stature is Mr. St. John Ervine,
and this in spite of a number who showed promise thirty
years ago. It is a pity that the Ulster movement should
never have been helped by any kind of subsidy, public
or private, and so should never have been able to
acquire a permanent home of its own such as we had
at the Abbey. Not long ago a young man who came
to the Drama League Summer School at St. Andrews
told me that he had started a Gaelic theatre at Galway
to which the Free State Government had granted a
subsidy of 700 a year to encourage the acting and
writing of Gaelic plays. So it is possible that Galway
will have its little theatre well established long before
the larger towns have even begun to think of such a
thing. In his book on the Irish theatre Father

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Dawson Byrne gives a list of over five hundred little
theatres in America that owe their existence to the
example set by the Abbey.

During our Spring season we made an interesting
experiment. As our patent allowed us to play foreign
masterpieces, the directors thought it was time we did
something to keep up our privilege. The question
was whose play and which. It was not easy to
decide, for with a company like ours where, with the
exception of Frank and me, there was no one over
thirty years of age and some of them not yet twenty
(and an Irish twenty is a very unsophisticated one),
the range of choice was surprisingly limited. One
thing was obvious enough, that the play would have
to be a comedy. Someone suggested a Moliere,
as a classic and good for the schools. Also, it must
be a simple comedy. What about Le Mededn Malgre
Lui ? I was quite willing, but pointed out that any
translations of Moliere I had read were poor stuff, the
English being so literal and sticky that it was almost
impossible to speak. I ventured to suggest that
Synge and I take the best English version of Le
Medecin Malgre L#/ that we could find and rewrite it
between us so that it would at least " speak." Then
up rose Lady Gregory, and said, " I will go home to
Gort this day and I will make a translation in the
Galway dialect that I have used in my own plays, and
then it will be sure to suit our people/' And so she
did. When she brought the manuscript it was not a
bit like the dead literary English of the standard
translations that are used in the schoolroom. It had

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

every bit as much vitality as her Spreading the News or
Hyacinth Halvey, and behind it were all the power and
imagination of the world's greatest master of comedy.
It was a revelation of what can be done in colloquial
dialect.

It was about this same time that we got a valuable
addition to our back-stage accommodation* Thanks
once more to Miss Horniman's generosity, we acquired
a house that adjoined the theatre on the right and
which, after being converted by Mr. Holloway, gave
^ us a passage leading from the stage to a scene dock
and property room, a comfortable green-room on the
ground floor, a manager's office, a wardrobe room
and, what we needed very badly, a rehearsal room for
use when the stage was occupied by the staff. The
green-room was, of course, an ideal place for holding
a party whenever Lady Gregory arrived from Gort
with one of the famous barm bracks. Many a one of
these was devoured there after a dress rehearsal, for
there is nothing that can arouse so fine an appetite as
three or four hours of rehearsing. After the first
night of a play a tidy number of visitors used to find
their way there for a cup of tea and a chat about the
show.

Whenever we produced a period play the costumes,
except when Miss Horniman had been good enough
to give them to us, were made of hessian and dyed in
a sine bath on the green-room gas stove. It was a stiff
job and a dirty one, especially when there was a lot of
material to be dealt with. In those days hessian was
6d. a yard and two yards wide, so that at a cheap rate

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we could covet a multitude of sins. Once Mrs*
Patrick Campbell, seeing one of our girls in an outsize
costume of this material, murmured to her gently,
" At first sight, darling, you looked as if you were
about to give birth to a grand piano." Our peasant
clothes were real, and by the time we got our wardrobe
room, there was a fair collection gathered from all
parts of the country to put into it. One place where
we got some really valuable old clothes was a pawnshop
in Galway. We had them cleaned and stoved before
putting them into stock. One old body-coat I used
was over ninety years old, and we had some linen shirts
with the very high collar attached that had rows of
tucks all down the front. The members of the com-
pany, too, helped to stock the wardrobe by cadging
suitable pieces from their friends and relations.

Our scenery had so accumulated that latterly, before
we got our store-room, we could hardly move on to
the stage. We had started with only a little for our-
selves and a set of stock scenery that I had had made
for hiring out to lessees the traditional kind of thing,
an oak chamber, a kitchen set and a wood scene. It
would have been useless to offer lessees any of our own
stuff, which they did not think was scenery at all, and
indeed from their point of view it was not. In the
earliest days I had to make it and paint it myself, but
presently I got a clever young mechanic to come to us
and learn to be a stage carpenter. It would have been
easy to get an experienced one indeed several called
on me to ask for the job but I wanted someone that
would grow up with the players and learn to work in

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our way without having to forget a lot of previous
knowledge. Shaun Barlow was very quick and smart
with tools, and soon learned not only to make and
paint scenery but to take complete charge of every
department of the stage. He was one of the best stage
carpenters I have ever had to work with, and I have
had to work with a few in forty years. As far as I
know he is still at the Abbey, sole survivor of the
original team.

Le Medecin Malg-e Lui, or The Doctor in Spite of
Himself y as we rather clumsily called it, went exceedingly
well in Lady Gregory's version. I remember one
evening, at one of the most amusing passages, some
of the audience laughed in a way which nearly made me
forget my lines, and it takes something to do that at
any time. A comedian soon gets sensitive to the
different qualities of laughter. As a general rule it
comes in a single note from the whole house, but
sometimes it may start in the gallery and come down
the house to the stalls, or it may begin in the stalls and
gradually spread until the whole house takes it up.
But in any case its common quality is sophistication.
It is the laughter of people who know the world and
its ways. It has not the frankness, the gaiety and
spontaneity that you find in a child's laughter. Yet
that was just the quality of the laughter on the occasion
of which I am speaking, and it was genuinely dis-
concerting, simply because it was so delightfol. I
have never heard it but once again, and. that was at the
dress rehearsal of The O'FIynn at His Majesty's Theatre
in London. It came from the box in which Miss Viola

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Tree was sitting. If the average audience could laugh
like that comedians would never stop acting until they
were ninety years old.

As it was now getting too far into the season for us
to expect a continuance of good business at the
Abbey, the directors thought that we might profitably
add some new towns in Great Britain to our touring
list; and, after consulting with Miss Horniman, we
decided to visit Manchester and Liverpool and possibly
Leeds, As before. Miss Horniman acted as our
advance agent and arranged for us to be at the Midland
Theatre, Manchester, the St. George's Hall, Liverpool,
and, thanks to a guarantee from the Leeds Art Club,
at the Albert Hall, Leeds. We were to play two nights
in each place. We crossed over to Manchester on a
Sunday. In the boat with us were Sir Herbert Tree's
company returning to England, with whom we
naturally fraternised. Among them was Mr. Alfred
Wareing, Sir Herbert's publicity manager. Mr.
Wareing, being a man always interested in new ideas
in the theatre, was attracted to our work. He and I
had a long talk. I told him how the Abbey had
originated and what I hoped for it in the future, and
how we were handicapped in the matter of touring by
the difficulty of booking dates. No one in the English
theatrical world outside of London seemed to know
anything about the new kind of Irish play or that they
were all played by Irish people. My rebuff when I
tried to get into the theatres at Oxford and Cambridge
was a case in point. Mr. Wareing thereupon made a
proposal. The tour that he was at the moment look-

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ing after for Sir Herbert Tree was coming to an end
in a few weeks, and then the company were having a
holiday during which he would be free to do other
work. He was sure that he could open some dates
for us at first-class theatres in towns where he was
known, and his position with Tree would make his
recommendation doubly strong. The upshot was
that on my advice Miss Horniman got into touch with
Mr. Wareing, and she made with him an arrangement
that was to take effect as soon as our present short tour
was finished. In the meantime he was to get as
many towns booked as possible before joining us in
Dublin.

Our programme was fairly representative of our
repertoire In the Shadow of the Glen, Spreading the News,
A Pot of Broth, Rjders to the Sea and The Building Fund.
After much persuasion and very much against his will,
we had persuaded Arthur Darley to come with us,
and give the English public a chance of hearing some
examples of his art. He hated the idea of touring,
never having done such a thing before, but he bore it
well, and we benefited greatly by having him with us.
Every night, after the show and supper were finished,
he would bring his fiddle into the smoke-room of the
hotel we were staying at, and there play tune after tune
of unknown airs that he had collected in his travels
through Ireland. When he thought he had given us
enough music he would make imitations of animals
by using his bow on the strings below the bridge.
The Manchester newspapers were kind and did all they
could to fill the house for us. It was while we were

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there that we first met in the flesh C. E. Montagu of
the Manchester Guardian^ to whom we had long been
indebted for his generous encouragement on our
earlier English visits. Frank and he became very
close friends, and afterwards, whenever a company
that Frank was playing with came near Manchester,
he and Montagu were sure to meet for an intensive
discussion of the drama from Sophocles to Bernard
Shaw.

At Liverpool we were not so successful in attracting
audiences, for the hall where we played was not in a
good location. However, what the audiences lacked
in numbers they made up in warmth, and, as at
Manchester, the newspapers were our good friends.
As for Leeds, we could not have gone there had it
not been for the guarantee of the Arts Club. This
made us nervous. Yet, as things turned out, there was
little ground for our misgivings. The novelty of our
performance ensured us a cordial welcome, and the
news of what we had done in Manchester and Liver-
pool had travelled before us. We returned to Dublin
very cheery about our prospects in the more ambitious
tour that was shortly to follow.

199

CHAPTER VIE

THROUGHOUT May we were very busy getting every-
thing ready for the grand tour under Alfred Wareing's
direction. There was a lot of work to be done and,
as usual in the theatre, little time for it. The Abbey
scenery would not suit the theatres we were going to,
and in any case it was too flimsy to stand the wear and
tear of touring. We had to make a complete new
outfit. Of course most theatres had some stock
scenery available, but a kitchen scene 18 feet high by
36 feet wide, with huge beams painted all over it in
the conventional manner to hide its height, was no use
to us. All our cottage scenes were the exact dimen-
sions of an Irish cottage 12 feet high in front, sloping
down to 8 feet at the back wall, 20 feet long and 12 feet
wide. To mask a set of these dimensions our
proscenium opening could not be more than 19 feet
by 12, hence we had to take with us very large " mask-
ing-in " curtains, for we should be playing on stages
which might have the proscenium opening as much
as 40 feet by 3 o. We were the first company of players
to travel scenery of correct dimensions for small
interiors and to mask in the proscenium openings to
fit them. It cost some trouble, but it was worth it,
for it is the only way by which the atmosphere of an
intimate pky can be preserved. Some of the actors
were a little dubious, thinking that the masking might
interfere with the visibility of our stage from the back
of a high gallery ; but I have proved that my planning
was sound. Provided a scene is never set more than

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twelve feet back from the footlights, the lines of sight
will be correct for every part of the house, even to the
highest gallery. I have always taken care that the man
in the last seat in the gallery shall both hear and see
what he has paid his money for.

There was another matter, too, that we had never
had to bear in mind on previous tours. We were now
going to play in first-class theatres, which, in accordance
with professional practice, meant that our contracts
provided for a heavy penalty upon us if by any chance
we failed to perform on any of the booked dates.
This, in turn, meant that every part in every one of our
plays had to be understudied in case of the principal
being unable to appear. With a repertoire of seven
plays this was not easy, especially as the additional
players we were taking as understudies had all to be
not only amateurs but people who would not mind
being absent from Dublin for five weeks. Here again
we had to draw upon all the tact and persuasiveness
we could muster. We managed somehow to assemble
a sufficient number of young people by giving the
most solemn undertakings to their anxious parents
that they would be returned safe and sound. Mr.
Wareing placed a large order with Aliens, the Belfast
people, for special posters and other matter for the
tour. Elaborate programmes were drawn up, out-
lining the history of the Abbey Theatre from its origin,
giving full notes on the plots and sources of the plays
and biographical details of the authors and actors.
Though neither an author nor an actor, Arthur Darley
had a long paragraph to himself telling all about his

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

work as a collector of Irish folk music. In addition
there was a little book throw-away containing portraits
of the actors and photographs of some of the scenes*

The tour opened at the Theatre Royal, Cardiff, on
May lyth, with the same programme as we had given
on the previous tour, plus Hyacinth Halvey. The com-
pany was in great fettle, as naturally they had all the
parts absolutely pat* I was glad to be once more in a
proper theatre, where there was the usual staff to work
the stage and everybody knew his job. In spite of
lamentably fine weather we did an excellent week's
business. Wareing's advance publicity had clearly
told. Our next move was to Glasgow, where we
played at the King's Theatre and again did well. We
had very discriminating notices from all the Glasgow
newspapers, including even The Glasgow Herald, which
in those days had the reputation of being hard to please.
It was interesting to note the different line taken by the
Scottish critics from that to which we had been
accustomed. They seemed to be interested in our
movement rather than in our plays. From Glasgow
we went to Aberdeen, and thence to Newcastle-upon-
Tyne, where, at the Tyne Theatre, we found the
largest stage in England outside Drury Lane. Our
tiny sets looked rather comic upon it almost as if the
stage carpenter was trying out the model of a set he was
going to make. We could not use more than one-
seventh of the available acting area, and to mask-in
the mighty proscenium opening took every scrap of
curtain we possessed. Of course a stage of that
size has always an auditorium to match, and I was

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THE ABBEY

more than anxious about how our young actors
would get their voices heard in every part. They
had had some experience at Glasgow, for the
.King's is a large house, but this Tyne Theatre
was considerably larger. I was proud, as well as
relieved, to find that Franks training proved effective.
The voices were as beautifully audible as ever they were
at home in the tiny Abbey Theatre.

Back to the North again to face the most critical
audience in the kingdom, not excepting London, at
the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, and here our Celtic
relationship was recognised. The playing of Arthur
Darley was heard by an audience that was able to
appreciate his traditional Irish music at its true value,
and the plays were well received because of their
novelty and freshness. The Scotsman and other papers
paid high tributes to the acting. Our next town, and
the last one of the tour, was Hull, where again we
aroused something like enthusiasm and made a very
gratifying conclusion. It was with great regret that
we said good-bye to the Wareings on the Saturday
night. Our tour had come to an end just as we were
beginning to enjoy it and everything was running
smoothly. Artistically it had been an unqualified
success. It is true that the financial returns were not
so satisfactory, for we had had bad theatre weather
that is, notably fine and warm weather and it was
late in the season for any tour. But the loss was slight,
for we had our salary list reduced to a minimum, and,
as a set-off against it, we had opened many possible
future bookings that might have remained closed to

203

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

us for years to come. Though the audiences had not
been uniformly large they had been appreciative, and
the Press everywhere had shown a lively interest in the
idea of a National Theatre that we were there to express,
Altogether we felt that by means of the tour we had
done important work for the future of the company;
for it was obvious that if the theatre was to become
self-supporting, we must look outside Dublin for our
main source of income. Our Dublin audiences were
quite good when we played the sort of play they
wanted, but scanty enough when we did anything like
The Well of the Saints. A production that failed to
please meant that the next one had to suffer as well,
for the public would not come in again until they were
assured that the new play was harmless, and by the
time they had found that out the week's run was over.
If ever we were to be financially independent it could
only be by getting better and better dates away where
we could be sure of making enough money to cover
Dublin deficits. The question of playing through
Ireland presented some difficulty, for if we were not
accepted by the people in the provinces, there was no
use our calling ourselves the National Theatre Com-
pany. But in these small towns for small they are
compared with English and Scottish ones it was not
possible to play for more than two nights at a time,
and the receipts would not more than cover the current
expenses even if they did that. Our capital was so
small that we could not afford to lose on our perform-
ances except very occasionally when some sacrifice was
necessary for propaganda purposes. We did well

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enough at Longford that year, for the news of our
various tours had preceded us and there was a certain
amount of curiosity about our plays and actors.
Playing in Ireland always brought out points that were
lost upon English audiences. It was a strange
position, for, while we would always rather play in
Ireland for the native understanding of the plays, we
had bigger audiences and made far more money
elsewhere.

In October we began with two new plays a one-
act tragedy by Lady Gregory, and a three-act play by
William Boyle, while as an additional attraction we
were able to engage a small orchestra, as Arthur
Darley could not stay with- us this season. Another
change that we had been contemplating for a long
time, but hitherto had been unable to afford, was to
reserve a portion of the theatre for sixpenny seats.
The departure is celebrated by Miss Winifred Letts
in Songs of Ldinster with a poem called " For Six-
pence." Here follow three verses from it :

For Sixpence I have been to Tir-Na-N-oge

(No more I had to pay)
And looked my fill at Kings and Gods and Fools

May God be with the day.

And all for sixpence I have heard fine talk

From playboys, rogues and tramps,
And so forgot the east wind in the streets,

The fog, the dim-eyed lamps.

Sixpence the passport to this splendid world,

Enchanted, sad or gay.
And you the playboy of them all I saw

For sixpence William Fay.

The Gaol Gate was Lady Gregory's first tragedy,

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

and, short as it is, the poignancy of the story never
fails for a moment. It is written in a lyrical prose,
and has a " caoine " composed for it by Arthur Darley
that was beautifully chanted by Miss O'Neill. Miss
Allgood had a great opportunity as the old mother,
Mary Cashel, who is waiting for news of her boy that
is to be hanged. It is one of the best of her character
parts. Frank played the only other part, the gate-
keeper. It is a wonderful little piece and I always
think that Lady Gregory was happiest in writing these
one-act plays, where she had to concentrate her
material into half an hour or less. They certainly
have a power and quality that are lacking in her longer
works. Boyle's play, The Mineral Workers, was his
first attempt at really serious drama. He dealt with
the struggle against inertia that an enthusiast is bound
to encounter when he tries to get country people to
change their settled habits. Miss Allgood broke new
ground in her aristocratic part, and so did Arthur
Sinclair, who played Sir Thomas Musgrove.

During this month Granville Barker produced at
the Court Theatre, London, Bernard Shaw's John
'Bull 9 3 Other Island. It had been intended, I believe,
as a contribution to the Abbey repertoire, but it had
presented so many difficulties that nothing was done
about it, and Mr. Shaw had given it to the Vedrenne-
Barker management. While it was running at the
Court I was sent over to London to see, by watching
a performance, if I could think of some way that would
make it possible for us to do it at the Abbey. I came
to the conclusion that our company could not do it
adequately in their present circumstances. Their

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THE ABBEY

experience was far too limited. To my thinking the
play depends on having a Broadbent who can carry
the weight of it, for without him it is Hamlet without
the Prince, Besides, he must both look and sound
English, and we had nobody who could do that.
Similarly, we had nobody who could take the part of
the Cockney valet, Hodson. In Frank I had a splendid
Keegan, but I had no Larry. The rest of the cast I
might have managed, though my people were really
too young for the parts. Rather reluctantly I had to
advise against attempting the play.

J. M. Kerrigan joined us this autumn. He proved
a precious addition to our strength, as he fitted in
between Arthur Sinclair and Joe O'Rourke, and could
play both juveniles and comedy character parts an
unusual combination. He, Fred O'Donovan, and
the late Sydney Morgan, with Sara AUgood, Maire
O'Neill, Arthur Sinclair and J. A. O'Rourke made up
the company of Irish players that became famous all
over the world. Like others, Kerrigan went to
America later. The last time I saw him he was playing
in a film with John McCormack. He was another
with the hobby for collecting street-ballads, and I hope
he has found some means of getting his collection
printed, for it was well worth it.

A further new-comer at this time gives me less
satisfaction to speak of in this respect, though that
was not her fault for she was a most capable actress
but the fault of the directors, who, by a curious
kpse of judgment, insisted on engaging her specially
to play the leading part in Mr. Yeats's verse, play
Deirdre. I refer to Miss Darragh. She had recently

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

had several striking successes in London, notably in
The Walls of Jeritho by the late Alfred Sutro. Sara
Allgood or Make Nic Shiubhlaigh could, either of
them, have done the part admirably, but, though
accomplished in the Abbey way, they were not, as the
jargon goes, " experienced " actresses in those days.
There was no West End sophistication about their
work. Now, Mr. Yeats had got it into his head that
his Deirdre must be experienced and sophisticated as
well as Irish, and the only person who could fill the
bill according to his notions was Miss Darragh. Well,
I can't say she did not get plenty of applause. The
public and the Press voted her magnificent. She was
manifestly a highly trained professional, the like of
which was not among us. But in my eyes it was just
this manifestness that ruined the show. It did not
fit with our technique, which, for all its lack of obvious-
ness, had been slyly planned so as to get a special
effect out of special material. It was like putting a
Rolls Royce to run in a race with a lot of hill ponies
up the Mountains of Mourne, bogs and all. The
ponies, knowing each inch of the way, could outpace
the Rolls every time. On the one hand, Miss Darragh
made our company look young and simple, and, on
the other hand, their youth and simplicity made
her look as if she were over-acting. When the
wandering musicians, Sara Allgood, Maire O'Neill
and Brigit O'Dempsey, chanted the lyrics set to music
by Arthur Darley, their artless young voices made
Deirdre's sound tired and strident by contrast. For
once I found myself in agreement with some of the

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THE ABBEY

critics, who, for all their enthusiasm for Miss Darragh,
suggested that she was mis-cast and out of her element
among the Abbey players.

In addition to the artistic gaffe her engagement
involved some degree of heartburning among the
permanent members of the company. Owing to her
professional standing she had to be paid a substantial
salary, likewise to be specially advertised; and natur-
ally the others, whose salaries were only a fraction of
hers, and who never in their lives had any special
advertising, felt aggrieved seeing that they had done all
the donkey work. Thus, even if the experiment had
been artistically fortunate, it would scarcely have been
justified, for it introduced several of the very things
our movement existed to oppose such as the " star "
system and the grading of artists.

However, always and everywhere " the play's the
thing/' and there can be no denying that Mr. Yeats's
verse Deirdre went over as handsomely as had "JE's "
prose one. The audiences applauded enthusiastically,
and the Press hailed it as the best of Mr. Yeats's verse
plays. The fact that it was not in any way mystical,
but a straightforward treatment of a favourite story
from the great epic of the Red Branch, helped to make
it popular, for the publication of Gods and Fighting
Men and Cuchulain of Muirthemme by Lady Gregory
had lately aroused in the Irish people a fresh interest
in the early history of their country. This was the
first verse play that gave us the feeling that the audience
was with us and really liked it, and there were signs
that with time and trouble Frank's scheme for a verse-

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

speaking company was a possibility in the neat future.
We were hopeful in those days.

Miss Darragh did not remain with us long. Her
second and last part at the Abbey was Dectora, in a
revised (but not, as I venture to think, improved)
version of Mr. Yeats's Shadowy Waters. She then
returned to London, and shortly after went to Liver-
pool, where she founded the first repertory theatre in
Great Britain. This Liverpool Repertory had not
much luck in its earlier years, for, among other
handicaps, it presently had to contend very unequally
with the brilliant rival started in Manchester by the
indefatigable Miss Horniman. Yet Miss Horniman's
Manchester Repertory is now no more, while the
Liverpool Repertory, under the admirable direction
of Mr. William Armstrong, is an established institution
of the British theatre.

Along with the new version of Shadowy Waters we
produced The Canavans, a farcical comedy in three
acts by Lady Gregory, which did not show the drama-
tist at her best. On the whole our closing programme
for 1906 was hardly up to the average. Nevertheless,
taking it all round, we had put in a creditable year's
work. We had produced seven new plays and toured
for more than ten weeks, securing future dates at eight
theatres where we reckoned on doing better business
every time we visited them. At the end of October I
managed to dash over to Glasgow for a week-end, and
in Shamrock Street of happy omen was married to
Brigit O'Dempsey. For me, at any rate, 1906 was a
successful year, the most successful of my life hitherto.

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MRS. W. G. FAY

CHAPTER IX

I WISH I could say the same for 1907, the year that
proved as stormy in my fortunes as its predecessor
had been prosperous, for it began with the historic
uproar over The Playboy of the Western World and
ended with the departure of the Fays from the Abbey
Theatre and from Ireland,

I often hear it said that a really great artist is un-
moved by the howl of the rabble and goes on producing
his work as he pleases, confident that the future will
vindicate him. This is true only with some qualifica-
tion. Great artists have shown magnificent examples
of courage in the face of popular hostility, but that
is not to say that they have not felt deeply wounded
by it, and their resentment is often reflected in their
work. A classic case is that of Thomas Hardy, who
after Jude the Obscure retired from the struggle and
devoted the rest of his life to poetry. But not every
author, certainly not many young ones, can take the
course of dignity and silence. The temptation to

those wholSaYe yielded

to* it we .jjfo^ Herould not forgive

^^^^^^_fafaity3 > t^mai'evolence with
^

had ^^SLDL^&J^o^ faith, and offence had
been taken where no^^^e had been intended.
"Very wdl^A^^Jie said to me bitterly one night,
" the next play I write I will make sure will annoy
them.^l^And he did. As soon as I cast eyes over the
script of The Playboy of the Western World I knew we

211

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

were in for ..serious trouble unless he would consent
to altsritjdrastically. Many and many a time I strove
with him, using all the arguments I could muster,
to get him to see that if you attack your audience
you must expect them to retaliate, that you might as
well write to a newspaper and expect the editor not
to insist on the last word. The emotions displayed
on the stage are designed by the author and interpreted
by the players to give the audience a vicarious ex-
perience of them, and if the audience reacts to them,
that is the measure of the author's and actors' success.
Thus, laughter on the stage makes laughter in the house
and anger makes anger. But by laughter I mean
straight laughter, not wrath disguised in a grin which
the average audience is quick to see through and
resent accordingly. Synge could never be made to
understand that. He was apt to think in the terms of
Zola, who got his effects by keeping all his characters
in one key. He could never see that Zola was a
novelist, not a dramatist, and that there is all the
difference between a printed story that one reads to
oneself and the same story told as a play to a mixed
audience of varying degrees of intelligence, Frank
and I begged him to make Pegeen a decent likeable
country girl, which she might easily have been without
injury to the play, and to take out the torture scene
in the last act where the peasants burn Christy with
the lit turf. It was no use referring him to all the
approved rules of the theatrical game that, for
example, while a note of comedy was admirable for
heightening tragedy, the converse was not true.

212

THE ABBEY

The things that we wanted him to alter did not
amount to five per cent, of the whole play. The
Well of the Saints had suffered from too much anger.
The Playboy of the Western World was anger in excelsis.
The characters were as fine and diverting a set of
scallywags as one could invent for one story, but
it was years too soon for our audiences to appreciate
them as dramatic creations.

Frank jand I might as well have sated our breath.
We might as well have tried to move the Hill of
Howth as move Synge. That was his play, he said,
and, barring ofie "or two jots and tittles of " bad
language " that he g'ruJgingly consented to excise,
it was the play that with ^iseatscr^ing up of courage

I gave the Playboy long and careful rehearsal, doing
my best to tone down the bitterness of it, and all the
time with a sinking heart I knew we were in for
trouble, but it was my business to get Synge's play
produced as nearly to his notions as possible in the
circumstances and with the material at my disposal.
All through the first act the play went splendidly,
and I was beginning to feel hopeful, even cheerful.
The second act, too, opened to plenty of laughter.
We had not got to the beginning of the " rough stuff."
But with the entrance of the Widow Quin the audience
began to show signs of restlessness* Obviously'
they coujdn^abide her; and when we came to my
line abouT^a!! bloody fools." the trouble began in
earnest, withjusses and cat-calls and all the other
indications^hat_tii, audience are not in love with

"3

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

yon. NoSLjhatjro^ had

given me qualms^ul Synge had insisted and who
was I to cont^dict him? that in the West it was
the casual mild expletive, like "bally," or "beastly,"
or "bloominV Yj^tJIrowj^
thatj^ In Dublin, as for that matter all over England
ancfScotland in those days, it was a " low " word, a
pothouse word. Quite a lot of years later, even, it
provided the theatrical sensation of the London
season when Bernard Shaw's Eliza Doolittle rapped
it out in tygmalwn. Nowadays,. I understand, it is
so much a young lady's expression that no he-man
ever dreams of using it. S^^e^is^^a^nce of
hjsjhjlDf^ There was therefore some excuse for the
audience's protest, though it was needlessly violent.
Yet the queer thing was that what turned the audience
into a veritable mob of howling devils was not this
vulgar expletive, but as irreproachable a word as
there is in the English dictionary tl^e decent old-
fashioned/' shift " for the traditional under-garment
of a woman. There is a point in thejjjJay where
in this case was goor me) says, " It's

Pegeen I'm seeking only, and what'd I care HTyou
brought me a drift pf chosen Females "^anding^ in their
W^s itself, maybe, from this place to the Eastern
Wond/ y You may say that the image a magnificent
one, mark you must have been shocking to so un-
sophisticated an audience as ours, but it was not the
image that shocked them. It was the^smid^for the
row was just asj>ad when Pegeen Mike herself said
to the Widow Quin, " Is it jpu asking for a penn'orth

214

THE ABBEY

of starch, with ne'er a shift or a shirt as long as you
can remember ?. "

The last act opened with the house in an uproar,
and by the time the curtain fell, the uproar had become
a riot. Two or three times I tried to get them to let
us finish for the sake of those who wanted to hear
the play, but it was no use. They wanted a row and
they were going to have one. There" 'wefrft eights
in the stalls. Mr. Hillis, our conductor, got Ms" face
damaged, and at one time it seemed as if the stage
would be stormed. It was lucky for themselves
that the patriots did not venture as far as that, for
our call-boy, who was also boiler attendant and
general factotum, had armed himself with a big axe
from the boiler-room, and swore by all the saints in
the calendar that he would chop the head off the first
lad who came over the footlights. And knowing
him, I haven't a shadow of doubt that he would have
chopped.

This was on a Saturday night. Over Sunday the
directors had to consider whether thejijvipjald bow .to
the storm and withdraw the play, or face it out. Very
properly they took course, and the

company, though it joke for them, loyally

supported on playing at all costs.

And so on the the curtain was rung

up to a well-organised^Kdemonium, for the patriots
had been busy over HR week-end also. As it was
impossible for any of us to be heard, I arranged with
the cast that we should simply walk through the play,
not speaking a word aloud, but changing positions

215

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

and going through all the motions, so to speak.
The noise was terrific, but we finished the play.
It was not until the Thursday night that, in order to
give a fair deal to those who had paid their money to
hear, the directors had the police in the theatre. Wg.
also had taken the precaution to pad the floor with
felt, wMchTm?^ that had

1 ,.^,,3,,-^^^ l*-v ..... .M'ttwtMftilH^^^'f'T*^*^ ...... ""' -/-T-W

b^fftne opposition s most efircuve device. Thus
we 'were able once more to speak the lines, but our
reputation as an Irish national institution was ruined.
Not content with libelling the saintly Irish people,
we had actually called in the tyrant Saxon's myrmidons
to silence their righteous indignation

the root of the trouble was that Synge had written
a brilliant play about the Irish peasantry without any
of the 'traditional sentiment or ilkskms^that were the&
so dear to the Irish playgoer. He was accused of
making a deliberate attack on the national character,
whatever that may be. Even William Boyle was
among the angriest of angry, though he had to confess
that he had not seen the play but had only read the
reports of the hubbub in the newspapers. To mark
his loathing of us he withdrew all his plays, which
I think was ungrateful, considering all we had done
for him.

The uproar, of course, was not confined to the
theatre. It re-echoed, with terrific amplification, in
the Press, and Dublin in those days was peculiarly
rich in organs of public opinion which ordinarily made
a discordant chorus, but now were enabled to bray
all together in something that was almost harmony.

216

THE ABBEY

One or two writers ventured to "praise with faint
damns/' but damning of some sort was de rigueur.
Arthur jGriffith was particularly venomous > &$r&p
^iSte^^ He

dedated, that, ".shift" and "bloody" were not the
worst; qf Syngas verbal offences, that he and several
friends present with him would take their Bible oath
tfiat another word, a nauseating word, fl doacme.
word was used. On^being, confronted with the script
he had to adtaait (which, he did with a very ill grace)
that, m his eagerness to hear evil, he had misheard
TT^pBBEectly innocent and commonplace word that
sounds a little like it. Even more discreditable than
this flight of imagination was his attack on the Abbey

money fwhich was his agreeable way of describing
Miss Horniman's generosity. The strictures of the
dramatic critics and the fulminations of the leader-
writers were followed up by the hysterics of the corre-
spondence columns . Most of the letters were incredibly
funny, though at the time we could not be expected to
appreciate their humour. There was, for example,
" A Girl from the West," from whom I cannot help
quoting a sentence :

Every character uses coarse expressions, and Miss AUgood

attire which the lady would probably never utter in ordinary
circumstances even to herself.

Soyou sse^e ^ beset AJspectable

....... ghe goes ..... jptQ ft *>b"p to buy a

217

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

! It was this sort of nonsense that inspired
the following verses in the Dublin Evening Mail. I
have never definitely ascertained the authorship,
but I suspect the late Susan Mitchell, ",/EV
secretary.

THE BLUSHES OF IRELAND

Oh really, Mr. Yeats (or Yates),

Oh really really, William Butler,
Your language fairly beats (or bates)

A Saxon sutler.

You're quite too dense to understand

The chill the thrill of modest loathing

With which one hears on Irish land
Of underclothing.

Allusions to a flannel shirt

(Young man, remember this, I urge 'ee)
Afflict with agonising hurt

Our patriot clergy.

And you, sir, you and Mr. Synge,

In spite of virtue's no-surrender,
You go and make the shameful thing

Of female gender.

Oppressor I thrust us to the Wall,

Bid bravo bobbies beat us yellow,
We'll raise an Independent bawl,

A Freeman's bellow.

We tell you to your brazen face,

A score of brogues in concord lifted,

That Ireland never was a place
Where clothes were sh fted.

You come, sir, with your English ways,

Your morals of the Cockney cabby,
Corrupting with unseemly phrase

The Abbey babby.

218

THE ABBEY ,

Unless we watch your wanton text,

And waken shame with boos and knockings,

You'll want that poor Miss Allgood next
To mention st ck ngs.

Unless we curb from hour to hour

This frenzied cult of Aphrodite,
You'll urge reluctant Ambrose Power

To name his n ghty.

We'll shriek we'll faint we won't be mute

Until we've forced you to elimi-
nate that vile word, and substitute

The chaster sh mmy.

And, look, sir, do not sh ft your scenes

There's scandal aided and abetted.
Let them now virtue intervenes

Be chemisetted.

Yield Willie 1 else your day is done,

Boyles will break out, and health desert you;

The little Fays your doors will shun
In wounded virtue.

We played The Playboy for the full number of ad-
vertised performances, matinee included. There was
a debate conducted by Mr. Yeats in the theatre on
the following Monday, when both sides were given
an opportunity of stating their views, but it was a
rather futile meeting, I think. The incident was a
lamentable business from every point of view, as
the future proved. If it taught the public that they
could not dictate the policy of the theatre, that was
all. However, you cannot beat the public in the
end, as I had warned Synge and the other directors,
because they can always boycott you. And that
was what happened after The Playboy. For weeks on
end we had to play to five or ten shillings a night

219

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

a full programme to half a dozen people scattered
all over the house, I used to invite them all into the
stalls to sit together. You can play serious plays to a
scattered audience, but you cannot play comedy
unless somebody laughs, and people do not laugh
unless they are sitting together. I lost friends who
never forgave me for producing the play and myself
taking the leading part, and who could not, or would
not understand that it was my job to produce any
play that my directors wanted, quite apart from my
personal likes or dislikes. All our hard work from
the November of the previous year was forgotten-
all the previous plays that we had produced to the
general delight. Where actors are concerned the
public has a very short memory.

One thing that made Synge's playsdffioiltjor a

the

people he was writing j.^^j^3yhereas they only
thought they did. One could get a fairly accurate
and just criticism of a Gaelic play from anyone who
spoke the language, for such a person had first-hand
knowledge of the peasant. But I don't suppose
half a dozen people in Dublin could have told you
the difference in idiom and brogue between a man from
the glens of Antrim and a man from Waterford, or
between a Galway man and a Wicklow one. I
myself knew these distinctions in a rough-and-ready
way owing to my experience as a stroller and I knew
how right Synge was. Time has justified him, for
his dialect is now the standard one and is even used
by Eugene O'Neill in America. And not only did

220

THE ABBEY

the Dubliners fail to appreciate Synge's profound
knowledge of rural Ireland, but they completely
misunderstood the character of the man. He was
popularly imagined as an outlandish ogre, actuated
by hatred of the human race in general and of the
Irish race in particular, and both willing to wound
and unafraid to strike. Nothing could have been
farther from the truth. Synge would never willingly
have hurt anybody. He was one of the gentlest souls
that ever breathed, and beloved by everybody who
knew him. I never knew him lose his temper even
in the most trying circumstances, and he was always
full of jokes and good-humour that made even a long
night journey on tour and that is a severe test for
anyone a pleasure instead of the penance that it
usually is.

He was a bit of a Quixote too. I remember,
when I was living in High Street, Synge and I one
night were walking through one of the roughest of
the back streets when we heard the screams of a
woman and child coming from behind the shutters
of a tumbledown shop and a man's voice shouting
and swearing. Synge stopped at once and wanted
to go to the rescue. Knowing the quarter I warned
him that we should get a rough house if we interfered,
but that did not stop him. He began hammering
away at the door, the screams getting louder and
louder all the time. As he got no reply to his knock-
ing we put our shoulders to the door, and with a
combined push smashed it in. It was pitch dark
inside but Synge managed to grab the woman while

221

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

I grabbed the baby, and we got them out. Not
content with that we dashed back to the shop and
yanked the man out of the house into the street
also. He swore powerfully, and was at first inclined
to show fight, but a short arm from Synge, planted
nicely under his chin, knocked him up against the
wall and reduced him to a comparatively reasonable
frame of mind. The mother and child were put back
into the shop and told to lock the door. Then we
walked the man down the street between us, intending
to hand him over to the police, but on the way Synge
suddenly changed his mind and chased him off instead.
After that he resumed the discussion of the first
principles of dramatic construction as if nothing had
happened. Next day, as I was passing along the
same street, I saw the man and his wife sitting on a
stool by their door laughing and joking while the
infant played at their feet !

I think the only really bright spot in this melancholy
year was the production in March of The Rising of the
Moon. I will not say it is Lady Gregory's best, or
even second-best, but it is very good, and it has a
real "rebelly" theme that immediately endeared it
to the great heart of Ireland and did something towards
placating our political " friends." It subsequently
became as much a stand-by to the Abbey as A Pot of
Broth had been. I played the ballad singer (and sang
songs, I regret to say !). Arthur Sinclair was the
sergeant and J. O'Rourke and J. Kerrigan the two
policemen.

I now turn to less pleasant matters that developed

222

J. M. SYNGE, from a drawing by J. B. Yeats

THE ABBEY

about this time. Notwithstanding the Playboy trouble,
taking things by and large, the Abbey players had
done uncommonly well. They hadn't made money
but they had established themselves as the representa-
tives of a forward movement in the drama that could
not be ignored. Naturally there was nobody more
pleased with our succis cfestime than Miss Horniman.
Unfortunately her gratification led her into a disastrous
error of judgment. Seeing we were doing so well
and yet suffered from some faults due to our
amateur origins, she took the notion that all we
needed to make us perfect was a real stiffening
of professional direction such as in her opinion
only England could supply. Accordingly she sug-
gested to the directors and in the circumstances a
suggestion from Miss Horniman was tantamount to
a command that Ben Iden Payne, an extremely
capable Lancashire lad, whose work for Benson had
greatly impressed her, should temporarily take over
the general management of the Abbey and broaden
its artistic basis. There was not a little to be said
for the idea. It could be argued that by our pre-
occupation with Irish plays, especially peasant plays,
we were hiding our light under a bushel, and that our
technique was capable of a much wider application.
Nobody was more sensible of that than I was. But
after all we had not been going for so very long, and
it would be time enough to be thinking about setting
our light on a candlestick when it was burning steadily
enough not to be blown out by the blasts of prejudice
and ill-will under which it was even now flickering.

223

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

It is bad enough to do the wrong thing, but to do
the right thing in the wrong way and at the wrong
time is worse. Miss Horniman's move was not only
inopportune on general grounds ; it was at the moment
appallingly bad tactics. Arthur Griffith had flung
the gibe that the Abbey Theatre was an anti-national
activity financed by English money, and here were
we playing into his hands by accepting an English
manager and producer. That in itself should have
made the directors a non possumus to Miss Horniman.
But even if the public situation had been less delicate,
there were still serious objections. I omit the personal
aspect of the matter. Naturally it was not agreeable
to me, who had built up the whole concern, to be
superseded even temporarily, but that is not the
point. The point was, no English manager-producer,
however gifted and well-intentioned, could make our
actors conform to the model of an ordinary repertory
company, which seemed to be the idea. Their
technique, such as it was at the time, was the result
of the tuition Frank and I had given, combined with
the team work that came from constantly playing
together. It could not be altered without destroying
the very quality that had given us our unique reputa-
tion and making it impossible to carry to a successful
issue our plans for the future.

None of our directors had enough theatrical ex-
perience or for that matter experience of this wicked
world to realise how difficult it would be for me to
remain if a new producer were put in charge. They
urged that Payne's appointment would not last long

224

THE ABBEY

and that as soon as it came to an end I should auto-
matically resume sole control. That sounded very
fine, but I knew things would not work out so simply,
and that I should never regain my old personal
authority over the company. My instinct was to
resign, and I said so ; but in the end, and much against
the advice of my friends, I was persuaded to remain
on the footing that I should produce all the peasant
plays, which at the time were the most important side
of our work, while Payne produced the others and
managed the theatre generally.

Payne, being a man of good sense, could appreciate
the manifold difficulties of the situation and fully
agreed with me that it would be disastrous for him
to play the new broom. His chief care to begin
with was to do a little more than we had hitherto
been able to manage in the way of contemporary
foreign drama. His first production, on March i6th,
was Maeterlinck's Interior. His methods were very
much like my own, and the play succeeded so well
that we were able to repeat it three times at the end
of the month, Frank and Kerrigan came in for the
best of the notices. Kerrigan "loses his own
personality and becomes what he represents, and
Frank Fay as the old man showed by his way of speak-
ing the infinite age, with a wondering contemplation
of sorrow that made his play a marvel of luminous
interpretation,"

At the end of April came Payne's second production,
Fand, a two-act play by that gifted but erratic soul,
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, founded on a legend of the

225

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

fairy woman who enticed Cuchulain to the under-
world the Irish Tannhauser legend in fact. It was
written in Alexandrines, and so gave the company
some excellent material on which to practise the
speaking of verse, but it had a poor reception except
from the faithful few who enjoyed good verse-speak-
ing. After that we once more toured Great Britain,
and for the first time visited Birmingham. The
Birmingham critics were by no means kind, a novel
experience for us in England. They could not
make us out at all. However, our visit had one very
good result. It inspired Barry Jackson and some of
his friends to imitate us and found the "Pilgrim
Players," which developed a few years later into the
Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In London, where
we played at the Great Queen Street (now the Kings-
way) Theatre, we had some anonymous letters threaten-
ing trouble if we dared to present The Playboy, and there
was even a half-hearted attempt at a demonstration
at the first performance. But it fizzled out, as the
audience showed very plainly that they were de-
termined not to be disturbed by a few rowdies. This
was the first time we had an opportunity of putting
the play before a sophisticated audience that simply
judged it as a play and were able to see in it a splendid
addition to our repertoire. Nobody could under-
stand what all the fuss had been about in Dublin.
Synge had a great reception when he took his curtain
call, and if the critics did find some weak spots in
the play they freely recognised its importance as a
contribution to the modern drama.

THE ABBEY

Iden Payne did not return to Dublin with us.
He had early realised in what a false position he had
been placed, and that in any case the Abbey was trying
to achieve something that was not at all in his line.
So when we reached London he sent in his resignation.
Soon afterwards he went to Manchester to produce
for Miss Horniman at her new venture, the Gaiety
Repertory Theatre, where, among many brilliant
players who began their careers at that time under his
direction, were Sybil Thorndike, Lewis Casson and
Basil Dean. When the War put an end to most
repertory work in this country, he went to America
to become director of drama at the Carnegie
Institute, Pittsburgh. He has recently been appointed
director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre,
Stratford-on-Avon.

When Payne left us I took full charge once more,
but I persuaded the directors to lighten my duties
by appointing Ernest Vaughan, one of the old members
of the Ormond Dramatic Society, to be business
manager, while I devoted myself to production and
acting. As heaven decreed it was little enough I
was to do of either, and of that little nothing that
was really memorable. George Fitzmaurice's three-
act play, The Country Dressmaker, with which we
opened our autumn season, had considerable merit,
and Lady Gregory gave us Devorgilla^ founded on the
incident that brought about the English conquest
of Ireland, which had no more than a very fair success.
However, it was better than the play that was destined
to be my last production at the Abbey Theatre The

227

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

Unicorn from the Stars, by Lady Gregory and Mr,
Yeats. This was a rehash of an earlier play called
Where there is Nothing, that had been done by the
Stage Society and had afterwards been published in
Arthur Griffith's paper. It was just the kind of thing
where, in my opinion, it is impossible to get good
results out of collaboration. Lady Gregory's peasant
characters were not good exponents of Mr. Yeats's
mysticism, which on this occasion was more than
usually tenebrous. Nobody could understand the
play then. I doubt if anybody could understand it
even now, or at any time. The most interesting and
pleasurable feature of the season I can call to mind
was the series of " professional matinees " that was
started in order that English actors who might be
playing in Dublin should have an opportunity of
seeing us. Many took advantage of it, among them
Sir Herbert Tree, Sir John Martin Harvey, Mrs.
Patrick Campbell, Sir Frank Benson, Haidee Gunn
and William Poel.

I need not dwell at length on the events that ended
in my resignation from the Abbey Theatre. They
can be stated quite shortly. The consequence of
Iden Payne's appointment that I had foreseen and
of which, I had warned the directors duly came to
pass. Although I was nominally in full control
again, the old spirit of camaraderie was gone and
the company was thoroughly out of hand. Incidents
of open insubordination were not infrequent; If I
ordered anything that happened not to be to some
member's liking, he (or she) would fling off to one

228

THE ABBEY

or other of the directors with his (or her) grievance,
and the chances were that I should be overruled.
Now it is important to observe that up to this time
not one of us, not even myself, had troubled about
having a formal contract in writing with the National
Theatre Company, Limited. Artists were engaged
by me by word of mouth, and the matter was left
at that not a business-like procedure, I grant you,
but one that worked well enough while we were all a
happy family. But now that the old spirit was no
more it was clear to me that the only way to restore
discipline was to conform to strict business practice
and to insist on written contracts of service clearly
defining the conditions of employment. The con-
tracts would, of course, be between each artist and
the National Theatre Company, Limited; but I de-
manded that one of the conditions should be that
no artist was permitted to approach individual
members of the Board on any matter touching his
work. If anyone had a grievance, let him submit
it formally in writing to the Board, who could then
take it up with me if they saw fit.

I cannot think that that demand was unreasonable.
It was only asking that we should proceed on the basis
that every business organisation finds essential to
efficiency, and would have been the right thing in
any circumstances. But apart from that there was a
particular reason that made the change imperative.
The Abbey Theatre had reached a critical stage in its
development. From the humblest beginnings, and
working mainly from a stock-in-trade of little native

229

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

peasant plays which, with all their merits, represented
a very narrow range of human experience, it had made
a surprising and gratifying reputation. And here in
its very success lay its peril, the insidious temptation
to rest content with its little laurels and forget the
big ones that had still to be worn. From the first
Frank and I had seen in the National Theatre move-
ment the possibility of a real art theatre, and we had
been led to believe that the Abbey directors shared
our vision. Miss Horniman certainly did, otherwise
she would not have backed the movement with her
good money, for what was Ireland to her, or she to
Ireland ? Unfortunately the lavish encomiums of
the English Press had been too heady for our friends
Yeats, Synge and Augusta Gregory, They imagined
we had arrived when we had no more than started.
We had a company that could do peasant plays with
an accomplishment and finish that have never been
rivalled, much less excelled. But we should have to
show much more than that before we could claim
to be a real art theatre. We should have to create
by degrees a company capable, both in numbers and
experience, of performing any type of play, whether
low life or high life, prose or verse. Frank and I
reckoned that this would be a long and hard job a
matter of ten years at least, even with the excellent
material we undoubtedly had.

I put these considerations to the directors, pointing
out that it would be idle for W to attempt such a
task unless I were given the usual power of a manager
and producer. Of course it would be possible to

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THE ABBEY

muddle through in the old way if we were content
to potter along with peasant plays, which would mean
first stagnation and ultimately, when we found no
more pots of broth to boil and no more news to spread,
death. But that was not my idea for the future of the
Abbey Theatre. What agitated confabulations the
directors held I know not. All I know is that after
a few days Lady Gregory came to me to say that they
were not disposed to make any changes, and what
was I going to do about it ? I did the only thing
that was left to me I resigned on the spot.

Frank went with me, and so did Ernest Vaughan.
I had hoped Frank would see his way to remain and
carry on the excellent work he was doing. He might
not have been as happy as of yore, but it was a safe
enough job, and safe jobs are not so easily picked up
in the theatre. However, he would not hear of it.
" I came with you," he said, " and I'll go with you/*
On January i3th, 1908, I left the Abbey Theatre for
the last time, going out a poorer man than I had come
in. Shaun Barlow met my wife and me to say good-
bye, and the housekeeper said farewell to us in the
hall. She said, " I knew I was losing a friend when
a tooth fell out on Tuesday."

END OF PART II

2 3 I

PART III
AFTER

CHAPTER I

OUR departure from the Abbey was a nine-days
wonder for Dublin, and all sorts of rumours were
afloat about the reason for it. There were plenty of
facilities for washing dirty linen in public, if we had
had any; but our disagreement with the directors
was not over the cleanliness of the material but the
quality and the proper use of it. Frank and I refused
to say anything for publication, for there was nothing
we could usefully add to the simple statement made
by Mr. Yeats that there had been a difference of
opinion about the policy of the theatre, which was a
private matter between the directors and me. That
was the case in a nutshell. Frank and I had one plan
for the development, of the theatre and the directors
had another they thought better. As between us
time alone could tell, and it did. Before very long
the directofs found that by concentrating on native
plays, which to all intents and purposes meant peasant
plays, they were arriving at a dead end. Even the
Irish public has not an infinite appetite for peasant
plays, and even if it had, the supply (saving Lady
Gregory's noble presence) could not go on for ever.
Maybe peasant drama was the safer and more useful
medium on which to concentrate the energies of the
theatre, but no theatre on earth could be kept going
on a policy of producing nothing but native works,
for there are not enough good plays written each year
in any country to supply a national theatre in this sense
of the term. The whole dramatic output of Europe

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

and America combined does not amount to a dozen
really good plays annually (there are plenty of com-
petent ones but a truly fine play is rare), and a national
theatre lives by quality. Hence the Abbey Theatre
directors were ultimately obliged to introduce trans-
lations of foreign masterpieces in order to give variety
to their programmes; but meanwhile valuable time
had been lost.

My wife and I stayed in Dublin only a few days
after leaving the Abbey, for I had to find work without
delay, and it was no use looking for it in Ireland. We
came to London, where William Boyle kindly gave us
hospitality. Frank remained behind until he could
make up his mind whether to take up teaching or
become an ordinary professional.

The only person I knew connected with the theatre
was Mr. Granville Barker, whom I had met when I
had come over to see if we could produce John Butt's
Other Island. I knew that if he could he would give
me a trial. But he was at that moment producing one
of Gilbert Murray's translations from Euripides, and
naturally had not much use for a character comedian
who left no doubt as to his nationality every time he
spoke. With the best will in the world he could do
no more than promise to remember me when he had
a part for which I was suitable. Presently our Dun-
mow friends, the Nashes, asked us to come down and
see them, and as the last couple of months had been a
very trying time, my wife and I were only too glad
to exchange the horrors of " looking for work " for a
turn of helping with the poultry farm, leaving the

236

AFTER

noise and bustle >f London for the quiet of the
country.

We had not been there more than a week when I
was astonished and delighted to receive a letter from
no less a person that Sir James Barrie inviting me to
come and see him at his house at Leinster Corner in
the Bayswater Road. When I arrived, the maid took
me through the house and across the back garden to
where some wooden steps led to what had been at
one time the hayloft but was now converted into a
study. Near the window at the far end of it stood a
very large roll-top desk with a large leather strap and
padlock fastened round it to give additional security
to its contents. On the opposite wall to the door was
an open hearth with a turf fire burning on it and
wooden settles on either side. The walls were hung
with Samoan mats, the gift of Robert Louis Stevenson.

I sat on one settle and smoked my cherry pipe, while
he sat on the opposite one and did likewise with a
well-seasoned briar. After getting from me the
whole story of our parting from the Abbey, he asked
a lot of questions about my own work as an actor. I
then fou&d to my astonishment that he had seen every
character I had played in our repertoire. How he had
managed it I don't know. He must have seen all the
plays we produced in London. I recalled an occasion
when he came over to Dublin with Charles Frohman
to see the first performance of one of his plays, and
we had all been hoping that they might visit us also,
and be so impressed that Mr. Frohman would want to
take the Abbey company for an American tour. But,

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

in spite of our nightly watch for them, they had never
been seen. Now it came out, accidentally in the course
of conversation, that they had been there after all.
They had slipped into the pit one night and, without
being recognised in front or behind, had seen our
performance. So there we sat talking about plays
and actors till it was time for me to say farewell, and
I returned to Dunmow elated at having met the
writer who is, to my thinking, the most gifted
dramatist of our time.

A week or so after my visit a telegram came from
Sir James that I was to call at the Hicks (now the
Globe) Theatre and there ask for Mr. Frohman.
With my heart in my mouth I came up to town.
That foolish propensity we all have for deciding before-
hand what a stranger we are about to meet should look
like, led me to expect in Mr. Frohman a tall American
with a voice as big as his reputation. Instead, I was
introduced to a man about my own smallness. There
was nothing big about him except the cigar he was
smoking. He gave me its fellow, and said he had a
proposition for me. He was about to revive The
Admirable Crichton at the Duke of York's Theatre,
and he wanted a curtain-raiser. Would I produce
one of our short Irish plays and play in it as well ?
I could hardly believe my ears. It was only a few
weeks since I had landed in England without money
or prospects, and here I was being offered a production
in a London West End theatre by a man who con-
trolled every first-class theatre in America, as well
as many in England! My answer took no time.

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AFTER

Terms were to be decided later. I dashed off to wire
to Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats for leave to do
The Rising of the Moon and A Pot of Broth, which was
given at once, and to Frank bidding him come over
and join us.

This first interview took place on a Monday. On
the Wednesday Mr. Frohman sent for me again to
announce a complete change of plan. He had
decided that The Admirable Crichton by itself was quite
enough for a full evening's programme, so instead of
playing at the Duke of York's I was to go to New
York to play a short Irish play in front of a farce called
Twenty Days in the Shade which was then running at
the Savoy Theatre in 34th Street. Could I collect
my plays and players and be ready to sail on Saturday ?
I did some rapid thinking. It left me only two days
in which to settle everything, but here was a chance
to go to America, given by the head of the theatrical
business in that country, and a better start than that
was not possible. Without in the least knowing how
it could be done I said I would do it. And so all was
settled. I was not to trouble about the arrangements
for the journey. Frohman's people would see to that.
We chatted for a few minutes about things uncon-
nected with the theatre while his secretary was making
out a large cheque for me against immediate expenses.
Did I like living in London ? Did I prefer a flat to
a boarding house ? Wasn't it pleasanter to live in a
quiet street than in a noisy one? Then he signed
the cheque and sent me off with cordial good wishes.
Nothing he said had been remarkable, but the per-

239

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

sonal power and attraction of Charles Frohman would
have got him to the top of any business to which he
applied himself, no matter how low his place to start
with. That was the impression I carried away with
me. I never saw him again.

Boyle said we could never do it, but by spending
a small fortune on telegrams I managed to gather the
Fay family on the platform at Waterloo for the boat
train on Saturday morning. I had a kindly letter
from Sir James Barrie wishing us a successful time
and hoping that when we returned to England we
should play, not in front of one of his plays, but in it.
The representative of Mr. Frohman was on the plat-
form with a bunch of flowers for " herself " and all
the illustrated papers for Frank and me. He wished
us the best of good luck, and off we went.

Bar a nasty knocking about we had on the fourth
day out (and even bad crossings of the Irish Channel
had not prepared me for the Atlantic roller at its
biggest and quickest) the eight-day voyage was
pleasant and uneventful. I spent most of my time
reading, for there was an excellent library of fiction
on board. I used to get a book each morning after
breakfast and read it sitting in the sun on big coils of
cable in the bow of the ship. After lunch I was
ready for a fresh one and read this sitting in my deck
chair on the sunny side of the promenade deck. A
third one I got before dinner and finished by bed-
time. Many years' practice in reading plays in
manuscript, typescript or print, makes one an adept
at rapid reading, and it must be a long novel indeed

240

AFTER

that I cannot read in two and a half hours. By the
time we came up with the Statue of Liberty I had
worked my way through most of the light literature
the ship carried.

We reached New York early on the eighth day, a
Sunday, and were met by two members of Mr. Froh-
man's New York staff. One undertook to see our
baggage through the Customs, while the other carried
us off in a taxi to a small flat in one of the streets that
have since been demolished to make room for the
Pennsylvania Railway Station. It was just the kind
of flat we would have chosen for ourselves, and so
was the lunch we found ready for us. I was wonder-
ing what genie had escaped from the Arabian Nights
to arrange things so aptly for our comfort, when it
came to me, suddenly, how at our last meeting
Mr. Frohman had discovered our tastes without my
being aware at all of what he was after. As soon as
I left him then he must have sent word to his New
York staff to arrange things just so. A great man.

Some of the English newspapers had commented
with surprise on the fact that we had agreed to play
in America without any written contract with Mr.
Frohman. The St. James's Gazette said, "For the
moment it does take one's breath away to hear of such
frankly unbusinesslike proceedings. They are like a
breath from an earlier world at any rate from a world
in which a man's word is his bond." But to anyone
connected with the theatre there was nothing so very
strange about it. I had enough sense to know that I
should be far safer to leave all arrangements in Mr.

241

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

Frohman's hands than to attempt any " businesslike "
arrangement of my own devising. His word was
known to be his bond, and no actor that ever worked
for him ever refused an offer to return to his manage-
ment again. I had the same experience with Charles
Hawtrey when I engaged to play Golligher for him in
General John Regan. It was just, " Will you play this
part for so much a week ? " and, " I will, up to eight
performances a week," and we shook hands on it.
When I come to think of it, I have not had written
contracts for more than perhaps 15 per cent, of all my
London engagements. Perhaps travelling the road
makes one sceptical about the all-compelling power
of documents; perhaps, also, it helps one to know
an honest man.

After lunch Frohman's man took me to the theatre
to see what they had for us in the way of scenery,
costumes and properties. A scene had been set
which was the stage manager's best notion of an
Irish cottage interior. It was the usual sort of
cottage interior in use at that time, about 34 feet
wide, 3 o feet deep and 1 8 high. This had to be altered.
And as fast as I indicated the alterations, the flats
were lowered on to the stage, whereupon the stage
carpenter and his crew set to work on them, and the
scenic artist got ready to paint them. When I came
again to the theatre on Monday morning, all was right
and ready. I was then taken by the property master
to the stores, a five-storey building that housed the
costumes and properties. A counter ran down the
middle of each floor. On one of the counters

242

AFTER

the staff had laid out all the costumes and so forth that
they judged from their instructions might be of use
to me. As I chose an item it was put straight into a
basket, and the lot came with us to the theatre. To a
mere Irishman these demonstrations of competent
organisation were a peculiar delight.

On February i8th we made our American debut
with A Pot of Broth. The type of play and our
peculiar technique of acting were so novel to the
New York critics that they obviously did not know
what to say and took refuge in guarded admiration.
A good example of their bewilderment was provided
by the gentleman who confessed that " with regard
to Mr. Fay's acting I don't know whether it was pure
genius or pure ignorance/' I treasure that oracle.
It was the finest compliment I have ever had.
Whether they understood me or not, the Americans
were never anything but kind to us. It would take
far too long, even if I could remember them, to recite
details, but there was one very early instance of
thoughtfulness that my wife and I can never forget.
While we were dressing for our first night, a great
box of flowers arrived for " herself." We wondered
who in the length and breadth of America could be
doing such a thing. It turned out that they were sent
as " greetings " to the young Irish actress by the
Ellen Terry of America, Miss Maude Adams. To
add to our cheerfulness, just as the curtain was going
up a cablegram was thrust into my hand. It was from
Barrie, wishing us all good luck.
A few days later in Broadway I met my old friend

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

Dudley Digges, just back from tour and looking for
work. I was glad to be * able to give him some.
When we had finished with A Pot of 'Broth he came
to play with us in The Rising of the Moon, making the
third member of the original Ormond Dramatic
Society in the cast. I may say that The Rising of the
Moon did not get over nearly so well as its predecessor.
The audiences did not seem to appreciate its political
background, which surprised us, in view of the
notorious influence of Irish Nationalism on American
public life, especially in New York, The ballad
singer, again, meant nothing to the inhabitants of a
city where nobody in his senses would ever think of
singing in the streets for a living.

Our run at the Savoy did not last so long as we had
hoped. Before many nights had passed I could see
Frohman's motive in sending us to New York. The
piece we played in front of was an adaptation from the
French by Paul B. Potter, who had had to adapt all
the French vitality out of it to make it possible for
an Anglo-Saxon public and the New York censor.
On a report that it was showing signs of collapse,
Frohman had thought to bolster it up by adding a
novelty such as we could provide. But that proved
to be beyond our modest powers. Twenty Days in the
Shade had to be withdrawn (with the actress whose
name has since become familiar to half the world as a
film star Miss Pauline Frederick), to be succeeded by
something very different Rann Kennedy's The Servant
in the House> a play that afterwards had some success
on this side until it was eclipsed by Jerome K. Jerome's

244

AFTER

exercise on the same formula, The Passing of the Third
Floor 'Back.

In the ordinary course we should have returned to
England forthwith. But Frohman had not yet given
up hope of Tmnty Days. Chicago might swallow
what New York had only nibbled at. His repre-
sentative, Mr. Hayman, therefore, gave us the option
to continue in the show, provided we could give
another play something more substantial and of
more general appeal than either of those we had
shown. So I got Boyle to let us do The Building
Fund. There was policy in this, for Boyle had a
brother in Chicago who was a big noise there, being
no less than Chief of Police and a very rich man to
boot. He had made his pile in the building trade
after the great fire that wiped out the best part of the
city in 1 871 . But he was now out of that and making
more money, hand over fist, as an ice-merchant.

The interval between the two engagements afforded
us a little holiday for sight-seeing, which included a
tour of Chinatown (a real one under the tutelage of an
experienced policeman) and a visit to Coney Island to
" hear the silence." It also enabled us to discover,
from an advertisement on Brooklyn Bridge, that
Lipton's tea was obtainable in New York, which was
the most substantial joy of all. It was well-nigh
dying we had been for a decent cup of tea ever since
we landed.

Our location in Chicago was Power's Theatre,
where we had the peculiar, almost tragic, experience
of being only too successful. For The Building Fund

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

we were able to put up a real original Dublin cast-
namely, Dudley Digges and his wife, Maire Quinn,
Frank and myself and my wife, Brigit O'Dempsey.
Being all, so to speak, a family party and knowing the
play backwards and forwards, we gave a show that
made the main piece look even sillier than it was. So
far from putting new life into Twenty Days in the
Shade, we killed it and thereby killed our own run.

It was some consolation that we got great space in
the Chicago newspapers, which in those days I can't
speak for now, when movies may have changed all
that made a big feature of theatrical news. We
were beset by pressmen pestering us for information
about the Irish theatre and its relation to the dramatic
renascence initiated by Ibsen. The renascence had
not yet reached the American stage, but it was a live
topic among the intelligent people. The young
pressmen were wholly up to date in their reading,
and much coffee was consumed at many pleasant
gatherings while we debated the modern theatre
versus the old. This interest eventually spread all
over America to such an extent that, by the time
Father Dawson Byrne published his book, The Story
of the Irish National Theatre, in 1929, there were 21
Little Theatres in Chicago, 53 in New York and 480
throughout America, all following the lead of the
Abbey Theatre in Dublin. If it was late in starting,
the United States has made up for it since by estab-
lishing schools of drama in connexion with all the
principal universities, notably Yale and Harvard, and
by encouraging lectures on drama by the Red Path

246

AFTER

Society and the Drama League in all the small towns,
with Little Theatres wherever they could find audiences
to support them.

Chief of Police Boyle did us proud, as a man should
whose thirty years in Chicago had not mitigated his
Dundalk brogue. He entertained us in the brown-
stone mansion he had built on the spot where he had
camped out after the great fire, and he showed us how
ice was got and stored. Altogether I have the
pleasantest memories of Chicago. Not that the place
itself was much to look at. The front on Lake
Michigan is noble ; but, for the rest, the Chicago I saw
was much like Manchester in a bad mood fog,
sulphurous fumes and all. But it has been rebuilt
several times since then, I am assured that it is a
really swell city now.

CHAPTER II

SOON after our return to England the Stage Society
produced Arnold Bennett's What the Public Wants, in
which I took the part of Holt St. John. Those who
have seen the play will remember that St. John is an
ultra-modern producer. I never enjoyed a part
more. It is rare fun to get the chance of burlesquing
oneself, and I took full advantage of it. Bennett
had just finished working for one of the daily news-
papers, and as he did not hold with their slick business
methods, or their treatment of him, he wrote this play
to give expression to his feelings. It is, in my opinion,
one of his best plays, and if he had used any other
theme but an attack on the " Third Estate " it would
in all probability have had a long run. It still plays
as well as it did then, and is a most useful addition to
the list of any repertory theatre. When, some
months later, the play was put on for a run, Charles
Hawtrey gave a great performance in it as Holt
St. John. How good he was I can best express by
saying that I enjoyed seeing his performance even
better than giving my own.

We had not been " resting " long before William
Poel wrote to Frank asking him if he and I and Brigit
would like to play in his forthcoming production of
Macbeth at the Fulham Theatre. We had seen other
productions of his, particularly his Merchant of Venice,
in which he played Shylock as it was done in Shake-
speare's own day as a red-headed Jew. It changed
the values of the characters to an extraordinary degree,

248

AFTER

and I then saw for the first time The Merchant of Venice,
a Comedy by William Shakespeare, and not, what is
usually presented to modern audiences, the Tragedy
of Shylock the Jew. Also we had seen his production
of Romeo and Juliet played by a boy and girl and not
by a man of forty-five and a woman of forty, as is
usually done. We were very glad to get an oppor-
tunity to be under his direction, and so it came about
that three Fays appeared on the stage as the three
. witches. Our Lady Macbeth was Lillah McCarthy, and
Hubert Carter was the Macbeth. Our messenger and
stage manager has since become known as the pro-
prietor of the Maddermarket Theatre at Norwich,
where he has carried on the good work with well-
deserved success.

There were two things about production I learned
from Mr. Poel. One was to make a point of occa-
sional rehearsals for words only without any move-
ment, which enables the actors to concentrate on
their speeches alone; the other, that if one wants
pace in a scene one must look after the big words
and the little ones will look after themselves. There
is a lot in this to stress the words that convey the
sense.

PoePs Macbeth was one of my life's landmarks, for
it was the last show in which Frank and I were ever
to play together. For a good many years he toured
England with various companies, and he had a spell
at Birmingham with Barry Jackson, but unfortunately
it was before my time there. From 1918 he lived
mainly in Dublin, teaching elocution and producing

249

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

for amateur societies. It was in Dublin that, to my
great sorrow, he died on January 2, 1931.

There is an old saying in the theatre, that " it is
easier to get work when you have it than when you
are idle/' and this engagement with Mr. Poel brought
a Shakespearean job for Frank, while my wife and I
started rehearsals under Granville Barker's direction
for a tour of John Bull's Other Island, in which Poel was
to play the lead as Father Keegan. I shall have some-
thing to say presently about Poel's rendering of that
extraordinarily difficult part. I imagine that most of
those who saw that production and are still above the
earth do not forget Nigel Playfair's Broadbent. It
was a perfect bit of casting. His representation of a
clever but fatuous man to type, full of sentiment and
good-nature and as utterly incapable of anything not
English, was the finest and most exemplary piece of
character acting I have ever seen. It was the joy of a
lifetime, and the best of it was that off the stage Play-
fair was a sincere and active Gladstonian Liberal, I
am sure he spoke every word that Shaw put into his
mouth with complete conviction. My wife had the
genteel but not very exciting part of Nora, while I
burbled along about " me sufferings " as old Haffigan.
But now as to Poel. During the first few weeks of
the tour I watched him re-create his part a thing I
have never seen an actor do before or since. His first
performances did not please him, so bit by bit for
the next two weeks he altered it, word by word, line
by line, until, when he had finished, it was a com-
pletely new reading of Keegan, with the original

250

AFTER

business and movements unaltered, and so nobody
upset.

The play had as good a reception on this tour as
when it had previously been on the road, -especially
in Dublin, where Brigit and I had not been since
leaving the Abbey, and where now we were welcomed
back with all the demonstrative affection that an Irish
audience can give to old favourites. Yet, for all the
nice things that the critics, both English and Irish,
said about its wit and acuteness of observation, the
fact remains that John Bull's Other Island ranks among
Shaw's failures. It is interesting as the first play of
his later manner, where action is nothing and talk
everything, but its talk was out of date before it was
written down. Mr. Shaw left Ireland in 1876, and it
was only by hearsay that he knew of the Land League,
the Plan of Campaign, and what Parnell meant to
Ireland, By the time he had grasped the significance
of all these things, Ireland had put them away and was
busy organising the Gaelic League which produced
Sinn Fein, followed by two revolutions and the
formation of the Free State. There is half a century
between the Ireland of John Bull's Other Island and the
Ireland of Sean O'Casey, and yet to O'Casey's name
one might add, with profound reverence, the name of
J, M. Synge.

This tour finished in December, and I was on my
way to spend the Christmas time at Dunmow when I
saw at the end of a column of the Westminster Gazette
a paragraph stating that Sir Herbert Tree proposed
producing a new play by Justin Huntley McCarthy,

251

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

called The O'Flynn. I wrote at once to Frederick
Whelan, Sir Herbert's secretary, whom I knew, and
went on my way, only to find a letter waiting for me
from Whelan that had crossed mine asking me to
come and see Sir Herbert after the Christmas fes-
tivities were finished. That was a merry Christmas,
and the result of my interview was my first real London
engagement, I was to play Conaher O'Rourke,
body servant to the OTlynn.

The play was a romantic comedy by a dramatist
who had nothing to learn about play construction,
and following the custom of the time it was written
to give opportunity for a great display by the " star "
actor. The scenes and costumes were designed by
Percy McQuoid, an expert on the eighteenth century,
and Miss Evelyn D'Alroy and Henry Ainley were at
the head of the cast, which included a vast number of
small part people and " walkers on," for those crowd
scenes which were as the breath of life to our chief.
One of the male extras, I remember, made himself
conspicuous by coming to rehearsal in a different suit
of clothes every other day, the tone value of each suit
being decided by the colour of the nicely disposed silk
handkerchief he wore in the breast pocket. His
position in the scene in which he appeared was just
prominent enough to attract attention. On the day
he arrived in his seventh suit Tree seemed to look at
him once or twice with evident interest, and presently
walked up to him. Taking the silk handkerchief
from the young man's breast pocket he tried it in
three or four different places all round the stage, after

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AFTER

which he replaced it precisely where and as it had
been, saying with a sigh as he turned away, " No !
No ! Perhaps you are right."

The O'F/jnn ran in London for nearly six months.
When we were given notice of the termination of the
run and I was preparing to pack up my goods and
chattels, Mr. Whelan suggested that I ought to be in
the Shakespearean season that was to follow. Con-
sidering my brogue I thought Whelan was having his
little joke, but he was serious. " Better see the Chief
about it," he said. I saw the Chief and was given an
engagement on the spot, not only for the Shakespeare
season but for the tour of The Q'Flynn as well. I
raised the question of my brogue. He waved it
airily aside. " Of course, Fm afraid you will have to
say ' wat ' instead of ' what * and c wich * instead of
* which/ not to mention * bawth ' for * bath/ It's all
wrong, I know, but you will have to do it. Good
morning ! " And that is how, of all people on this
earth, William Fay was found playing Justice Shallow
in The Merry Wives of Windsor with Tree and Ellen
Terry and Lady Tree. I was among the quality now
and no mistake.

Tree was a supreme character actor, and his Falstaff
was a magnificent example of his art, so rich in colour
and (what one so seldom gets on the stage to-day)
unction. But need I say that my proudest recollection
of that engagement at His Majesty's is of having played
with Ellen Terry. She was by that time quite an
old woman, and her memory for her lines was not
what it had been. But still what a player! And '

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

what a person ! The theatre was a different place
from the moment she entered it. Even before you saw
her, from the stage-door attendant upwards, every-
body was all of a do-da, and the feeling surged, like
the waves from a distant liner on the shore, into every
corner of the building. The actors, I believe, felt it
even more than the audience, for to play along with
her was better than a sea voyage for putting life into
you. She lived in the part she was playing, and her
virtue was infectious, for nobody who was lucky
enough to be performing with her could help but do
the same. As to the peculiar quality of her rapport
with her audiences I can say nothing that has not been
said hundreds of times already. Sarah Bernhardt
could stun an audience into awestruck surrender to her
genius. Ellen Terry's ascendancy was different. She
was so evidently in love with her audience and with
all the human world that they could not help loving
her in return. Every man, woman and child there
fell in love with her and with happiness. It was a
unique gift. No actress, I am convinced, ever had it
before in the same degree. I question if any ever will
again.

For his tour Tree had a mixed programme that
included with The O'Flynn, The Merchant and Trilby.
In my humble opinion Svengali was Tree's master-
piece, and I believe it was his own favourite among
the great range of his character parts. The tour
opened at Cardiff. We had no sooner got to our
second " stand," Birmingham, when the death of
King Edward closed all the theatres in the country.

AFTER

It was worse than a fair day. I took the opportunity
of slipping over to Dublin to see my mother, who was
very ill, and to await there the arrival of the company
when the theatres should be reopened after the King's
funeral. In due course we reassembled at the Theatre
Royal, Dublin. I found Tree somewhat troubled.
He was afraid that the Dublin people would scoff at
his Irish brogue, and honesty obliges me to confess
that it was about as bad and as funny as could be.
However, I assured him with a good conscience that
the Dubliners would not mind what sort of a brogue
he had so long as they liked the play. The theatre was
packed on the first night and he got a tremendous
reception. After he had taken eight curtain calls at
the end, he sent for me and, in response to the
audience's demand for a speech, he took me on the
stage with him and told them that "his splendid
brogue was entirely due to my able tuition." This
was just the kind of joke they expected from him. It
was received with roars of laughter and applause and
filled the theatre for him for the rest of the week.

It was while I was with him that I began a series of
experiments to see how far an actor in creating a part
could add to it qualities that were not mentioned in
the lines or suggested by the "business," like
Churdles Ash's rheumatism in The Farmer's Wife,
but existed solely in the artist's imagination. Was it
possible for members of the audience to recognise
them? In my part in The O'Flynn I impressed on
myself that I had a great feeling of loyalty for my
master, but took care neither to say it nor to show it

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

in any specific way, and in Punch the critic stressed just
this quality as part of tny impersonation. Since then
I have tried the same trick many times and always
found that what the actor visualises as the character
he is playing in his own mind is what the audience
accepts as the original conception of the part. The
stronger his mental image the more detail his audience
will perceive in the representation, as Miss Ruth
Draper can people her stage with characters that are
only in her mind's eye so effectively that one can
hardly believe they are not in reality there.

The Coronation of King George was celebrated in
the world of the theatre by a Grand Command Gala
Performance held at His Majesty's Theatre on Tuesday,
June zyth, 1911. The programme was a varied one,
opening with a special Prologue written for the
occasion by Owen Seaman and spoken by Johnston
Forbes-Robertson, followed by the Letter Scene from
The Merry Wives, with Mrs. Kendal and Ellen Terry
as the Wives ; David Garrick, with Mary Moore and
Charles Wyndham; and, as \ht piece de resistance., the
Forum Scene from Julius Casar, with Tree as Antony,
E. S. Willard, A. E. George and Basil Gill in other
parts, and two hundred well-known actors to make
up the crowd. There was also The Critic, with
Gerald Du Maurier, Charles Hawtrey and Arthur
Bourchier ; and Ben Jonson's Vision of Delight, pre-
ceded by a special prologue written by Herbert Trench
and spoken by Mrs. Pat Campbell, completed the bill.
I think every available actor and actress in London
was in that show in some capacity, however humble.

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AFTER

All those who had nothing better to do crowded on
to swell the mob of Roman citizens. That was a
mob, and a good mob too, and Tree was in his
element playing with it. How Cecil King, the stage
director, managed to find dressing accommodation
for everybody he alone knows. I know that, when
it came to housing these Roman citizens there was no
room from the grid to the cellars, so that we were
put to it to dress in the long Arcade behind the theatre
which the shopkeepers loyally lent for the occasion.
Down the centre from one end to the other was a
row of wooden washstands, each with a basin and
jug of water, and beside each washstand a wooden
dressing-table at which to make up. At the far end of
the Arcade an enterprising hotel opened one of its
windows so that thirsty actors and who was not ?
could get the wherewithal to quench their thirst
during the long evening. And there was no ten-
o'clock closing in those days.

Granville Barker produced the Crowd Scene. We
were provided with a printed slip giving the various
cues and the numbers of the various actors that
responded to them. Such as 2-4-6-8-23-34 say
AH AH AH, or 12-14-29-38 say HAH HAH HAH.
And as each was given a number, with a "little practice
we got the trick of it. After a few days E. S, Willard
took us in hand. It was the first time that either he
or Granville Barker had had a stage crowd of two
hundred actors to shout for them, and when we all
gave tongue together the noise fairly shook the
scenery and brought clouds of dust out of the grid.

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

I was cast for an old Roman tramp, with long beard
and stick, a regular old Father Christmas. On the
evening of the performance when I arrived at the
Arcade most of my colleagues were already busy
covering themselves with bole and formidable whis-
kers secured with plenty of spirit-gum. It suddenly
dawned on me that the removal of bole and spirit-
gum later in the evening with cold water, in order to
get into evening clothes to take part in singing " God
save the King " on the stage at the end of the per-
formance, was likely to cause me a lot of trouble,
not to mention the two hundred of us trying to dress
at the same time. Accordingly, I took off only my
coat, collar and tie and hid them in a safe place, and
then put on my gaberdine over the rest of my clothes
and didn't worry about bole or whiskers. For,
thought I, in that mob who was going to see enough
of a person of my size to determine what way I was
dressed or not dressed ? The result was gratifying in
the extreme. I was out of the Arcade fully dressed
before most of the others had finished transferring
the bole off their faces on to the fronts of their dress
shirts or making up their minds that they would need
a lot of hot water when they got home to deal effec-
tively with their whiskers. As the Irish proverb
goes, " There is nothing like an old dog for a hard
road."

It was a tremendous occasion. The whole of the
pit seating had been removed, and a huge Royal Box
erected instead, the which was filled by more Kings,
Queens, Princes and Princesses than ever before

258

AFTER

attended a theatrical performance in any theatre in
Europe. When, at the end of the evening, the stage
was crowded with all the performers, and the entke
audience stood while everybody sang " God save the
King," there was a thrill in that theatre that one can
experience only once in a lifetime. When I recall
those days I cannot help feeling like my famous fellow
countryman, Mr, Barney Maguire of the Ingoldsby
Legends, and murmuring

Och, the Coronation !
What celebration
For emulation
Could with it compare ?

For, mark you, the Gala Performance at His Majesty's
was not the finish of it for the poor players. At
the end of the week I had to appear at number 10
Downing Street. The Prime Minister (Mr. Asquith)
had had the happy idea of inviting the King and Queen
and the Lords and the Commons to a theatrical
evening in the ball-room of his official residence,
when Granville Barker's company did The Twelve
Pound Look and Act III of John Bull's Other Island,
in which I had the comfortable and congenial role
of old Haffigan. The latter item was a bit of
malicious humour on Mr. Asquith's part, seeing how
largely the possibility of a real Irish settlement was
being canvassed at the time. As all the world knows,
the Shavian lash is plied with its usual impartiality.
Nobody King, Lords, Commons, Liberal, Tory,
Irish as well as English escapes whipping. But
it all went over grandly, for everybody gets something

259

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

to laugh at when somebody else gets a whack. My
part involved sitting on an upturned clothes basket
for about twenty-five minutes, so I had plenty of
time to see what effect the performance was having.
I hope I am not guilty of fise majeste in saying that
none laughed more heartily at the rating they got
than the King and Queen. Afterwards Mr. Asquith
sent every member of both casts a set of fine photo-
graphs of the plays together with an invitation to a
Foreign Office levee. I still have the blue card'
containing direction for the disposal of my carriage
when it should reach Charles Street on the eventful
night. I regret to say that it never did. When the
beautiful gilt-edged card arrived I was in a dirty
old shirt washing the floors of our flat, " herself "
being away on tour.

When an old actor sits down to write his life, as,
in a manner of speaking, I am doing now, he must
pull himself up at times to marvel, perhaps with a
certain resentment, over the all-absorbing power of
the theatre* Surely, too, his readers, as they turn
over page after page relating to this production,
that engagement, and this other impersonation,
reception, criticism, analysis of play or of performance,
must sigh and ask, " Is this indeed a man's life we are
reading or is it the account of some puppet which,
when not displaying itself in ' the show/ is stowed
away out of existence in its box ? " I think there is
something here that has to be faced. Of all human
callings that of the actor is the one that makes most
demands upon a man's essential vitality; of all

260

AFTER

human-built temples the theatre makes the completest
claim on his body, soul and spirit. His vows are
none the less binding for having never been uttered,
his habit none the less impossible to discard for being
a fool's cap and bells, his dedication none the less
complete for being involuntary. And upon the top
of all this he has to face the continual exigencies of
his profession, which keep him superficially in a state
of worry. If one could imagine a religious order
in which the rules would be as arbitrary as the regimen
was non-existent, one might get something near to
the imposition of the theatre upon those who have
fallen beneath its spelL " All other Life abandon,
ye who enter here," might well be written in neon
signs above every stage door. Incidentally, I think
this is one of the reasons why most actors who have
any religion at all find their needs best satisfied by
the Roman Catholic Church. But that by the way.
The inescapable -truth about theatre people is that
for them nothing outside the theatre has more than
a secondary, even a shadowy existence. This is
not less the case when, as it has been with me, and, I
believe, with far more theatre folk than the outside
world imagines an actor is happily married to an
actress and has a satisfying family life. Then, while
there is work going, his energy and imagination are
centred in that work; and while he is "resting,"
he lives half in reminiscence of past engagements,
half in anticipation of engagements to come. It is as
different from the other arts as from a business life.
For his very body is an instrument of the theatre,

261

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

and his mind, trained as it is to direct that instrument
strictly in concert with others, can do so in full power
and effectiveness in the theatre alone. Sensitive
observers, who are used to meeting and conversing
only with " private " people, are sometimes taken
aback, upon talking with theatre folk, to find them
absent, even hollow, after a fashion that is as easy
to feel as it is hard to define. They belong, not to
the " real " world, but to another country, and their
own foreignness or " unreality " is proclaimed in their
voices, their movements, and often in their pathetic
ignorance or indifference to what may be happening
in the so-called " real " world. True, some of them
especially in England, where there is a curious habit
of expecting actors to mix and mingle on equal terms
with society and political people manage to dis-
guise it fairly well. Some, though by no means all,
actors are capable of doing a bit of play-acting off
the stage, and if Miss Henrietta Watson, as she once
confessed, never felt capable of entering or leaving a
real drawing-room at a real party with any credit to
herself or her hosts, I do not think that Miss Marie
Tempest or Miss Gladys Cooper would have any
insuperable difficulty on that score. But the surface
has only to be scratched for you to find that, for all
of us, the kind of " realities " presented by Mr.
Asquith or the Royal Family are the true wraiths,
and the questions as to how far up-stage we are to
stand or which word of a sentence we are most to
emphasise, are the hard, the exciting facts of existence.
And so long as we are in a position to deal with such

262

AFTER

facts in a word, so long as we are " working "we
are wonderfully philosophical about what happens
to us, or to the rest of the world. Of course, when
we are unable to get work on account of an unthriving
theatre, we feel that there must be something very
far wrong with the world.

This little divagation, you may guess, gentle lay
reader, is to excuse and explain what follows, more
or less, to the end of this book, and what will need
neither excuse nor explanation to the most ferocious
of theatrical readers namely, a succession of theatrical
activities in which I had an interest, with my comments
and recollections concerning plays and their people.
Fortunately, with all its drawbacks, the theatre is a
many-sided affair.

It is funny to remember, after all the grandeurs of
the Coronation, that my next job should be to form
part of a music-hall programme for Sir Alfred Butt
by producing and acting in a short Irish play by
John Redmond's daughter, called falsely True. I
had the help of Sara Allgood and Fred O'Donovan,
and we had a successful two weeks with it, though
a modern Irish play struck strangely upon an audience
who were then accustomed chiefly to red-nosed
comedians and mothers-in-law, and thought that all
the Irish lived in quaint thatched hovels with the
pig running in and out and the hens roosting over
the bed.

After that, as things were slack, I joined the
Play-actors Society and so got an opportunity to
produce the first two of Bjornson's plays to be done

263

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

in England The Gauntlet and The Newly Married
Couple. They are both feminist plays and far more
challenging than A Doll's House. When The Gauntlet
was first produced at Hamburg in 1883 it gave rise to
a bitter controversy on the ethics of sex. It was said
that hundreds of contemplated marriages were broken
off in Norway as the result of it. But somehow
it failed to appeal to the British public as A
Doll's House did. The Play-actors Society had been
formed to give provincial actors and actresses, or
those who spent most of the year in touring com-
panies, an opportunity of being seen in performances
in London West End theatres. It also tried to help
young dramatists by giving their plays a London
production. Two of the society's notable dis-
coveries were Elizabeth Baker, whose Chains became
one of the topics of the year, and Harold Chapin,
a born dramatist if there ever was one, whose death
on the field of battle was the cruellest of the many
blows that the War inflicted on the stage. It was
the Play-actors who gave Ibsen's great tragedy,
Brand y its first and only production in England. I
had the honour of being entrusted with it. We used
the excellent prose version by William Wilson.
When Brand is played in Norway, it is played in full,
which takes five hours. It was out of the question
for our society to try to present a play of that duration,
but we wrote to Mr. Wilson and, with his permission,
H. K. Ayliffe and I spent three months cutting it
down to two and a half hours' playing. It proved a
great success with H. A. Saintsbury as Brand and

264

AFTER

Phyllis Relph as Agnes. About the same time I
was also doing a good deal of work for the Stage
Society. I directed the production of Congreve's
The Way of the World, D'Annunsio's The Dead City,
and James Joyce's only dramatic essay, Exiles ; and
in May 1912 I played Crispin in a version of Jacinto
Benevente's famous comedy, Los Interests Creados.
This is commonly known in English as Invested
Interests, but Beryl De Zoete, whose version we played,
called it The Bias of the World, which is a much more
suitable title for the theme. Crispin was the best
and the longest part I have ever had in London.
The love scene between Columbine and the Poet,
played by Nell Carter and Mary Barton, I have never
seen equalled in any play for delicacy and charm.
I often wonder that Benevente's play is not used more
often in repertory theatres, as the cast is not large and
the scenery gives an opportunity for the designer to
express himself.

When Charles Hawtrey accepted "George
Birmingham's " General John Regan I was given a part
after my own heart Thaddeus Golligher, proprietor
of the famous journal The Connaught Eagle. (That
was in 1913, and after twenty years I have just finished
playing it again at Elstree for Henry Edwards.)

" George Birmingham's " Dr. O'Grady, as every-
body knows, is own brother to Ananias, and Charles
Hawtrey was the light comedian that could play
"liar parts" better than anyone in the English-
speaking theatre or any other. Dr. O'Grady fitted
him better than any glove. The moment he came

265

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

on the stage it didn't matter Haifa hoot to any member
of the audience whether he was from Galway or
Aberdeen. I always seem to be saying that I learned
a lot (learning is the actor 's business), but it's the truth
that I learned more from Hawtrey about acting and
production than from anyone else I ever worked with.
When he gave you an inflexion or a bit of business
to do, you recognised without fail that it was just
right and got precisely the effect he wanted. His
theatre sense was more subtle than that of any other
producer under whose direction I have played. I
remember rehearsing a scene with him, and when we
had finished he said, "I'm sorry, but we must do
that again." When we had completed it a second
time, he said, "I knew it was wrong, I felt it was
wrong/' He went down to the stage manager's
table, and taking the manuscript from him looked
at it for a moment and then tore out four pages and
threw them away, saying, " That's what it wanted.
Now let's stitch it together again." Without the
missing pages the scene was right.

One Monday night I failed to get the usual number
of laughs in a scene with Leonard Boyne, who played
Doyle, I altered my reading of it the next night
with no better result. I tried other changes on
Wednesday and on Thursday still no laughs. As I
came off the stage that night and was making my way
to my dressing-room the Chief called me into his, and
said, " For Heaven's sake, Golligher, leave that scene
of yours alone and don't be chopping and changing
it every night." I said, " I can't get the laughs there

266

MAIRE O'NEILL AS AUNT ELLEN IN "WHITE-
HEADED BOY "

AFTER

that I used to." " Well, you fool, it's not your fault
but the audience's/* said Hawtrey. " Put the scene
back where it was and next week a fresh audience
will give you the laughs again. It often happens
in a long run that for a week or so a joke won't go
each night, but the following week it gets over every
time. Whatever you- do don't pull a scene to pieces
that you have found to play successfully the first
four weeks of a run." I thanked him for his advice
and was startled to realise that, though he was not
on the stage during my scene, he heard me altering
it and went to the trouble of giving me the clue
to what was wrong. For he was right as usual.
I often went into the Prompt Corner to watch his
work, and one night, I remember, he seemed dead
tired, walking about the stage with his eyes half
closed, the audience laughing at everything he said.
When he came off he saw me sitting in the corner
and came to me and said, " Do you see that fat old
buffer sitting at the end of the third row in the stalls ?
It's taken me six minutes' hard work to make him
laugh."

When the London run had finished, my wife and I
were engaged by George Tyler to go to New York
to pky in the production of General John, which he
proposed doing in the autumn. It was to be directed
by Felix Edwards, and Make O'Neill took over Mary
Ellen, which Cathleen Nesbitt had played at the Apollo.
We tried it out at Atlantic City before bringing it to
the Hudson Theatre in New York, and it was pleasant
to step from a chilly English autumn into the radiance

267

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

of the' American " fall " with a temperature of over
70 degrees, so that I could sit outside without a coat
and do some of the pastel sketches which are my
hobby. When we opened on Broadway the play
had an excellent reception both from the public and
the Press. Indeed the same critic that on my previous
visit had been unable to decide if my acting was pure
genius or pure ignorance was so handsome as to
decide that anyway it wasn't the latter. In the spring
of 1914 we had- to vacate the Hudson Theatre and
go to the Liberty instead. This did not help us,
neither did the fact that our Dr. O'Grady was not a
light comedian like Hawtrey, but a " straight actor "
used to playing leading parts in Shaw's plays and to
heavy dramatic stuff. He had none of that inborn
faculty of Hawtrey's for telling lies with all the charm
of truth.

When General John finished I refused a part in a play
called Cheating Cheaters, as we wanted to get back home.
Soon after we arrived, Philip Carr engaged us to play
for him in Paris at the Vieux Colombier Theatre,
where he was running a series of English and Irish
plays. This was before the unique productions of
Jacques Coupeau had made the name of the Vieux
Colombier famous. Coupeau it was who first among
European producers invented a set of scenic units
with which, by various changes of position and
lighting, he could stage any play he wished. His, too,
was one of the first successful experiments in adapting
a tiny stage to give all the variety of scenes that are
required by a theatre playing repertory.

268

AFTER

Although we had only the week-end in Paris and
it was our first visit, we saw much of the city that
strangers never see at all, for Philip Carr took us
round, and what he doesn't know about Paris I
don't know about Dublin. We had intelligent
and interested audiences for our plays.

It was in the February of that winter, 1915,
that our only child, a son, was born in London.
Desmond William Fay has shown no particular
interest in the theatre or in other arts; his world's
work is that of a draughtsman in a firm of structural
engineers. But " his heart hangs all upon " a
cinder track. In his spare time he is a keen speedway
rider, a sport which is in its infancy in this country,
even as the sport of the Little Theatre was an unborn
child in my youth. Therefore he hopes, eventually,
to be, like myself, an entertainer of the public before
he is done. He has had one broken head already.

269

CHAPTER III

DURING the first few weeks of the Great War the
theatre was badly hit. The autumn productions
proceeded as usual, but the public were too bewildered
and busy to take much interest in them. As time
passed, however, and the early hopes that the magni-
tude of the conflict would quickly bring the nations
to their senses were shown to be delusive, the houses
began to fill up again. God knows that in those sad
times people needed all the diversion they could get,
and as part of the policy of keeping up the national
moral the Government gave encouragement to all
kinds of entertainment* More, indeed, was demanded
from the stage than it could conveniently give, for no
section of the community responded more promptly
and generously to the call to arms, and even before
the end of 1914 managers were finding difficulty in
filling their casts. In one respect the national emerg-
ency permanently benefited our profession. When the
problem of man power became so complicated that it
was hopeless to deal with it wholly by sifting individual
claims for exemption, the Government adopted the
expedient of dealing with the organised trades en bloc
through the unions. For this purpose the Actors'
Association ranked as a trade union, and thus gained
not only prestige for itself but the first recognition of
the stage as an essential part of the national life.

For a good many years I had been an active member
of the Actors* Association, and now, owing to the
depletion of our Council by the demands of the

270

AFTER

fighting services, was forced, much against my will,
to accept the chairmanship, and with the aid of Adam
Sprange, our secretary, and John Mortimer, I set about
the urgent task of freeing the Association from its
debt. Thanks to Sir Herbert Tree, Sir George
Alexander, H. B. Irving and many others who spoke
for us at the public meetings we organised for the
purpose, we not only got out of debt but, by 1916,
had a substantial credit balance at the bank. There
was one bit of business we had to do that involved
sending a deputation to Downing Street. When the
Entertainments Tax was first proposed, complimentary
tickets for theatrical performances were not exempted.
Now this was a serious matter for the profession, for
the actor's bread and butter depend largely on seeing
what is going on. That is why he can always get a
complimentary ticket for the asking. Hence a tax on
complimentary tickets was in effect a tax on seeking
employment. We sent Ellen Terry, Sidney Valentine
and H. B. Irving to interview Mr. Bonar Law. They
came back triumphant. They had wisely let Ellen
do all the talking, and what man could ever resist her ?
Mr. Bonar Law agreed to everything. Not that it
cost him much, to be sure !

When Mr. Boucicault revived Pinero's Trelamey of
the Wells with Miss Irene Vanbrugh as Rose Trelawney,
he engaged me to play the Stage Manager, O'Dwyer,
a nice little part in the last act. The revival was so
successful that they had to put on extra matinees until
the middle of October, during the time of the full
moon, when the Germans made an air attack every

271

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

night about 9 p.m., and the theattes were deserted. I
was living in Chelsea at the time, and as I had not
to be on the stage until after 10 p.m. I was usually
on my way to the theatre when the doings began ; and
what with the enemy's bombs and our own shrapnel
(which was worse) the journey along the King's Road
was not devoid of interest. At Sloane Square Station
it was often twenty minutes before the train ventured
to pass the open spaces between there and Charing
Cross. Finally, there was the sprint up Villiers Street
and St. Martin's Lane to reach the stage door of the
New Theatre and relieve the anxiety of Mr. Owen
about the last member of his cast being in the theatre.
I remember one night in the middle of a raid how,
just as I reached the Chelsea Palace, a bus drew in to
the pavement and I nipped into it. We reached
Piccadilly Circus in four minutes, which must be a
record for that distance for any motor-bus. The
Underground stations I avoided, for they were so
stuffy and crowded with refugees who had no further
bourne that it was difficult for travellers who had.
There they sat or lay, all along the platform, three or
four deep, with children, dogs, cats, parrots and
(highly necessary) chamber-pots, leaving only the
narrowest passage for the passengers. Hundreds,
especially ia the East End, lived there during these
nights and believed that they were safe, though in
point of fact they were, in the mass, in much greater
danger than if they had stayed at home. E, as might
easily have happened, a German bomb had landed on
an Underground lift-shaft, not a soul in the place

272

AFTER

would have survived. But fortunately it didn't
happen. One night when the Irish Players were at
the Chelsea Theatre there was a lot of movement and
whispering all over the house. Two actors were on
the stage and one said to the other, " What in the name
of goodness is the matter with them ? I'm thinkin*
they don't like us at all to-night." To which the other
replied, " Let you not be a fool. It's an air-raid, so
it is, that's goin' on," " Thank God for that," says
the other; " I thought they were givin' us the bird."
The better known story is how George Robey stopped
an incipient panic with his gag " Shurrup 1 " when a
bomb fell near the Alhambra during the great run of
The Bing Boys in 1917. But incidents like that were
typical of the London stage at that time.

In the late spring of 1917 I had an offer from Mr.
Piggott of the Liverpool Playhouse to take over the
productions for the autumn season. His policy was to
revive plays that were known to have been successful
wherever they had been played, and to run them for
as many weeks as the box-office returns were satis-
factory much the same kind of work as I had been
doing at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, for Mr.
Oswald, only at Liverpool there was to be a stock
company, while at Manchester a new company was
engaged for each play because we rehearsed them in
London and took them up there for two weeks.

I was to begin work in Liverpool early in August,
but by the end of July there was what Fleet Street (bad
cess to it !) had begun to call a " comb-out " of all
those in the last age category. My medical board

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

marked me a bad C 2, which exempted me from
military service, but obliged me to engage in " work
of national importance," the precise meaning of that
impressive phrase being left to me to interpret. The
best national service I could think of, if I wasn't
allowed to amuse people, was to go back to Dunmow
and help with the poultry farm. I knew a bit about hens
and their ways, if not enough to be really dangerous.
But while I was clearing up my work for the Actors'
Day Fund previous to departing to the country, I had
a visit from my friend Miss Friedman, the secretary
of the Stage Society. When I told her what I was after
doing, she said I was a fool. " You write to Captain
Basil Dean at the headquarters of the Navy and Army
Canteen Board at Knightsbridge," she said, " and he
will find you some better work of national importance
than chasing chickens/ 5 I took her advice, and Basil
Dean took me on at once. He and Carl Leyel were
controlling a large department that supplied plays and
cinematograph pictures to all the camps in the country.
If the camp was a large one, like Catterick or Bulford,
it got plays, but if it was too small to carry the expense
of a theatre it was provided with a small cinema.
The camp theatres were occupied each week with a
company doing two plays nightly and visiting each
camp in succession before returning to London to
rehearse two new ones and begin their itinerary again.
There were camp theatres at Oswestry, Kimmel Park,
Catterick, Ripon, Witley, Bramshot, Bulford, Tid-
worth, Larkhill, Blackdown and Bordon. The last
one the Board built was at Clipstone. Catterick was

AFTER

the show theatre of the circuit. George Harris, who
designed it, made it on the model of a London play-
house of Shakespeare's time. These camp theatres
were a great boon to the soldiers. The prices of
admission were low, and any profits made went to
swell the sports fund of the particular camp. The .
Board arranged for the transport of the actors from
camp to camp and for their board and lodging at the
hostels attached to the theatres. It was a highly com-
plicated business that was carried through without a
hitch, thanks to the initiation and energy of Basil
Dean and Carl Leyel's genius for organisation.

The first job they gave me was to produce and play
in The Butterfly on the Wheel and "Raffles > and to take the
company to Clipstone. I took the company down,
but I did not play. When JLaffles was ready to go on
I was recalled by wire to London to undertake another
production there, and in London I stayed producing
plays until I was demobilised.

We did what we could to please and .amuse our
audiences, but what is perhaps less obvious is the help
we got from them all unconsciously on their part.
You will hardly believe it, but many of those men had
never seen a play acted before they joined- up. Many
a letter we afterwards had from France saying what an
experience it had been and. how they had enjoyed it.
There never were such audiences. The boys came in
to see our plays after a stiff day, and their response to
the artist was entirely fresh and sincere. They were
impatient of any kind of high-falutin* or sloppy
sentiment, which they detected immediately. Hence

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

they were difficult to keep in hand with a play like
The Title, though they loved a good comedy drama
like Freedom of the Seas. Strong emotional scenes, if
not played swiftly and with perfect simplicity, were
sure to get the bird. Comedy of all kinds was safe,
especially musical comedy, which always packed the
theatre. Local references of any kind were sure to
bring the house down, so I learned a bit about gagging.
At Bulford, for example, where, unbeknownst to the
powers that be, they trained a racehorse, remarks
about training horses on the quiet were " safe/' and
jokes about " civvy boots " were good in those camps
where the CO. was notorious for giving large doses
of C.B. to any men caught wearing them.

" Effects " were a tough problem. Whenever we
played The Land of 'Promise^ as sure as Taylor said to
Nora, " Listen ! Listen to the silence of the prairie,"
somewhere in the camp a bugle would blow or an
aeroplane tune up for a night flight. Stage gunfire
was always a dead flop, for the boys knew the real
sounds only too well, so that our attempts to reproduce
them were always greeted with hilarity, not to say
ribaldry. The arrival of the sea-plane to bomb the
ship in The Freedom of the Seas was the occasion of
shrieks of mirth, but nobody took exception to the
noise of the steamers' engines, which we got by rolling
a heavy counter-weight back and forward. As we
had no naval men among us, there were no experts on
that kind of noise. Thanks be ! It was fascinating
to produce plays for an audience that was 90 per cent,
male and most of that under thirty years of age.

AFTER

When the Armistice was signed in November 1918,
the N.A.GB. expected to be demobilised at the end of
the year, but the War Office, knowing that the general
demobilisation was going to be a long job, asked the
Board to continue to supply plays to the camp theatres
until all the camps were evacuated. In the course of
time, however, we were all back in the comfortable
hugger-mugger of civil life, and the whilom Captain
Dean became Mr. Basil Dean of the Aldwych Theatre.
His first adventure there was Arnold Bennett's Sacred
and Profane Love with Iris Hoey, Franklyn Dyall and
Clive Brook in the leading parts, and me as stage
director. But he tried it out in Liverpool for a
fortnight before putting it on in London. During
the rehearsal Dean fell ill and I had to take charge.
Arnold Bennett, as you might expect, was on the spot,
and so I saw a good deal of him. He asked me to dine
with him one evening at the Adelphi, where he was
staying, and when we were seated in the dining-room,
instead of ordering dishes from the menu, he sent for
the head waiter and enjoyed himself giving directions
for all sorts of foods of alien denominations to be
brought us. The waiter departed equally pleased to
have a visitor that knew more about food than " a
cut from the joint and two veg, apple pie and
cheese, and I'll take my coffee in the lounge." As we
attacked these holy viands the chef having, I am
sure, left nothing undone to please a connoisseur
we talked " theatre." He told me that he seldom
went there because it bored him, which was doubtless
the reason why he was never a conspicuous success

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

as a dramatist. He had not the same interest in a play
that he had in a piece of music. About music he knew
a great deal. But to get his own plays technically
correct he felt he needed to collaborate with someone,
as he had done with Mr. Knoblock in Milestones. He
told me, too, that he would never have written a novel
if he had missed reading A Mummer's Wife by George
Moore, which has scenes laid in the Potteries. This
was a revelation to him of the material that was lying
to his hand in his own home country. He asked how
it was that I had never succeeded in making money, to
which I replied, with my customary .truthfulness, that
I expected it was because I didn't know how. When
the next complicated course was served and he found
it to his liking he said, " Well, maybe you have got
something out of life that I haven't/' My response to
this was, "One thing is certain. You have got
something out of life that I never thought of looking
for." How otherwise, thought I to myself, would he
be staying at the Adelphi Hotel ? There is a passage
in his story The Glimpse, describing the sensations
of a disembodied spirit, which had impressed me so
much that I was sure it must have been derived from
a personal experience. While we were having our
coffee I asked him about it. He looked at me for a
moment, and with that faint but unmistakable twinkle
he could give his eyes he said, stuttering, "I . . .
pinched ... it ... out of ... one ... of Annie
Besant's books."

By 1920 there were only six camps still occupied.
The N.A.C.B. had disbanded the staff of the amuse-

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AFTER

ment department, but kept the theatres open by
engaging various theatrical managers to bring com-
panies to visit their theatres. I suppose A. K. Phillips
and myself were the last to supply these with plays
before the closing down of all camp theatres. I ran a
stock company, including Hilda Plowright and Edward
Petley, round the circuit for a year, and we did good
business.

When Mrs. Edward Compton changed the old
Grand Theatre at Nottingham into the Nottingham
Repertory Theatre, she asked me to come down and
produce a new play by Henry Walls called Renovating
Eve. It was an entertaining comedy, though not so
good as his later play, Havoc, which was produced at
the London Haymarket. I had expected to stay in
Nottingham about four weeks. Actually it was three
years before I got back to London, for after Renovating
Eve Mrs. Compton offered me the production of a
Shakespeare season, and I was pleased with this chance
to extend my experience in staging Shakespeare. As
we had not a great deal of money to spend, costumes
and scenery were made in the theatre. After thinking
hard I decided to make a permanent setting for all the
plays and add to it what extra scenery was unavoidable.
We made the first six feet from the curtain line our
main " acting area," and at each side placed two built
arches with four-feet openings and depths. Across
the stage six feet back we placed four pillars, eighteen
feet high and two in diameter, standing on equidistant
square bases. In front of those we hung three sets
of curtains and whatever painted scenes were abso-

279

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

lately necessary; behind them all scenes 'that required
a full depth of stage* As these last would be seen only
between the pillars it did not need many pieces to make
a scene. The beauty of all such procedure, which the
stage owes largely to Ellen Terry's son, Mr. Gordon
Craig, is that it can combine the best art with the
utmost economy. I tried to follow William Poel in
having as few waits as possible. He never had more
than one. I was obliged to divide my plays into three
acts with two waits, but the tableau curtains never
closed at the end of an act. At Christmas we produced
A Midsummer Night's Dream, with a cast of eighty
performers which included Miss Jean Anderton and
thirty of her pupils for the ballet. In the last act I
introduced a novelty by making Bottom and his
colleagues use a wheeled platform, which they trundled
in for their performance and then trundled out again,
leaving a clear stage for the fairies. But probably the
best of our shows was Quality Street, which we did in
the Spring with Viola and Ellen Compton as Susan
and Phoebe Throssel. It was the first and, I think,
the only time the parts have been played by sisters, and
the circumstance gave an atmosphere to the play that
I have never felt in any other production. I can still
hear Viola's triumphant voice as she writes the
invitations for her sister's wedding

Miss Susan Throssel presents her compliments to the
Misses Willoughby and Miss Henrietta Turnbull and
requests the honour of their presence at the nuptials of her
sister Phoebe and Captain Valentine Brown.

and Ellen Compton's Phoebe will never be excelled.

280

AFTER

During my second year at Nottingham we had a run
of bad luck. First there was an outbreak of smallpox,
which made timid people stay at home as much as
possible. No sooner had we got over that than the
miners went on strike. The shortage of coal was such
that the Municipal Electricity Department could not
supply the theatres with light, so we had to search for
a temporary plant to give us what we needed.

We managed to buy a second-hand engine and
dynamo from a neighbouring town. It arrived at
the theatre on a Saturday morning, and that night we
were opening our Shakespearean season with Othello.
We bore it into the carpenter's shop beside the stage
and bolted it down to thick baulks of timber. When
we thought it secure we made a temporary connexion
with the mains of the theatre and started up the engine.
As soon as it gathered speed water began to pour out
of the jacketing and make a small lake on the floor
which was soon ankle-deep. We splashed round in
it trying vainly to stop the leaks with red lead. To
add to our troubles the engine presently began to
wobble about on the timber bed, for the bolts were not
strong enough to hold it down and at any moment it
might take the dynamo with it and walk out into the
yard. We kept experimenting until it was time to open
the doors for the performance, but by that time it
was obvious that nothing could be done with our
plant that night. Fortunately our theatre was one of
the few where the architect had remembered that it is
useful to have windows in a playhouse, which save
the expense of artificial light in the daytime and can be

281

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

darkened by shutters during a performance. Accord-
ingly, we threw back our shutters, and let the summer
evening light flood the auditorium and stage. Com-
ing, as it did, from behind the audience it gave a soft
illumination with enough visibility for the actors to
be well seen. Over the " grid " was a huge skylight
which threw a beam of light on the centre of the stage.
The effect was that of floodlighting and, as we never
used footlights for our Shakespearean productions,
the stage bore this novelty of daylight well We
managed to get as far as the third scene of Act I just
as the light began to fade, and we reached the end of it
in twilight. Meanwhile we had laid in a stock of
candles, and had turned into candlesticks all the empty
wine bottles from the cellars. Before we began Act II
the whole company paraded in front of the curtains
from one side, each actor carrying a candle stuck in
a bottle which was placed in front of the stage, the
bearer then making his bow to the audience before
going off at the other side. These gave a good light-
ing for the early part of the act, but as the brief candles
burnt down they fell into the bottles, which burst with
a bang. When we reached the death scene all the
bottles had perished and Desdemona had to die by
the light of three acetylene bicycle lamps held by the
electricians. Our audience were patient and sym-
pathetic. By working all Saturday night and Sunday
we got our plant ready to work for Monday night.

While I was at Nottingham we considered the possi-
bility of establishing a three-town circuit so that each of
them would have a change of play and players for three

282

AFTER

weeks at a time. This, of course, would have meant
having three companies, but it would have limited
production expenses to seventeen weeks a year instead
of at least twenty-six. Owing to lack of co-operation,
however, the idea had to be abandoned, which was
sad, for it is the only way I can conceive of making
repertory financially sound. As a second-best policy
we tried taking the company to other towns and book-
ing touring companies for the weeks we were away,
One of these touring plays was Tons oj Money > the week
after its production in the provinces and before it went
to London, Among our visitors were Miss Viola
Tree, in Zangwill's Too Much Money, and Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, in Hedda Gabkr. I remember one evening,
after the show, my wife and I went round to Mrs. Pat's
dressing-room to talk shop, and she said to me*;
" What have you got for all the years you have spent
in the theatre ? Obviously not money, you're too
happy-looking to have done that." I replied, "A
very amusing rich life, the pleasure of meeting and
knowing hundreds of people of all sorts for I like to
collect human beings as others do stamps and the
chance to teach some of the younger actors all that
older ones have taught me about acting since I began
nearly forty years ago. What have you got ? "
" The conviction," said she, " that I know my job
as an actress and I know that I know it."

Towards the end of 1922 the post-war slump was at
its worst. All the theatres suffered, but the repertory
theatres worst of all. Miss Compton made an appeal
to the big business men of Nottingham for help to

283

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

keep the theatre open until better times. It met with
a generous response from Sir Jesse Boot, Mr. Jardine,
Mr. John Player and others. I did what I could to
lighten the ship by resigning and thus terminating my
three happy years in the town.

In the spring of 1923 I was engaged by Sir Gerald
du Maurier for a play, written by Miss Viola Tree and
himself, called The Dancers. I had never worked under
him before. I found him amazingly skilful at getting
the utmost out of his company. Without ever seem-
ing to interfere with their work he was all the time
quietly moulding them into what he wanted. This
last he always knew, and if an artist could not get it,
du Maurier could do what many producers cannot,
that is, come up on the stage and act it himself. His
own part never varied a jot from one night to another,
and it was as perfect the night the play finished as it
was at the opening performance. He had an extra-
ordinarily equable temper too, a rare thing in the
profession. All the time I was in the theatre I never
heard him utter a cross word, no matter what went
wrong. I must add this about The Dancers. The first
act took place in the bar of a " saloon " in a shack town
in Canada during a cabaret entertainment of singing
and dancing. The star dancer, Maxine, was played by
a young American actress making her first appearance
in London. Since then she has become famous both
in the theatre and on the screen Miss Tallulah Bank-
head. Dancing was at the height of its popularity at
that time and the play ran for forty-two weeks.

When Jack de Leon opened his little theatre at

284

AFTER

Kew Bridge, he tried a new experiment, which was to
produce a new play one week and an old one the week
following, to give time to get another new one ready
for the next week. He had Milton Rosmer to produce
the new ones, while I did the others, such as The Barton
Mystery, The Land of Promise and EK%a Comes to Stay.
As the theatre was so near London there was no
difficulty in getting good casts, and the scenery was
made and painted in the theatre by Harry Crane.
The seating capacity was so small that it was only by
Jack de Leon's faculty for making a shilling go as far
as a pound that he was able to make a profitable
margin between his expenses and receipts. During
the first year a remarkable number of the new produc-
tions went to the West End, and the standard of the
performances made the " Q " theatre capable of drawing
its audiences not only from Hammersmith to Rich-
mond, but also from less accessible and more
fashionable parts of London,

285

CHAPTER IV

IT is bad enough, I suppose, to be an Irishman, but
to be an actor as well means a double allowance of the
agreeable vice of casualness unless, of course, as
some say, Irishman and actor are identical terms. I
have just told how in 1920 I went to Nottingham for
a few weeks and stayed for three years. I did much
the same at Birmingham, In March 1926, Sir Barry
Jackson needed his producer, H. K. Ayliffe, in London,
and invited me to fill the place at Birmingham for
sk months. Poor man, it was two and a half years
before he got quit of me.

The origins of the Bkmingham Repertory Theatre
were much like those of the Abbey, It had begun
with the " Pilgrim Players," a group of amateurs,
headed by Barry Jackson, that played for six years
with ever-increasing success. At the end of that time-
they were so well established that he built the
beautiful little theatre in Station Street as a permanent
home for their activities, and most of them became
professionals, including the manager, Bache Matthews.
The work was peculiarly congenial to me, for
the plays were chosen for production, not because
they were possible commercial successes, but of
dramatic importance in Europe or America. A new
play was produced each fortnight, so that each one
got twelve performances in the evenings and two
matin&s. While it was running the next play was
rehearsed. This gave ample time for any competent
repertory company to give a finished performance.

286

AFTER

There was not only time in which to get the pkys
ready, but no reasonable expense was spared. The
costumes and scenes were designed by Paul Shelving,
the most original artist in the country for colour and
form in stage decoration. When he had to leave
Birmingham for the Royalty Theatre, London, his
work was taken over by his able assistants, Hugh
Owen and Ben Healey, who undertook not only the
designing of the scenes but the painting of them as
well.

Most of the plays were modern Pirandello's Cost I
se m Pare and Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine were
among those of my time. But we did occasional
costume pieces like Dryden's Marriage a la Mode and
Garrick's The Country GirL We staged The Country
Girl precisely as it was done in Garrick's own time
changing the scenes in view of the audience, and having
the furniture moved by servants in livery. We even
had the stage lighted by candelabra of the period.
The copy of the play that I used contained a list of the
various scenes with the times they played at the first
performance at Drury Lane. When the company
knew their lines well enough for us to time the scenes
as we rehearsed them, I found that our pace was only
about half of what Garrick's had been, according to
the book. I kept speeding up until the company
complained that if they spoke any more rapidly they
could not manage their articulation, to which I replied
that if Garrick's actors could do it we ought to be able
to keep the same time and get the play " over." I
remembered William Poef's receipt for getting pace in

287

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

his productions by stressing the important words in a
sentence and leaving the rest to look after themselves.
After giving the company a little practice in this
method of speaking lines I timed the scenes again, and
found to my surprise that we had actually beaten
Garrick by six minutes, and yet every word was, as it
should be, audible in any part of the theatre. The
fast pace improved the play immensely, I am certain
that the old comedies need rapid playing if they are
to be as good " theatre " as they were when they were
originally produced.

But, as I have said, the majority of our productions
were modern plays of all sorts and from all countries.
This variety was of. the greatest value both to actors
and to audiences. To the former it gave range and
accomplishment and it educated the latter in critical
values. Just as the Abbey Theatre taught the public
and Press what an Irish play should be, so the Birming-
ham Repertory Theatre on a larger scale has given its
public a real knowledge and understanding of the
modern drama, both native and foreign. Except in
London at the Stage Society and at the Liverpool
Playhouse, where Mr. Armstrong has done such fine
work, there are no audiences in Great Britain to
compare with those of the Birmingham Repertory for
real critical intelligence. And it is a very sad thing
to have to say that, for instead of only three there
ought to be scores of such audiences all over the
country. Every considerable town should have its
repertory theatre. It could be done handsomely at
a cost equal to less than a farthing rate. A Playgoers'

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AFTER

Society in connexion with such a theatre would form
the nucleus of a permanent audience. The theatre
would be a meeting-place for all who were interested
in the aesthetic side of the people's education, recog-
nising that the arts are as necessary to a full life as our
sports and that " where no vision is the people perish."
This is the only kind of playhouse that can afford to
produce, experimentally, the work of young authors.
The ordinary theatre proprietor cannot, for the plays
he produces must be of the particular type that happens
to be popular at the time if he doesn't want to lose
money. Thus, while I was producing for Sir Barry
Jackson, we put on five plays that had never before been
seen on any stage Something to Talk About by Eden
Phillpotts, The Third Finger by R, R. Whittaker (pro-
duced afterwards at Hampstead), The Mannoch Family
by Murray McClymont, A Comedy of Good and Evil by
Richard Hughes, and Aren't Women Wonderful? by
Harris Deans (afterwards produced in London at the
Royal Court Theatre) . Some of the younger members
of our company have since become stars in London
Peggy Ashcroft, Jessica Tandy, Edward Chapman
(who came to the front as Ackroyd in The Good
Companions at His Majesty's), Ralph Richardson and
our youngest actor, Laurence Olivier, who, after
starring in London in Beau Geste and other plays, has
just gone to Hollywood to play opposite to Greta
Garbo.

During my last year in Birmingham, I was asked to
give a series of lectures to the Dramatic Club at
Bournville. This was my first experience in lecturing

289

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

on the drama. The class was enthusiastic, and I
began by getting them to read a play, then explaining
to them the acting technique required, which was
followed by a demonstration rehearsal. At the end
of the season I took an intensive school for amateur
producers at the Moseley Hall, where I had pupils from
nearly every dramatic society in Birmingham. I took
them through demonstration rehearsals of three plays
one Shakespeare, one old comedy and one modern.
I have used such demonstration rehearsals wherever
I have been director of studies at a drama school. I
believe it is the only way to give a large amount of
teaching of acting in a short time.

I got back to London just in time to produce at the
Arts Theatre Vera Beringer's translation and dramatisa-
tion of Feuchtwanger's novel The Ugly Duchess. To
many who saw it, as to myself, it is a far finer play
than its predecessor, ]w> Suss, and Esme Beringer gave
the performance of a lifetime as the Duchess. Her
make-up took three months to perfect and, when
finished, it was a facsimile of the only existing portrait
of that unfortunate lady.

In August 1928 the British Drama League opened
at St. Andrews the first Scottish Summer Drama
School, to which I went as lecturer and teacher of
acting, and, as the University was in vacation, we were
able to hold it in the Women Students' Hostel. It
was attended by pupils from all parts of Scotland and
of all ages, from sixteen to sixty. Our syllabus
included lectures every morning and evening, making
and designing model scenery, lessons in making

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AFTER

costumes and demonstration rehearsals. We wound
up with a " Mummers' Party " at which the pupils
had an opportunity of showing how much they had
learned during the session. I had gone to St. Andrews
thinking that three or four hours' work a day would
leave me plenty of time to get a sea breeze down by
the golf links. Actually we worked about nine hours
a day, but the enthusiasm was such that I only wished
we could have carried on all through the year. So
successful was the school with Miss MacNamara's
organisation that Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth, the secre-
tary of the Drama League, arranged a similar one for
the next year, since when it has become an annual
event conducted by the Scottish Community Drama
Society (the Scottish section of the British Drama
League) with an ever-increasing number of pupils.
It is possible that before long St. Andrews will have
a permanent drama school like those attached to the
universities of Harvard and Yale.

I had an invitation from the Drama League some
time afterwards to adjudicate in Glasgow at the
Festival and choose the team to represent Scotland at
the final Festival in London held for the Howard de
Walden Cup. This was the first opportunity I had
of seeing the actual results achieved by the Drama
League. The rapid growth of the movement is one
of the most striking social phenomena of recent years.
When I adjudicated in 1929 the eight finalists had been
selected from eighty-four competing teams. Now, I
believe, the competing teams of Scotland number
something in the neighbourhood of four hundred

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THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

an astonishing figure when one remembers that it
does not include numerous dramatic societies that
devote their energies to full-length plays and opera.
Community drama has added immensely to the ameni-
ties of life in villages and small towns, from which most
of these teams come, for rehearsals and the making
of scenery and costumes are a grand occupation.
Now the Women's Institutes are competing and are
sending more and more teams to the festivals each year.
In 1934 the total entries in Great Britain were over a
thousand. Another result of the movement has been
to create a flourishing market for one-act plays, which
could hardly be said to exist in the days when a " one-
acter" was only wanted as an occasional curtain-
raiser. The interest aroused by these new little plays
is helping to create an intelligent playgoing public all
over the country.

In the autumn of 1929 I went to Wolverhampton
to produce for Mr, Salberg in conditions that were new
to me, viz. for a "twice-nightly" house, which
involved ruthless cutting. However, in Ireland I had
had some experience of cutting long plays. Mr.
Salberg staged a new play each Monday night. So
we had to start our rehearsals of the next one on
Tuesday, when I roughed out the position and indi-
cated the business for each scene. On Wednesday
we went right through the play with all the cast
arranged. On Thursday the company had a day to
study their parts, while the stage manager and I went
round the town collecting furniture, carpets, pictures,
electric fittings, etc. to be delivered at the theatre

292

AFTER

first thing on Monday morning. If we were lucky
we got the stage on Friday to rehearse on, and on
Saturday maybe some of the scenes might be available,
but more often we had to make do with substitutes.
Sunday being a day of rest, the stage carpenter, scenic
artist, stage manager and I spent it getting the scenery
ready for the next day. One Sunday we wanted a
full-size Venetian scene for a backing, and as the time
was short the artist painted one side of it while I did
the other, making an invisible join in the middle. On
Monday morning the assistant stage manager heard the
company recite their lines in the rehearsal room, while
we got the scenes set, dressed, and lit ready for the
night. Even with our Sunday work, if the play had
many scenes, the artists and I were often putting the
finishing touches to the first scene when the orchestra
was playing the overture for the first house. Play-
ing twice nightly is hard labour for all engaged. The
actors and staff are in the theatre from 10 a.m. till
2 p.m. or later, then back again from 6 p.m. until 11.
The first house on Monday is really only a dress
rehearsal, but unfortunately it decides whether the
week's business is going to be good or bad. Twice-
nightly performances are not the highest art, but they
help the theatre by enabling the public to see plays of
acknowledged merit at prices that can compete success-
fully with the cinema. They give permanent employ-
ment to staff and actors, and there is no better training
ground in which performers can learn the rudiments
of their business.

My next move found me back in Glasgow again, this

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

time as producer to the Scottish National Players.
The company, which was an amateur one, had been
organised ten years before with the idea of doing for
Scotland what the Irish Players had done for Ireland.
We gave our performances at the Lyric Theatre
(formerly the Royalty), which had been the home of
the Glasgow Repertory Theatre under Alfred Ware-
ing's direction. The dramatists that supplied the
Players included " John Brandane " and Robins Millar,
both of whom have had plays done in London ; Donald
MacLaren, Joe Corrie, Hal Stewart, Murray McCly-
mont, Norman Macowan (whose Infinite Shoeblack had
a success at the Ambassadors' Theatre) and, most
important of all, ** James Bridie/' who needs no intro-
duction, especially since he has written mine for me.
The company had to rehearse in the evening after
their own day's work elsewhere. I thought them
every bit as good in their Scots plays as my Irish
Players had been in theirs, and it was a revelation to
me to see a play like What Every Woman Knows in the
hands of an all-Scottish cast.

Production was by no means the only activity of my
Glasgow days. Robins Millar let me do a weekly
article on acting for the Saturday edition of the Glasgow
Evening News, with " hints on production," covering
sixteen weeks, and Donald Sutherland, then editor of
Scottish Country Life, commissioned one a month for
six months, dealing with both acting and production.
When the first season finished I was engaged by the
Scottish Community Drama Society to undertake a
lecture tour for them. At first I found it difficult to

294

AFTER

speak from notes for eighty minutes, and afterwards
to reply to questions, keeping my audience entertained
all the time. But on reaching Fort William, the last
town of my itinerary, I had become expert enough to
give my lectures without using a note. Also it was
easier for me to speak extempore on a subject that was
so familiar to me than to piece a set lecture together
from guiding scraps provided beforehand. I always
felt myself losing touch with my audience when I had
to look at a bit of paper.

Before leaving London I had completed my Glossary
of Theatrical Terms which I had begun while in
Birmingham. I wanted to get into print a list of the
technical terms used in the theatre, for I had found
that often young actors did not know even the names
of many things used on the stage, or if they knew the
names, they did not know the definitions. It is a
modest work, but I hope it may some day, in the hands
of a more competent person, form the nucleus of what
is much needed, a proper theatrical dictionary.
Mr, Whitworth gave it space in Drama and afterwards
Messrs. French published it together with a later book,
A Simple Stage and the Scenery for it. This latter book
I wrote and illustrated to help amateurs who were
beginning to take an interest in the technique of stage
and scenery in the hope that it would teach them how
to do those simple things that most books on the
theatre take for granted. Amateurs away in villages
must find it difficult to get exact and detailed informa-
tion. I know I did, even living in so big a town as
Dublin. In yet another little book, Merely Players, I

295

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

have followed the same idea in regard to the rudiments
both of acting and producing plays.

In December 1932 Mr. Anmer Hall engaged me to
produce, at the Westminster Theatre, Alice > Thomas
and Jane, the first " thriller " ever written as a children's
play and the first children's play I have done in which
there are no fairies or Red Indians. It had been skil-
fully adapted by Vera Beringer, from Enid Bagnold's
book, and our audiences seemed to enjoy their
juvenile " Edgar Wallace " by way of a change.

Before I close, I may as well confess that I am always
glad to take a film part when I can get one. As
early as 1916 I played small parts, though what the
results were like I never knew, for I never saw them
on the screen. Not long ago I finished my first
" talkie " parts in The Blarney Stone with Tom Walls,
and my old part of Golligher in General John Regan
with Henry Edwards. Now I am faced with the
prospect not only of seeing myself as others see me
an unlooked-for experience for the old-fashioned
actor but, what is more trying and interesting, of
hearing myself as well. How eagerly an actor like
Charles Hawtrey or an actress like Ellen Terry would
have welcomed such an opportunity 1 In my case
I expect to feel like a brother actor who, as he came
away from the trade show of his first film, said, " I
don't think I want to act in films. They make one
look such a bounder, don't you know."

I like film work. It is a relief to be told what to do
and where to stand instead of having to tell others or
make up one's mind about one's own part. The

296

AFTER

technique is so different from that of the theatre that
it takes time to accommodate oneself to the change.
Instead of being a conscious pivot upon which the
whole play moves, the film actor is only a tiny part of
the machinery like the camera, the microphone, the
lights and a hundred other bolts and screws. You
have no idea what you look or sound like, for the
sound machine can do queer things with your voice
and you never speak more than a couple of speeches
at a time, with little knowledge of their relation to the
whole. It is a new method of acting and one that
holds enormous possibilities in the future for those that
can master it. But I do not at all agree with pessi-
mists who declare that the theatre cannot survive the
competition of the music-hall, the cinema and the
wireless. On the contrary, I hold that the great variety
of entertainment provided for the public will only
make them into more appreciative theatre audiences.
They will come to the play instead of to animated
photographs when they want the vicarious experience
of the subtler, more intimate phases of human life as
created by the dramatist and portrayed by the actor.
So long as an individual artist like Ruth Draper can fill a
large theatre, and people a stage, empty save for herself,
with human beings, there will always be a demand
for pure acting. The theatre has been in existence as
part of the cultural life of civilised nations for over a
thousand years, and it will still be wanted another
millennium hence, when all mechanised imitations and
reproductions of the living being shall perhaps have
returned to the shadows whence they came.

297

LIST OF FIRST PRODUCTIONS, WITH CASTS

On 2nd, 3rd and 4th April, 1902.
" DEIRDRE," a Play in three acts, by "JR."

Produced by W. G. Fay's Irish National Dramatic Company
at the Hall of St. Theresa's, Clarendon St., Dublin.

DEIRDRE Majre T. Quinn.

LAVARCAM Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh.

FERGUS P. J. Kelly.

BUINNE P. Colum.

ILLAUN C. Caulfield.

ARDAN F. Ryan.

AINLE H. Sproule.

NAISI J. Dudley Digges.

MESSENGER ..... Brian Callender.

CONCOBAR F. J. Fay.

and

" KATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN," by W. B. Yeats, a Play in
one act.

KATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN
DELIA CAHEL
BRIDGET GILLAN
PATRICK GILLAN
MICHAEL GILLAN
PETER GILLAN

Maud Gonne.

Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh,

M. T. Quinn.

C. Caulfield.

J. Dudley Digges.

W. G. Fay.

December 4th, 5th and 6th, 1902, at 34 Lower Camden
Street, the Irish National Theatre Society produced

" THE LAYING OF THE FOUNDATIONS/* a Play in two acts
by Fred Ryan.

MR. O'LOSKIN, T.C

MICHAEL

ALDERMAN FARRELLY
MR. MACFADDEN, T.C.
MR. NOLAN, Editor
MRS. O'LOSKIN .
MRS. MACFADDEN
EILEEN

298

F. J. Fay.
P. J. Kelly.
J. Dudley Digges.
P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.
N. Butler.

Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh.
Honor Lavelle.
T. Quinn.

LIST OP FIRST PRODUCTIONS

" A POT OF BROTH," a Farce in one act by W. B. Yeats.
A BEGGARMAN . . . . W. G. Fay.

SIBBY Make T. Quinn.

JOHN P.J.Kelly.

" EILIS AGUS AN BEAN DEIRCE/' a Play in one act by

P. T. McGlNLEY.

EILIS Maire T. Quinn.

CONCUBAR P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.

MEADDA Maire ni Perols.

and

" THE RACING LUG/* a One-Act Play of Real Life in two
scenes by Seamus O. Cuisin.

JOHNNY F. J. Fay.

NANCY Maire T. Quinn.

BELL Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh.

ROB . . . . . . J. E. Sheridan.

REV. MR. MCMEEKIN . . . P. J. Kelly.

and his One-Act Play, " THE SLEEP OF THE KING/' was produced

later that year.

The Irish National Theatre Society produced on Saturday,
14th March, 1903, at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin,

" THE HOUR-GLASS/' a Morality Play in one act by

W. B. Yeats.
THE WISEMAN . . . . J. Dudley Digges.

BRIGIT Maire T. Quinn.

( Eithne and Padragan Nic

His CHILDREN . . . .1 Shiubhlaigh.

( P. J. Kelly.
( Seumas O' Sullivan.

His PUPILS IP. Colum.

V P. Mac Shiubhlaigh-

THE ANGEL .... Make Nic Shiubhlaigh.
THE FOOL ! F. J. Fay.

" TWENTY-FIVE," a Play in one act, by Lady Gregory.

MICHAEL FORD . . . . W. G. Fay. m

KATE FORD . . . ... Maire NIC Shiubhlaigh.

CHRISTIE HENDERSON . . . P. J. Kelly.

A NEIGHBOUR .... Dora Hackett. ^

ANOTHER NEIGHBOUR . . . P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.

299

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

The Irish National Theatre Society produced at the Moles-
worth Hall, Dublin, on October 8th, 9th and loth, 1903,

" THE KING'S THRESHOLD," a Play in one act and in verse by
W. B. Yeats.

KING GUAIRE . . . . P. J. Kelly.

THE CHAMBERLAIN . . . Seumas O'Sullivan.

A SOLDIER ..... W. Conroy.

A MONK ..... S. Sheridan-NeilL

THE MAYOR OF KINVARA . . W. G. Fay.

A CRIPPLE , . . . .P. Colum.

ANOTHER CRIPPLE . . . E. Davis.

AILEEN) ~ . 7 ,. f Honor Lavelle.

ESSA } Court ladies . . { Dora Melville.

PRINCESS BUAN .... Sara Allgood.

FEDELM (Seancbaifs sweetheart} . Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh.

PRINCESS FINNHUA . . . Doreen Gunning.

SENIAS \ 7 JG. Roberts.

ARIAS fP*P ffS ICaitiaNicChormac.

SEANCHAN ..... F. J. Fay.

" IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN," a Play in one act by
J. M. Synge.

DAN BURKE . . . . G. Roberts.

NORA BURKE . Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh.

MICHAEL DARA . . . . P. J. Kelly.

A TRAMP W. G. Fay.

The Irish National Theatre Society, at the Molesworth Hall,
Dublin, produced on December 3rd, 4th and jth, 1903,

" BROKEN SOIL," a Play in three acts by
Padraic MacCormac Colum

CON HOURICAN . . . . F. J. Fay.

BRIAN MACCONNELL . . . P. J. Kelly.

BRIGIT MACCONNELL . . . Sara Allgood.

ANNEKILBRIDE .... Honor Lavelle.

MARIE HOURICAN . . . Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh.

300

LIST OF FIRST PRODUCTIONS

The Irish National Theatre Society produced at the Moles-
worth Hall, Dublin, on I4th, ijth and i6th January, 1904,
" THE SHADOWY WATERS/' a Dramatic Poem by
W. B. Yeats.

FORGAEL F. J. Fay,

AIBRIC P. J.Kelly.

HELMSMAN Seumas O 9 Sullivan.

/ G. Roberts.
SAILORS \ P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.

( U. Wright.

DECTORA Make Nic Shiubhlaigh.

PROLOGUE Honor Lavelle.

" THE TOWNLAND OF TAMNEY," a Folk Play in one act by
Seumas MacManus.

THE WISE MAN . . . . W. G. Fay.

FEARGAL De Courcy Millar.

CONAL G. Roberts.

DONAL P- Mac Shiubhlaigh.

TEAGUE P. J. KeUy.

.At the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, on 25 th, 26th and zjth

February, 1904,

" RIDERS TO THE SEA," a Play in one act by J. M. Synge.
MAURYA Honor Lavelle.

BARTLEY W * G ; 1 F ay * J

CATHLEEN SaraAUgood.

NORA EmmaVernon,

/Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh.

I Maire Ni Gharbhaigh.

jDoreen Gunning.
MEN AND WOMEN . . ' ) P. J. Kelly.

Seumas O'Sullivan.

\G. Roberts.

On Tuesday, December 27^, 1904, first production by the
Irish National Theatre Society at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,
opening performance,

" ON BAILE'S STRAND," a Play in one act by W. B. Yeats.

CUCHULLAIN . . . - F- J- Fa 7;

CONCOBAR George Roberts.

DAIRE Arthur Sinclair.

301

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

YOUNG KINGS and OLD KINGS

FINTAIN Seumas O'Sullivan.

BARACH W. G. Fay.

A YOUNG MAN . . . .P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.

'Make Ni Gharbhaigh.

Emma Vernon.

Sara Allgood.

Doreen Gunning.

R. Nash.

N. Power.

U. Wright.

E. Keegan.

Costumes designed by Miss A. E. F. Horniman.

" SPREADING THE NEWS/' a Comedy in one act by
Lady Gregory.

BARTLEY FALLON

MRS. FALLON

MRS. TULLY

MRS. TARPEY

SHAWN EARLY

TIM CASEY .

JAMES RYAN

JACK SMITH

POLICEMAN .

A REMOVABLE MAGISTRATE

W. G. Fay.
Sara Allgood.
Emma Vernon.
Make Ni Gharbhaigh.
J. H. Dunne.
George Roberts.
Arthur Sinclak.
P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.
R. S. Nash.
F. J. Fay.

Also revivals of " KATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN " and
" IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN."

On Saturday, February 4th, 1905, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,

" THE WELL OF THE SAINTS," a Play in three acts by
J. M. Synge.

MARTIN DOUL W. G. Fay.

MARY DOUL

TlMMY

MOLLY BYRNE
BRIDE .

MAT SIMON ,

A WANDERING FRIAR

Emma Vernon.
George Roberts.
Sara Allgood.
Make Nic Shiubhlaigh.
P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.
F. J. Fay.

Scenery designed by Pamela Coleman Smith.
302

LIST OF FIRST PRODUCTIONS

On Saturday, 25th March, 1905, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,
the Irish National Theatre Society produced,

" KINCORA," a Play in three acts by Lady Gregory.

. F.J.Fay.

. George Roberts.

. A. Power.

. Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh.

. P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.

. Seumas O'Sullivan.

. Arthur Sinclair.

. W. G. Fay.

. J. Dunn.

. U. Wright.

. Make Ni Gharbhaigh.

Sara Allgood.

. R. Nash.

. U. Wright

BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTES
MURROUGH .
MALACHI .
GORMLEITH .

SlTRIC . .

MAELMORA .
BRENNAIN .
DERRICK
RURY .
PHELAN
MAIRE
AOIBHELL .
BRODAR
A DANE

Scenery and costumes designed by Robert Gregory.

On Tuesday, 25th April, 1905, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,

" THE BUILDING FUND," a Comedy in three acts by
William Boyle.

MRS. GROGAN .... Emma Vernon.

SHAN GROGAN . . . . W. G. Fay.

SHEILA O'DWYER . . . Sara Allgood.

MICHAEL O'CALLAGHAN . . F. J. Fay.

DAN MACS-WEENY . . . Arthur Sinclair.

On Friday, 9th June, 1905, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,

" THE LAND," a Play in three acts by Padraic Colum.
MURTAGH COSGAR . W. G. Fay.

MATT .
SALLY .

MARTIN DOURAS
CORNELIUS .
ELLEN

P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.
Sara Allgood.
F. J. Fay.
Arthur Sinclair.
Maire Ni Gharbhaigh.

This was the last play produced by the Irish National Theatre
Society at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin; the Society was dis-
banded and the work taken over by the National Theatre
Society, Ltd.

303

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

On Saturday, 9th December, 1905, the National Theatre
Society, Ltd., produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,

" THE WHITE COCKADE," a Comedy in three acts by
Lady Gregory.

PATRICK SARSFIELD

KING JAMES II

CARTER

A POOR LADY

MATT KELLEHER

MARY KELLEHER

OWEN KELLEHER

FRENCH SAILORS .

FIRST WILLIAMITE
SECOND WILLIAMITE
WILLIAMITE CAPTAIN

. F. J. Fay.

. Arthur Sinclair.

. J. H. Dunn.

. Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh,

. W. G. Fay.

. Sara Allgood.

. P. Mac Shiubhlaigh.

f Walter S. Magee.
" t Edward Keegan.
. A. Power.
. U. Wright.
. M. Butler.

On Saturday, 20th January, 1906, the National Theatre
Society, Ltd., produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,

" THE ELOQUENT DEMPSEY," a Comedy in three acts by
William Boyle.

JEREMIAH DEMPSEY
CATHERINE DEMPSEY
MARY KATE
DR. BUNBURY, J.P.
CAPTAIN MCNAMARA, J.P.
MIKE FLANAGAN .
BRIAN O'NEILL .

W. G. Fay.
Sara Allgood.
Brigit O'Dempsey.
F. J. Fay.
Arthur Sinclair.
J. H. Dunne.
U. Wright.

On Monday, i9th February, 1906, the National Theatre
Society, Ltd., produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin,

" HYACINTH HALVEY," a Comedy in one act by
Lady Gregory.

HYACINTH HALVEY F. J. Fay.

JAMES QUIRKE
FARDY FARRELL .
SERGEANT GARDEN
MRS. DELANE
Miss JOYCE .

304

W. G. Fay.
Arthur Sinclair.
Walter McGee.
Sara Allgood.
Brigit O'Dempsey.

LIST OF FIRST PRODUCTIONS

On Monday, i6th April, 1906, the National Theatre Society
produced at the Abbey Theatre,

" THE DOCTOR IN SPITE OF HIMSELF," a Farce in three acts
by Moliere, translated by Lady Gregory.

SGANARELLE . . . . W. G. Fay.

MARTHA SaraAllgood.

ROBERT Arthur Sinclair.

VALERE A. Power.

LUKE U.Wright.

GERONTE F;J' F ^ T -n

JACQUELINE Maire O'Neill.

LUCY Brigit O'Dempsey.

LEEANE Arthur Sinclair.

On Saturday, 20th October, 1906, at the Abbey Theatre,
Dublin, the National Theatre Society produced

" THE MINERAL WORKERS," a Play in three acts by William

Boyle.
SIR THOMAS MUSGROVE . . Arthur Sinclair.

MRS. WALTON Sara Allgood.

STEPHEN J. O'REILLY . . . F.J.Pay.
DANFOGARTY . . - W. G. Fay.

NED MULROY
MARY
PATRICK
KITTY.

UNCLE BARTLE
MR. CASEY, P.L.G
DICK .

A. Power.
Alice O'Sullivan.
U. Wright.
Maire O'Neill.
J. A. O'Rourke.
H. Young
Shaun Barlow.

and

" THE GAOL GATE," a Tragedy in one act by Lady

Gregory.

MARYCASHEL ....
MARYCUSHIN .... Maire ONeill.
THE GATE-KEEPER . . F. J. Fay.

On November 24th, 1906, the National Theatre Society

produced at the Abbey Theatre,
" DEIRDRE," a Play in Verse by W. B. Yeats.

CONCOBAR I'

FERGUS ..... Arthur

305

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

NAISI

MESSENGER
EXECUTIONER
FIRST MUSICIAN .
SECOND MUSICIAN
THIRD MUSICIAN .
DEIRDRE

F. J. Fay.
U. Wright.
A. Power.
Sara Allgood.
Maire O'Neill.
Brigit O'Dempsey,
Miss Darragh.

Scenery by Robert Gregory; Music by Arthur Barley.

And

" THE CANAVANS," a Comedy in three acts by Lady Gregory.
PETER CANAVAN . . W. G. Fay.

ANTONY CANAVAN
CAPTAIN HEADLEY
WIDOW GREELY .
WIDOW DEENY

J. A. O'Rourke.
Arthur Sinclair.
Brigit O'Dempsey.
Maire O'Neill.

On Saturday, 8th December, 1906,
" THE SHADOWY WATERS/* a Play in Verse by W. B. Yeats.

DECTORA Miss Darragh.

FORGAEL F. J. Fay.

AIBRIC .Arthur Sinclair.

(U. Wright.
A. Power.
J. A. O'Rourke.
J. M. Kerrigan.

On Saturday, z6th January, 1907,

** THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD," a Comedy in

three acts by J. M. Synge.
CHRISTOPHER MAHON *

OLD MAHON
MICHAEL JAMES FLAHERTY
MARGARET FLAHERTY .
SHAWN KEOGH
PHILLY O'CULLEN
JIMMY FARRELL
WIDOW QUINN
SARA TANSEY
SUSAN BRADY
HONOR BLAKE

PEASANTS .

306

W. G. Fay.

A. Power.

Arthur Sinclair.

Maire O'Neill.

F. J. Fay.

J. A. O'Rourke.

J. M. Kerrigan.

Sara Allgood.

Brigit O'Dempsey.

Alice O'Sullivan.

Mary Craig,
f U. Wright,
t Harry Young.

LIST OF FIRST PRODUCTIONS

On Saturday, 2 3rd February, 1907,
" THE JACKDAW," a Comedy in one act by Lady Gregory,

JOSEPH NESTOR . . . . F. J. Fay.

MICHAEL COONEY - . . W. G. Fay.

MRS. BRODERICK . . . Sara Allgood.

TOMMY NALLY .... Arthur Sinclair.

SIBBY FAHY Brigit O'Dempsey.

TIMOTHY WARD . . . . J. M. Kerrigan.

On Saturday, March 9th, 1907,

" THE RISING OF THE MOON," a Play in one act by Lady
Gregory.

BALLAD SINGER . . . . W. G. Fay.

POLICEMAN X . . . . J. A. O'Rourke.

POLICEMAN B . . . . J. M. Kerrigan.

POLICEMAN Z Arthur Sinclair.

On March i6th, 1907,
: THE INTERIOR," a Play in one act by Maurice Maeterlinck.

THE OLD MAN
THE STRANGER
MARTHA
MARY .
PEASANT
THE FATHER
THE MOTHER

F. J. Fay.

J. M. Kerrigan.
Maire O'Neill.
Brigit O'Dempsey.
J. A. O'Rourke.
Arthur Sinclair.
Sara Allgood.

THE SISTERS i Annie M S od '

1HEMSTERS .... \ B . Warrington .

On April ist, 1907,

" THE EYES OF THE BLIND," a Play in one act by
Winifred M. Letts.

MRS. DOYNE .... Maire O'Neill.

THERESA DOYNE .... Brigit O'Dempsey.

LAWRENCE SHAUGHNESSY . . W. G. Fay.

BLIND PHELIM . . . . F. J. Fay.

507

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

On April 3rd, 1907,

" THE POORHOUSE," a Comedy in one act by Lady Gregory
and Dr. Douglas Hyde.

COLUM W. G. Fay.

PAUDEEN ..... Arthur Sinclair.

THE MATRON .... Maire O'Neill.

A COUNTRY WOMAN . . . Brigit O'Dempsey.

On April zoth, 1907,

" FAND," a Verse Play in two acts by Wilfrid Scawen
Blunt.

CUCHULAIN . . . . F. J. Fay.

CONCHUBAR .... Arthur Sinclair.

LAEG J. M. Kerrigan.

LAEGAIRE Ernest Vaughan.

LUGAID J. A. O'Rourke.

EMER . . ' . , , Sara Allgood.

FAND Maire O'Neill.

EITHNE Maire Ni Gharbhaigh.

ATTENDANTS . . . / Brigit O'Dempsey.

( Annie Allgood.

On Thursday, October 3rd, 1907,

" THE COUNTRY DRESSMAKER," a Comedy in three acts by
George Fitzmaurice.

JULIA SHEA Sara Allgood.

NORRYSHEA .... Brigit O'Dempsey.

MATT DILLANE . . . p. J. Fay.

MIN Make O'Neill.

PATS CONNOR .... J.M.Kerrigan.

EDMUND NORMYLE . . . J. A. O'Rourke.

MICHAEL CLOHESY . . . Arthur Sinclair.

MARYANNE Maire O'Neill.

BABE Eileen O'Doherty.

ELLIE Kathleen Mullamphy.

JACK T. J. Fox.

LUKE QUILTER . . . . W. G. Fay.

308

LIST OF FIRST PRODUCTIONS

On Thursday, October 3151, 1907,
" DEVORGILLA," a Tragedy in one act by Lady Gregory.

DEVORGILLA Sara Allgood.

F. J. Fay.

Maire O'Neill.

J. M, Kerrigan.

Brigit O'Dempsey.

W. G.Fay.
< Arthur Sinclair.
I J. A. O'Rourfce.

FLANN

MONA

OWEN

MAMIE
WANDERING JESTER

YOUNG MEN

GIRL

Kathleen Mullamphy.

On Thursday, November 2ist, 1907,

" THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS," a Play in three acts by
Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats.

FATHER JOHN
THOMAS HEARNE
ANDREW HEARNE
MARTIN HEARNE
JOHNNY BACACH
PAUDEEN
BIDDY LALLY
NANNY

Ernest Vaughan.
Arthur Sinclair.
J. A. O'Rourke.
R J. Fay.
W. G. Fay.
J. M. Kerrigan.
Make O'Neill.
Brigit O'Dempsey.

This was the last play I produced for the National Theatre
Society at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, being the twenty-third,
and there were thirteen before we had a theatre of our own.

309

INDEX

A Pot of Broth, 125, 128, 129, "Bridie, James/* Foreword

132, 156,243, 244 and 294

Abbey Theatre, 105-23 1 passim British Drama League, 290-292

Aberdeen, 202 Broken Soil, 145-147, 156

Actors' Association, The, 270, Bronson, 57-59

271

Adams, Maude, 243 Callender, Brian, 118, 120

"&" (G. W. Russell), 105, Cambridge, 181, 182

115-120, 123, 148, 149, Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 195,

158 n., 164 283

Allgood, Sara, 136, 146, 151, Campbell-Bannerman, the

178, 190, 191, 208, 263 Right Hon. Sir Henry, 155

An Enemy of the People, 108, 109 Carr, Philip, 268, 269

Annesley, Dora L., 158 n.
Antoine, Andre, 108
Aran Islands, 137
Archer, William, 107, 133
Armstrong, William, 210, 288

Carswell, Catherine, Foreword

and Postscript
Casad an Sugan, 114
Caulfield, G, n 8, 120, 121
Chicago, 245-247

Asquith, the Right Hon. H. H., Colum, Padraic, 118, 123, 130,

259, 260

Ayliffe, H. K., 264, 286

144-148, 156, 175
Compton, Mrs. Edward, 279,

283
Compton, Viola and Ellen,

280

Bailey, H. E., 81-85

Bankhead, Tallulah, 284

Barker, H. Granville, 206, 236, Coronation performances, 256,

257, 259 260

Barrie, Sir J. M., 155, 173, 237, Cost e se vi Pare, 287

238, 240, 243
Benevente, Jacinto, 265
Bennett, Arnold, 167, 173, 248, Cousins, James, 115, 118, 120,

277, 278

Benson, SirK R., 114, 115
Beringer, Esme, 290
Beringer, Vera, 290
Birmingham Repertory Thea- Dalton, Frank, 52

tre, 226, 286-290 Darley, Arthur, 188, 198, 201,

Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 225 203, 206, 208

Boyle, William, 173, 174, 188, Darragh, Miss, 207-210

189, 191, 205, 206, 216, 236, De Leon, Jack, 284, 285

245 Dean, Basil, 274, 275, 277

Brand, 264

311

Courtney of Penwith, Lord,

123, 125
Cumann na nGaedeal, no,
113,119

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

Deirdre (W. B. Yeats), 207-209
Devorglla, zzj

Diarmuid and Crania, 114, 115
Digges, Dudley, 67-70, 118,120,
121, 123, 130, i57>*44> 24< >
Dillon, John, 164
Du Maurier, Sir Gerald, 284
Dunne, J., 182

Edinburgh, 203
EHis and the Beggar Woman, 125
Ervine, St. John, 192
Esposito, Vera, 158 n., 178
'Exiles, 265

Fand, 225

Fay, Desmond William, 269
Fay, Frank, 5, 10 et seqq., 32,
35-38, 67, 69, 99, 118, 120,
123, 130, 146, 152, 158 n,,
165, 178, 182, 190, 191, 225,
231, 239, 248-250
Fay, W. G., passim
Fitzmaurice, George, 227
Frohman, Charles, 237-242,
244, 245

Gaelic League, The, 109
Garvey, Make, 158 n., 185
General John Regan, 186, 265-

268, 296
Girvan, 54, 55
Glasgow, 202, 210, 293-295
Gleeson, Miss, 135
Gogarty, Oliver St. John, 147,

121, 149
Gonne, Maud, 114, 118, 119,

121, 123
Gregory, Lady, 105, in, 118,

129, 158 and n., 164, 170-

172, 178, 185, 187, 193, 205,

206, 209, 210, 222, 227, 228,
230,231,235

Gregory, Robert, 170-172

Griffith, Arthur, 105, no, ii3 >

132, 141, I47> 2I 7
Gwynn, Stephen, 131, 158 n,>

164

Hackett, Dora, 130

Hall, Anmer, 296

Hawtrey, Sir Charles, 242, 265-

267

Holloway, Joseph, 155* T 94
Horniman, Miss, 105, 108, 136,

143, 144, 1 52-15 5, 157-160,

164, 166, 177, i79- l8 *> 194.

197, 198, 210, 217, 223, 224,

227

Hyacinth Halvej, 164, 190
Hyde, Dr. Douglas, 109, no,

114, 123, 158 n.

Ibsen, Henrik, 108, 109, 264
In the Shadow of the Glen, 136,

Inginide na hEireann, 1 14, 119,

120

Interior, 225
Irish Literary Theatre, 105,

in, 112, 114
Irish National Dramatic Com-

pany, 118
Irish National Theatre Society,

123 et seqq.

Jackson, Sir Barry, 226, 286
John Butt's Other Island, 206,

207, 250, 251, 259, 260
Joyce, James, 149, 265

Kathleen ni Houlihan, 118-121,

127, 132, 191
Keegan, E., 182
Kelly, P. J., 118, 120, 123, 128,

130, 146, 157
Keohler, T., 123, 158 n.
Kerrigan, J. M., 14, 207, 225

312

INDEX

Kettle, T. M., 152
Kinsella, Pat, 22, 53

Lacy, Mr. and Mrs. J. W.,

34-59

Laird, Helen, 119, 123, 158 n.
Lane, Hugh, 164
Lavelle, Honor, 146, 185
Law, the Right Hon. A. Bonar,

*74

Le Mede'tin malgre Lui, 193, 196
Leeds, 199

Lewis, R. B., 71 et seqq.
Level, Carl, 274, 275
Liverpool, 199, 210
Liverpool Playhouse, 273
Lloyd's Mexican Circus, 85-95
London Irish Literary Society,

London, Irish Players' visits to,
131-134, 155, 156, 182-184.

Lower Camden Street Hall,
123-127

Macbeth, 248, 249
Mackay, Chalmers, 39, 52
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 225
Manchester, 198
Martyn, Edward, in, 112
Masefield, John, 164
Maskelyne, 183, 184
Matthews, Bache, 286
"Mechanics'" Theatre, The,

*53> 155

Molesworth Hall, 127, 128
Montagu, C E., 153, 156, 199
Monteagle, Lord, 127-129
Moore, George, 108, in, 112,

114, 153, 183

National Theatre Co., Ltd.,

177-178, 229
Navy and Army Canteen

Board, 274-279

New York, 239, 241-245, 267,

268

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 202
Nic Shiubhlaigh, Make, 118,

120,. 121, 123, 129, 130, 146,

151, 152, 158 n., 185, 186
Norman, Henry F., 123, 1.58 n.
Nottingham Repertory Thea-

tre, 279-284

On Baile's Strand, 164, 165
Ormond Dramatic Company,

1 8, 25, 66-71, 102
Oxford, 179-181
O'Dempsey, Brigit (Mrs. W.G.

Fay), 186, 190, 191, 208, 210,

248, 250

O'Donovan, Father, 135
O'Dovovan, Fred, 156
O'Grady, Standish, no, 115
O'Neill, Make, 186, 208, 267
O'Sullivan, Seumas, 123, 130,

149, 185

Paris, 268, 269

Payne, Ben Iden, 223-225,

227

" Pepper's Ghost," 96, 97
Pigott forgeries, the, 161
Pirandello, 287
Pitt-Hardacre, J., 53
Play-actors, The, 263-265
Playfak, Sir Nigel, 250
Poel, William, 108, 248-251
Pollock, Sir Frederick, 155

"Q" Theatre, 285

Quality Street, 280

Quinn, Make T., 114, "9 I20

121, 128, 129, 144* *45> J 57

246

Randford, Maud. See Lacy.
Rice, Elmer, 286

313

THE FAYS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE

"Riders to the Sea, 153, 191
Roberts, George, 123, 142, 143,

158 n., 185

Russell, G. W. See"JE."
Ryan,F., 118, 120, 125

Scottish Community Drama
Society, 291, 294, 295

Scottish National Players, 294

Shadowy Waters, 151

Shaw, George Bernard, 108,
206, 251

Sinclair, Arthur, 165, 166, 170,
182, 185

Sinn Fein, 105, 113

Spreading the New, 164, 172

St. Andrews, 290, 291

St. Louis International Exposi-
tion, 156

Starkey, James G., 158 n.

Stone, , 86 et seqq., 98

Stopford Brooke, Dr., 1 5 5

Symons, Arthur, 134

Synge, J. M., 106, 136-141,
148, 153, 156, 158 n., 166-
169, 178, 183, 211-222

Terry, Ellen, 253, 254, 271

The Adding Machine, 287

The Bias of the World, z^

The Building Fund, 173, 174, 245

The Canavans, 210

The Countess Cathleen, in

The Country Dressmaker, 227

The Country Girl, 287, 288

The Dancers, 284

The Eloquent Dempsey, 188-190,

191

The Gaol Gate, 205, 206
The Hour-glass, 129, 130, 132
The King's Threshold, 136, 143,

156

The Land, 175

The Laying of the Foundations,

125, 132

The Mineral Workers, 206
TheO'FIynn, 252-255
The Playboy of the Western

World, 211-220
The facing Lug, 125
The Rising of the Moon, 222, 244
The Sleep of the King, 127
The Ugly Duchess, 290
The Unicorn from the Stars, 228
The Well of the Saints, 166-169,

181, 183, 211
The White Cockade, 185
Tree, Sir Herbert, 19, 251-255
Tree, Viola, 284
Twenty-five, 129, 130, 132

Ulster Literary Theatre, 192

Vaughan, Ernest, 227, 231
Vernon, Emma, 183, 185, 186

Walker, Frank, 123, 130,

158 n., 185
Walkley, A. B,, 133
Wareing, Alfred, 197, 198, 200,

203

Whitbread, J. W., 39, 47, 60
Wolverhampton, 292, 293
Wright, Udolphus, 158 n., 178,

182
Wyndham, the Right Hon.

George, 141, 142, 155

Yeats, J. B., 150, 160-162, 164
Yeats, W. B., 105, 108, no,
in, 118, 120, 123, 125,129,
130, 136, 143, 151, 157, 158
and n., 162, 164, 178, 207-
210,219,228,235