Читать книгу Lady Gregory's Journals 1916-1930 - Lady Augusta Gregory - Страница 5

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There are dominant things in everybody’s life. Lady Gregory’s life was full of varied interests, but I think her dominants were Coole, her writing, the Abbey Theatre and, for her last sixteen years, the fret about the Lane Pictures. Yeats has written about Coole in “Dramatis Personæ”, she has written about it herself in a little book called “Coole,” describing its library and woods. Abbey Theatre business or Hugh Lane business would call her often to Dublin or to London—even to America—but Coole was home and she would rather be there than anywhere. So it seems fitting to place Coole first in this book. There is not a very great deal about it in her Journals, it was so present in her mind that it was hardly necessary to mention it. Only when there was a danger of it slipping from the family does an expression of her love for it break out. It never did slip and she died there.

Coole always seems to have been a generous giver. Sir William Gregory’s father gave his life, in the terrible famine time, side by side with the parish priest. Sir William gave friendship. In all the bitter, Land-Leagueing days there never seems to have been any crossness at Coole.

Sir William writes to Augusta, just before their marriage:

“I am very glad indeed that the country people are pleased. Whatever naughty deeds I may have done I always felt the strongest sense of duty towards my tenants, and I have had a great affection for them. They have never in a single instance caused me displeasure, and I know you can and will do everything in your power to make them love and value us.”

Love and value us! Those words echo down through the many years. Sure enough, there wasn’t much money to be given, yet a little bit here and there, and there were always plums in the summer, apples in the autumn, and flowers in the spring. Flowers for the children, for Gort chapel, for the Civic Guards to deck all Gort for some special Sunday. The gardens were blooming until the end, full of perennials.

I picked from her broken-down greenhouse a leaf from the passion-flower that still grows there: the vines were perishing and the peaches. I suppose it was sentimental of me to take it but there it is in my diary, dried and undying, a symbol of Coole, the Coole she loved.

She was an Irish Protestant but impatient with Irish Protestantism because, before everything else, she was Irish. And so though she worshipped every Sunday in the Protestant church in Gort, staring across from the Gregory gallery to the Gough gallery, her heart was really on the other side of the street in the Catholic chapel, with the country people, her country’s people. I do not want to suggest that she ever wanted to become a Catholic; far from it, but she loved the people and the people were Catholic.

A spacious house, great gardens, and the “seven woods” immortalised by Yeats, as he immortalised its lake and its wild swans. I saw it all to-day—the day I write these words: bright April afternoon, the trees bursting into young green, carpets of bluebells, the pale anemones not yet withered, the biggest and bluest wild violets I have ever seen, and tufts and tufts of primroses. The dim orchis was starting into bloom. A flock of wild swans in the far distance startlingly appeared from behind an island and splashed into the lake.

I had been re-reading the day before Thomas Hardy’s lovely poem “Afterwards”:

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

“He was a man who used to notice such things”?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,

The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight,

Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,

“To him this must have been a familiar sight.”

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,

When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

One may say, “He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,

But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.”

.......

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,

And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,

Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,

“He hears it not now, but used to notice such things”?

Lady Gregory noticed such things and I am sure her spirit haunts, in a happy haunting, those grassy paths through her beloved woods. It cannot haunt the house for that was demolished a few years ago and the staircase—I have written elsewhere that Balzac would have spent fifty pages on that staircase—and the library, where The Rising of the Moon and all her other plays were written, are but stones lining the avenues or dust blown through the trees.

L.R.

Aug. 1, 1919. I took charge of the children at Burren for a week—Margaret going to London—and then I brought them back, July 29, to meet Richard and he arrived next day, well and bright and happy. It is just as Robert used to come. He was taken up for the first day or two with thought of cricket and talk of school. But yesterday he took his gun to scare the crows that are attacking the potatoes, and cut branches to make pen-holders and had a hunt after a trespassing rabbit in the garden. I read to him a cricket story after he was in bed last night. It was that day 18 months the news from Italy had come (Robert’s death). It is a great happiness seeing that room occupied, the little dark head lying where the little fair head used to lie in holiday-times long ago.

Aug. 18. To-day I have been as usual gathering fruit for the children and have arranged nets in the vinery for the ripening nectarines to fall into, and have covered plum jam, and written a scenario for my Aristotle play.

Jan. 22, 1920. An exodus from the County (Galway). The Goughs leave this week and Lough Cutra is to be shut up till they see how things are, and Hugh (Gough) is still in the Irish Guards. Lord Killanin has had trouble at Spiddal and has dismissed all his men and gone to London. The Lobdells, because of their motors having been searched or put out of action the night they were going to Roxboro’ dance, are going to live in England. Amy has let Castle Taylor and lives in England. I will stay here I hope till my life’s end, or rather I hope it will be kept open by Margaret for the children.

The Big Houses are falling. We shall read later of the destruction of Roxboro’, Lady Gregory’s birthplace; Lough Cutra, the home of the Goughs—Field-Marshal Gough’s statue stands in Phœnix Park—is being abandoned, and there is an auction in Castle Taylor, Shawe-Taylor’s old home. In the end only Edward Martyn’s Tulira remains, and Coole—for Lady Gregory’s lifetime.

April 20. Margaret told me of negotiations about the sale—the only offer under £7,000—Scott Kerr says “the value of an estate in Galway is what you can get for it,” and then began by asking our minimum price £12,600! He says he “has the grazing tenants well in hand,” and that they have now combined—but we know very little of what is happening. I said, “Would it be any use my going over to Coole?” and Margaret said, “Yes,” so I decided to go at once.

Margaret and I had a talk of plans. I would be quite satisfied to keep Richard’s home a resting place in this stormy and uncertain and broken-up world, and let him judge whether it is a burden or a boon. But it will be hard to keep up the house—I will do my best—I am happier for the talk.

No account from Scott Kerr of his meeting with the tenants on Saturday offering 20 years’ purchase. In the evening a telegram saying they have taken till next Saturday to consider the matter and he has written.

May 2. ... drowsing again, those I thought of as helping me in that Upper House were those who had but lately gone from my company, Robert and Hugh and John.... Perhaps it was this that made me, when Scott Kerr said the offer for the land was bad, and that he “relinquished the sale,” feel that rebuff was less a defeat than a victory. For if it is sold to the Congested Districts Board it is the poorer man who will profit and is I think the most worthy, and so may be laid the foundation of a lasting peace.

May 23. I think of all the arguments—through so many storms, through 150 years or more, Coole has been a place of peace. We came through the Land League days and through the sale of the outlying property without war, without police protection or any application to the country for compensation—for there were no outrages. Coole has been not only a place of peace during all that time, but a home of culture in more senses than one. Arthur Young found Mr. Gregory making a “noble nursery the plantations for which would change the face of the district,” and those woods still remain; my husband added rare trees to them and I have added acres and acres of young wood. Richard Gregory collected that fine library; William’s father died from famine-fever brought on through his ministrations to the poor. He himself had a highly honoured name in Parliament and in Ceylon, loving Coole all the time, all through his lifetime. Robert loved it and showed its wild stern beauty in his paintings; left it through high-mindedness and died fighting for a good cause. I have lived there and loved it these forty years and through the guests who have stayed there it counts for much in the awakening of the spiritual and intellectual side of our country. If there is trouble now, and it is dismantled and left to ruin, that will be the whole country’s loss.

I pray, pray, pray.

Jan. 1, 1921. I shall be glad if Margaret’s plan can be carried out to let Coole for seven or nine years, to Richard’s coming-of-age, and he can decide then about keeping it. Burren will be kept for the summer and River Court be the home for the rest of the year; there is a good day-school there for Anne and Catherine. It is quite different from an irrevocable selling of the place. And I am thankful that even Catherine is now seven years old and they know the happiness of the country life and could return to it, as I have done, with content. For myself I may buy a little home—Beach House, at Burren—that is to be with the children for the summer holidays. For my sunset it doesn’t much matter—I shall just work anywhere while mind and energy last—and after that—what does the last phase matter, except to be in no one’s way?

Jan. 4. On Monday I had a long talk with Margaret. She cannot keep the woods—she thought not the house—that all must go—land and rates so high. We went through and through. I talked again to her next day and we walked out to see how much we could cut off and what we could keep. We planned keeping out Nut Wood, Pond field, Shanwalla to the Lake farm gate—tillage fields—and the strip of trees beyond then, and plantations. This would make a little demesne, about 350 acres, wooded and romantic and beautiful, tho’ any who know the old woods would miss the extent. This she thinks—even this—would come to £300 a year in rates and taxes. Then what makes it more desirable, I thought that perhaps the 300 acres woodland we sell might be taken for forestry and so be kept as woods, a great advantage, instead of selling them to farmers or timber merchants who would cut them down and turn in cattle.

Jan. 16. Yesterday in the woods with the children, looking for primroses, we heard a dog hunting and the children said that down by the lake the day before they had seen men with dogs, and rabbits they had caught. I have told Mike and he says young ash have been cut in the more distant plantations. There have been no Petty Sessions for a long time and the Volunteers have been taken away or are “on the run,”—so that there is no law at present. It reconciles me to losing the woods, if we cannot mind them.

Aug. 1. Sometimes I have thought we need not try to keep Coole after all, with its anxieties and loneliness, with the burden of keeping it in order and paying its taxes and rates and labour. But this passed quickly and it seems more in harmony with my life than taking ease, to take this increased responsibility for Richard’s sake especially, that he may if he will, and chooses to work for it, inherit and keep the place, even though diminished, his father and those before him loved, and that once gone, sold, dismantled, could never be regained. The little ones love it too, and it would be a shock to them to know it is gone. Little Richard inherits a fine tradition. And who can say how much of it is bound up with the woods and solitudes that have been loved by all of these? For Ireland’s sake also I keep it, I think the country would be poorer without Coole. And I read the other day, but I forget where, “to care truly for a bit of land anywhere the world over is a liberal education.”

Aug. 11. Margaret wrote about my keeping up Coole, “Thank you so much for charming letter. I feel if we are each doing what we believe right about the children’s future such a happy time ought to be still there for both of us.”

Aug. 20. I, alone, can only go on living here if I have the goodwill of the people, and indeed I have done nothing to lose or lessen it.

Sept. 18. I told Yeats of the arguments for selling Coole and my trying to keep it on, and he thinks I am right, “there is no country house in Ireland with so fine a record,” but is afraid the want of enough money will be a burden on my mind.

Frank had come in the morning, I wanted to consult him about practical things, what bits of my little demesne I should let, and whether the proposal I had made to Margaret was a fair one. He says yes, but he thinks it will be impossible to carry on if I keep even the workman I propose, and then urged me to shut it up, dismiss all workmen, put a caretaker in the house and only open it in holiday time, and take a flat for myself in Dublin, “where you will be happy and have no weight on your mind.” But abandoning Coole is no part of happiness to me. I told him my object is to keep it for the children whenever they want to come home, and to give Richard the chance of keeping it on if he wishes to when he grows up.

Oct. 19. G.B.S. wrote to the children in return for the scarlet Croftons, some lines, and on such charming postcards. This is G.B.S.’s poem:

Two ladies of Galway named Catherine and Anna

Whom some called acushla and some alanna,

On finding the gate of the fruit garden undone

Stole Grandmama’s apples and sent them to London.

And Grandmama said that the poor village school children

Were better behaved than the well-brought-up Coole children

And threatened them with the most merciless whippings

If ever again they laid hands on her pippins.

In vain they explained that the man who was battening

On Grandmama’s apples would die without fattening,

She seized the piano, and threw it at Anna,

And shrieking at Catherine “Just let me catch you!”

She walloped her head with the drawing-room statue.

“God save us, Herself is gone crazy,” said Marian,

“Is this how a lady of title should carry on?”

“If you dare to address me like that,” shouted Granny,

“Good-bye to your wages, you shan’t have a penny!

Go back to your pots and your pans and your canisters!”

With that she threw Marian over the banisters.

“And now,” declared Granny, “I feel so much better

That I’ll write Mr. Shaw a most beautiful letter

And tell him how happy our lives are at Coole

Under Grandmama’s darlings’ beneficent rule!”

Nov. 27. The Gort avenue fields are being laid out for a coursing match, a cruel sport, I think, but old “Mary the Dance,” coming from Gort, says that it is not so, for that “God Almighty likes to see the hounds following the hares and routing the fox out of his burrows because that is according to their nature.” Father T., who is spending his time overseeing it, says “it is very hard to make them get up any sort of amusement.” He says he has hounds of his own and goes to all the coursing meetings in Clare. The “Coursing Committee” keep sending down for poles and for laurel branches and I am glad to give them and go out to show where they may be cut without injury, even with good result. Yesterday they sent me two hares. I sent one of these to Jack Yeats, and in thanking me he says:

“I wouldn’t care for the coursing. I agree all hunting and coursing is horrible, though what old Mary from Gort says is half true. But there was a time when nature did not require the aperitif of cruelty. You may have heard how in India in a long drought when the beasts were tamed by the agony of thirst a young subaltern was sitting by his tent door, having a cup with a little water in it hanging in his hand, and a hare came out of the edge of the jungle, staggered to him, buried its long bony face in the cup, and drank. There is not a living man who could look on such a sight without some wrinkling of the emotions.”

May 13, 1922. Yesterday a nice motor drive with Guy to Ballylee and to Burren, sea and mountains beautiful. I went to bed tired, and at 11 o’c. Mike’s son knocked at the door. “There’s men downstairs knocking at the hall door. I think they are raiders.” I told him I would follow him down, put on dressing-gown and a veil over my hair. He said they had called out to him to open the door. He said he had not the key.

“Where is it?”

“Upstairs in Lady Gregory’s room,” it being in the door all the time.

When I came to the door they were knocking again. I went to it and said, “Who is there?”

“Open or it will be the worse for you,” a rough, unpleasant, bullying voice.

I knew one would not gain anything by speaking to such men, so stood at the foot of the stairs. They kicked the door then and I expected every moment they would break in the unshuttered window and come in. I prayed for help though without much hope, and stood still. After a while the knocking ceased. I thought they had gone to look for another door and whispered to Mike’s son to come up to the playroom by the backstairs as we could see from there. But the door on the backstairs was locked and the moonlight was so bright on front staircase I didn’t like to show myself upon it. We could see nothing or hear nothing. Once I saw a red light as though they were coming back with helpers. But no one came and I could see no one from any window and at 1 o’c. went back to bed and Mike’s son to his.

It did shake the nerves. Yet at the worst moment I felt it was right, somehow, I should know what others had suffered in like cases, and that I might be glad later to have known it. (Feb. 1924: Yes, it has given me more sympathy and understanding, for now that I am alone again in the house, so long after, I constantly feel a slight nervousness when I have gone to bed, a feeling that there may again come a knock at the door.)

May 15. I was troubled last night, lay awake wondering what I ought to do, wishing for peace but doubtful if it would be right to show any weakness. And opening the prayer-book to read a Collect, the one I opened at was for St. John Baptist’s Day, asking that we may “after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake.” And knowing what the truth is, I suppose I must go on. On Friday night the Collect I had read was for the Ascension, “that we may in heart and mind thither ascend and with Him continually dwell.” And I tried to fix my mind on that high country while I stood expecting the raiders to break in.

“Mr. Quirke” came asking for a little help; says he had his stall in the Square at De Valera’s meeting and was skinning a couple of kids at the time, and the meeting was no great success, “the people not paying much attention to it, and he said there would be civil war all over Ireland, and that every man should carry a gun.” He thinks the Gort thieves who robbed the station are to be arrested—“Everyone down on the Free State Army for not doing it before; sure they had them chased into the churchyard and it’s well known who they were. Father M. gave a great sermon and he asked where was the use of an army in the town if it wouldn’t do that much. But they are well-to-do lads: if it was a poor man going to bed fasting they’d arrest him quick enough.” But he says also, “There are a good many with De Valera in Gort.”

May 18. Yeats had been to the Workhouse Barracks and appointed to meet Free-State officers here. Two came, W. rough, but seemed to have a good head; T. who didn’t say much. I told them of the night alarm and asked for either a patrol or a couple of men to sleep in the house, and they promised these, thought it would be best. But at night, having made a room ready with two beds, they didn’t come. I stayed up till after 11, Yeats till after 12, D.J. till after 1 o’clock. But this morning cigarette ends were found in laundry yard, as if they had been there. And J., going to Gort, found they had come, but seeing no light in front of the house had gone away after a while, but they are to come to-night.

May 28. I had a visit last evening about 10 o’c. from Captain Leonard, of the Irregular Force. I asked for news of Roxboro’ and he said it was he who had taken it over. He said Major Persse was a fine man, and had taken it very quietly, and Miss Persse was a splendid girl; it must have been a shock to her to leave her home so suddenly, but he was acting under orders.

I asked why Major Persse, such a fair man and large employer of labour, had been molested, and he said, “He was unlucky. The names were put in a bag, and his came out twice. Besides he is a Freemason and high in the Order. It is such men as he who can influence Craig and the English Government to stop the Belfast disorder. There are no Belfast refugees in the house, but it will be kept until Belfast is quiet. There are four men in it, they keep to the back rooms. I locked up all valuables in the drawing-room, I put padlocks on the door. The raids before that were not by us but by thieves. We have got back the arms that were taken then and the motor. We are using it but will keep it safe and give it back. The stock is all right. The place was being eaten up by rabbits, there were three trappers being paid 20/- a week.”

June 2. All here so radiant, so decorated, the great white horse-chestnuts in bloom, the smaller red ones, the crimson and the white hawthorn, lilac and laburnum, the leaves so fresh, the paths carpeted with the brown blossoms of the beech. It would have been a pity to forsake this home and leave it to desolation.

June 3. I have been out till after 9 o’c. Everything is beautiful, one must stand to look at blossoming tree after tree; the thorns in the Park that William used to come over from London to see at this time of year best of all. I feel certain I am doing the best thing in giving Richard the chance of keeping this place and in keeping it as a home for the others’ childhood at least.

July 30. Sunday. No bad news even after church, but I must be a little downhearted, the gathering of my darlings for the holidays so far away. I sent for the Hehir children to take some of the gooseberries I had netted, and was glad to give that pleasure, though tears very nearly came when I saw some of the little red and yellow pears Anne and Catherine liked, fallen in a heap. I could but gather them up for little Anne Yeats.

Aug. 6. This has been a better day. I picked fruit for little Joseph at the gate, and meditated that we are at the seamy side of the carpet: these burnings and breakings of bridges, and perhaps the pattern on the other side is growing to a harmony. And then reading Hodgson’s poem, a Song of Honour, somehow I thought of those climbers of Mount Everest going through so much hardship and peril for the sake as it were of difficulties and dangers, and that we without any effort of our own are confronted with, surrounded by both, and my courage rose.

There is serious danger of the Ballylee bridge being blown up. I said I would go over and tell Yeats. I found him and told him of the rumoured danger to the bridge and he was disturbed, but decided to go and see the C.O. at Gort when he has left this. Sept. 5. Packing and sending plate to the bank: Mr. Johnson advises it. I think it right but I am a little sad, having kept it through these troubled years, liking to act according to my faith.

Oct. 1. The summer over. The children have not seen the flowers or gathered the fruit. An anxious month, it may bring peace, or, failing that, a more bitter war. I think if the idealists among the Republicans could realise that against the high light of the desire for freedom are to be measured these dark shadows of covetousness and crime they would themselves call for peace.

This has been a good Sunday, the sun came out after church, the people looked in good humour. I felt so much at peace that it seems as if peace must be in the air! Two Killeen children came for apples, I gave them damsons as well. And a rather deaf young Hayes, son of the harness-maker in Gort, passed, having been in the woods picking nuts, and I took him to the garden for apples, and I liked his brightening and excitement when I said he might have damsons—his sister is an invalid—“and will be so glad of them.”

Oct. 8. Thieves were in both gardens, took all apples from apple house, a good many, but not good ones, windfalls, we had stored the rest. They broke a pane of glass and strained lock in vinery, but didn’t care for the grapes, not yet ripe. I don’t mind as the children are not at home to know of it.

I was sitting alone outside, at the steps, when a man appeared, D.S. I hadn’t seen him before. He produced my letter:

“Dear Sir, I am sorry you did not act as those nice young boys did yesterday, when wishing for some apples, they asked me for them; while you, wishing for some of my young trees, cut them without asking. I did not tell the little fellows of this, although I was aware of it at the time, as I would not have them know that a man had set them a bad example. I should be glad if you would come and see me on this matter. I. have always wished to live in peace and friendship with my neighbours, but at the same time must protect the property in my charge.”

He said, or shouted, “In general when I get a letter from a lady I wish to treat it as a letter from a lady, but I’m afraid I can’t do that this time. It wants an explanation. What does it mean?”

I said, “Just what it says. Some trees were cut and I am told you cut them.”

“Who told you that? It is either a concoction or a misunderstanding.”

I said, “My keeper whose business it is to look after the woods told me.”

“Did he see me cutting the trees?”

“Either that or going away from them, getting over the wall. They were freshly cut.”

“I was never near the place, I haven’t a sheep-cock or anything that would require timber. It is a concoction.”

I said, “It is quite impossible it was a mistake. Mike Dooley could not have invented it, he is a quiet honest man.”

“I know he is that—and his son too.”

Then I told him of my hearing blows of a hatchet one day and finding it was old M.P. who had brought cart and hatchet, and when he did so, it showed how closely I must look after the woods I have in charge for my grandchildren.

We parted amicably; rather a verdict of “Not guilty, but don’t do it again.”

And now I am told that young B. had seen O’S. going into the plantation with a hatchet and he had come later and asked him for the loan of his jennet to carry away what he had cut. I think of Lord Morris’s definition of prima facie evidence, “If I saw a man coming out of a public-house wiping his mouth, I would say that was prima facie evidence he had been having a drink.”

Oct. 9. I sent Mike for a walk round and he found hidden by a wall some young trees cut from Raheen plantation. John sent a cart for them and they have come; six young oaks, two quite substantial oaks cut in lengths, and a sycamore. But I mustn’t grumble as we have had so little trouble so far.

Nov. 4. Last night, looking over old letters, I found that William writing from Ceylon agreed with his mother that “there is no getting over November, it is odious,” and encourages her to leave home. But this morning the garden is more lovely them in summer-time, such an Italian sun and sky, and the silver stem of the copper-beech shining through its gold.

St. Stephen’s Day. The darling children arrived this evening last week, well and bright, happy and simple as ever. Margaret came on Saturday, all very happy days, and yesterday we were all at church, and had the Christmas tree very pleasantly, though with only the Johnson children and their parents, and Rita and Georgie Daly, and all has gone well.

The only annoyance was yesterday afternoon; just as I was getting things ready for the tree, a deputation called: A., B., and a newcomer, C., lately come to D.’s old cottage. They, or rather A., the only speaker, asked if they might give a dance in our barn. (I had had a hint of this request coming.) I said I was very sorry they had not asked for something I could give; that this was impossible as our hay is in the barn. A. said that didn’t matter, “We took a look at it as we came and there is plenty of room for us!” I said there was the danger of burning and I couldn’t give leave. He said they would guarantee it to be kept safe, and went on to say they wanted to give the dance towards paying for a Gaelic teacher they have had, so that it is for the Gaelic League. I said I had brought the first Gaelic teachers here long ago and was in sympathy with the League, and that though giving the barn was impossible, if they could get another place for the dance I would give £2 towards the fund. They said they had no other place, that they were getting Kiltartan School for one dance, but Father Cassidy would not give it a second time, that they were so sure I would not refuse that they had put it on the posters that it would be here. I said it was impossible, that even if I had no other reason I had not power. He said they would ask the “young lady.” I said, “No, I would not have the unpleasantness of a refusal put on her; that she could but say as I did, that it was impossible.”

He went on for a long time, saying his committee would “think bad” of my having refused. I asked who the committee were. He would give no names, said they were “young lads.” I repeated my offer of £2, said that was all that could be done, and they went away, he muttering a sort of threat that another deputation would come.

Finnegan here to-day says he heard three weeks ago and believes that De Valera was taken, in a priest’s clothes, and is in the hands of the Govt., I think they are more likely to let him stay out. And I have never lost hope that he may come to a better mind—believing that, like Cromwell, he “was once in a state of grace.”

Dec. 30. In the evening, after tea, we were all in the breakfast-room. There was a sudden loud knock at the door and it startled us. Then Marian came to say she had asked who was there; and the answer was, “the same members of the committee who had come on Christmas Day.” I went out, rather shaking, fearing a fresh effort to get the barn or perhaps a seizure of it. A. began, “We are come again. We know that if you had power to do it you would have granted our request.”

I interrupted, “No. You must not think that. It is a mistake. I ought to have said it before. It is that I am a woman who has lost her husband and her son. It is not fitting that there should be merriment and dancing going on here, it would not be respectful to their memory, I could not have it.”

A. said at once, “Why didn’t you say that before? We would never have troubled you at all or said another word. We thought it was a made-up thing, we didn’t understand, we won’t trouble you any more.”

Then I asked what I could do for them, and they said, “Just what you offered, to write to Father Cassidy for leave to use the schoolhouse and to give us what you said.” I promised to do so. Then they said, “The Committee thought the young lady ought to give something,” but I said I didn’t know about that, but if she didn’t I would give something on her behalf. So they said Good-bye, promising they would do anything they ever can for me. I have sent £3 to-day and the letter to Father Cassidy, and hope all may go well.

Jan. 7, 1923. Evening. This afternoon, “A., a younger A., B. and M. want to see you.” I went down. “We want to ask the loan of the boat to go over and hunt rabbits on the island.”

“Our Island?”

“Well, doesn’t it belong to the Committee that bought the land?”

“No. We didn’t sell it, as far as I know, near Inchy.”

“Well, we only want a day’s sport, we brought the dogs, we’d do no harm.”

“I don’t mind lending you the boat, but that is not admitting any claim to the island.”

“Oh, no, all we want is the day’s sport.”

“I wish all sports were as harmless as this.”

“Ah, you heard something ...”

“Well, I think with all the trouble in Ireland we ought all to do our best to keep good conduct. I pray every day, ‘Thy will be done in Coole, in Kiltartan, in Ireland’.”

So they went off to get the boat. But rain came on and I have just been to the barn to look and it has not been moved; was probably too heavy, or the rain put them off.

Jan. 8. This afternoon towards 5 o’c. I went down to the lake and saw the boat drawn up, the island party having landed, two of them were there. They had got about 70 rabbits on the island, half starved, a mercy to kill them; and a badger. I was sorry it had been killed. They thanked me very much for their day’s sport, a lovely day, and they had, some of them, never been in a boat. I told them we had a difficulty about cartridges for Richard and they eagerly offered me some but had no 20’s. I asked if they could give powder and they said yes, “but it might not suit, we made it ourselves.”

I said, “You ought not to tell me that. I may give information of an ammunition dump,” but they laughed and said, “Oh, we know you of old.”

When I came back after a while they had gone, had left me a brace of rabbits, and John says are very grateful. They asked me to let them have the boat again to-morrow morning “for a couple of hours” and I gave leave.

Jan. 13. The week passed well, I think. The boat was put back after a second day’s use, the group calling one evening while we were at dinner and leaving me some gunpowder for Richard. And to-day I have a letter from Patrick A. thanking me for my subscription to the Gaelic League in the name of the Kiltartan Branch who “wish you happiness, prosperity and moreover a Peaceable New Year.” Richard has been happy and has shot a pheasant as well as pigeons, the three chicks very gay all together.

Jan. 23. I took the children to the Convent to learn step-dancing. Sister Enda and Sister Columba teach it, “they didn’t learn it here but before they came to us,” the Rev. Mother said. All the infant-school learn only in Irish, speak Irish; the elder ones all learn it. Such a difference from that old day when the Rev. Mother wrote to thank the Turkish Ambassador for a donation she thought came from the Sultan because the letter was written in such a strange-looking language she thought it must be Turkish (and they always remember the Sultan’s charity in famine time). But he denied it and she took the letter to Monsignor Fahey and he burst out laughing and said that strange language was Irish! One of the older nuns there to-day said, “It was you, Lady Gregory, were the first to bring Irish to this neighbourhood,” and spoke of Miss Borthwick, who had given classes at our gate-lodge.

March 12. I have been a good deal in the woods seeing the little trees in Pairc-na-tarav, and find my love for the wood-work has come back as strong as ever. I do hope to save all the woods for the children. I have sold the Cuala sets for £135, that will help pay rates and taxes.

Edward Martyn was a neighbour and an old friend of Lady Gregory. He, Yeats, Moore and herself founded the Irish Theatre. He was a good landlord, a lover of music and the arts, and the Gaelic Revival. He can be read about in Moore’s Hail and Farewell or, more accurately, in Denis Gwynn’s excellent book Edward Martyn and the Irish Revival.

Sept. 8. I wrote to Arabella: “On the way back from Galway we got to Tulira about 6.30. The chauffeur had never been there before and instead of stopping at the hall door drove a little past it, and there in the bow window of the Library I saw Edward sitting. I thought he would turn and look round at the noise, but he stayed quite immovable, like a stuffed figure, it was quite uncanny. I rang the bell and Dolan the butler appeared, said he was only ‘pretty well,’ but showed me into the drawing-room, and came back to say Edward would like to see me.

“I went in, but he did not turn his head, gazed before him. I touched his hands (one could not shake them—all crippled, Dolan says he has to be fed) and spoke to him. He slowly turned his eyes but apparently without recognition. I went on talking without response till I asked if he had any pain and he whispered, ‘No. Thank God.’ I didn’t know if he knew me, but presently he whispered, ‘How is Robert?’ I said, ‘He is well, as all are in God’s hands. He has gone before me and before you.’ Then I said, ‘My little grandson Richard is well,’ and he said with difficulty and in a whisper, ‘I am very glad of that.’

“Then I came away, there was no use staying. I had seen a man (his nurse) behind the screen when I came in, but he went away.... Dolan had tea ready but I could not have touched anything, it seems such a house of death. Poor Edward every moment was picking at the rug over his knees. I thought the best thing to do was to write to Lady Hemphill, as I had promised to write when I saw her in Dublin some time ago.”

It was a very sad visit.

Oct. 10. Amy Shawe-Taylor was here arranging for her auction. She was indignant on Sunday that the King was not prayed for, and wouldn’t listen to the explanation that the Archdeacon had industriously prayed for him and Royal Family every Sunday but this one, and let their names drop out because, for Amy’s benefit, he had read a Lesson as well as Epistle and Gospel, which he had not done for a long time. She says that she had succeeded in having “God Save the King” put on at Ardrahan in wartime, but on its first Sunday everyone sat through it, even the police, who when she remonstrated said they didn’t know they were to stand, they had never heard that tune before!

Dec. 7. Yesterday I took the children to a party at Ballyturin, very merry for them. But I heard of Edward Martyn’s death, it had taken place that morning. The doctor told Mr. Bagot a tumour had been taken from his head on Saturday: Dr. Magennis had come from Dublin for the operation and he lost a good deal of blood. Father O’Kelly said he had, after the operation, recognised Father Carr, which he had not done for some time. I asked about the funeral. He said Father Carr told him also he had bequeathed his body to Dublin doctors, in the “interests of science,” so it may probably be in Dublin.

Though he had been too ill to see of late and I had not been able to go and see him before because of the broken bridge and my difficulty about rough roads, I feel a loneliness now he is gone. He was from the beginning of my life here at Coole a good neighbour; he was always grateful for my husband’s interest in him. He had gone to see Edward at Oxford to advise him not to build that large addition to his old castle, until at least his own taste and opinion were formed; and though the forces were too strong, his mother and her surroundings, he often regretted that he had not the strength of mind to take that advice. He was very kind to Robert, giving him his first real gun and letting him and his friends shoot Tulira in the holidays. And then when Yeats’ summers, and the Theatre project began, he was constantly here, walking over and staying to dine. It was George Moore who brought that work, putting his own name to The Bending of the Bough, rewritten by him and Yeats, but on Edward’s foundation. And Edward had been weak about The Countess Cathleen and took a wrong turning, I think, in withdrawing his support from our Theatre.

Of late I was told he felt his support of Sinn Fein in the beginning had been wrong. It was on his conscience. And yet he hated, with a real hatred, England. I always felt there were two natures in him, the old blood of the Martyns and the blood of the Smiths. The country people believed him to be a descendant of Oliver Cromwell—perhaps that was why they never warmed to him (nor he to them). It was old Mrs. Quirk who told me Cromwell had “stopped at Tulira for a while when there was a Mrs. Martyn in the house, and the master of the house not in it. And ever since then there has been an Oliver in the family.” I don’t think Edward ever heard this, but he was proud of the deed giving permission from Cromwell to Tulira unmolested, that used to hang in his study.

Dec. 21. Yesterday’s paper told of Edward Martyn’s funeral; he had directed in his will that his body, like those of many of the friendless poor, should be placed at the service of the Cecilia Street School of Surgery, and when it had served its purpose then should be interred in the common grave which holds the unclaimed workhouse dead. The poor body was taken to Glasnevin in the workhouse van with six other bodies being buried by the Union. His coffin the same as theirs. A Mass celebrated in the Cemetery Chapel for him and the nameless six who were to share his grave; the “Benedictus” sung when they were lowered into the earth by the Choir he endowed; this was the only ceremonial.

Feb. 22, 1924. Last night in the Library the firelight, the lamplight, shining on the rich bindings of that wall of books, and this evening, by the lake, so silent and beautiful, Crannagh so peaceful—“the tilled, familiar land;” and later as I went upstairs and looked from my window at the sunset behind the blue range of hills I felt so grateful, as I have often done of late, to my husband who brought me to this house and home. May 20. Cheery letters from Anne and Catherine, but they want a squirrel caught and tamed for a school friend, and I can’t bear to disappoint them but it doesn’t seem very practicable. Mike climbing a tree to rob the nest to begin with. And there are enough prisoners in the country already.

May 21. I have asked Mike about squirrels. He says this is about the time the young are born. He was coming over from Inchy one time, “and Nolan’s dog began to bark at a tree, and we poked with sticks at a big ivy bush that was in it, and there was a squirrel’s nest and three or four of the young ones fell down.” But he doesn’t think one could be tamed because “they are very cross, and try to bite you if they are caught in a trap.”

A delightful young American, Harold Speakman, toured Ireland with a donkey, and wrote a charming book about the country. He endeared himself to everyone he met. He died, tragically, too young.

July 11. A letter from Mr. Harold Speakman. He called late a few evenings ago from Gort, is travelling through Ireland with a donkey and cart; has come from Cork and is going on to Galway, Connemara and the North. Is painting also to illustrate the book he is writing, and wants to get “at the heart of the people.” A nice young fellow. He asks me for a name for his donkey. “She is a friendly little creature, ears forward most of the time, is several years older than the tinker who sold her to me, he told me, and seems to know the rules of the road almost better than I, for in America we travel to the right instead of to the left. She has never laid down in harness, and would work, I am sure, to the last ounce of her strength.” I have suggested “Grania,” who “walked all Ireland,” and, so far as I know, only once lost her temper.

Aug. 9. The darling children have left to-day for Burren. I have felt the loneliness but am glad they are at the sea; the weather here has changed to summer, they are better there. But while the floods continued, this house with its contents made the best Noah’s Ark.

I go on typing my diaries without joy. To-day I think of a possible play, a short one, and have rummaged for old notes. Among them I find one, written in May 1918, not about plays but—

“What has been expelled from my life?

“Interest in politics except as they affect Ireland.

“I think any sort of personal ambition. I have done some good work that the children may be proud of—Robert was. I would be glad to do more, because it is rather sad giving up creating—but not, I think, for praise. I have had enough.

“Since Robert’s death I do not covet money. I wished to leave him better off. I think the children will have enough for freedom from anxiety. I should like a little more to spend on woods and keep garden better, but if the sale of books goes on, I shall have that. Desire for Society went with Hugh’s death, it could never be as pleasant as those Lindsay House visits.

“I passionately wish for the children’s love and their happiness. For the return of Hugh’s pictures. For the government of Ireland in the hands of Ireland; for the rebuilding to begin.

“For the increased worthiness of the Abbey until we hand it over.

“With all the anguish of Robert’s death I have lost my one great fear of losing his affection. Now there is nothing that could hurt me so much to dread.”

Now I am typing this, seven years all but ten days since his death, I have little to add. The children have just been clustering round me, making out a crossword puzzle from Punch. I have kept their home for them. But I want or need more money than I did, with all expense of rates, taxes, labour, house—but thank God with the help of my plays and books I have kept going so far. A little anxious about this year and wondering if I might lecture in England. (Jan. 21, 1930. Yes, I have kept the home all this time and without, thank God, doing less worthy work.) Oct. 8. Yesterday I drove with Kathie to Roxboro’, took a motor. We went the lower road by Ballinabucky, our old tenants’ houses there much improved, flowers in the windows, gates to yards. I was glad to see it. I don’t know if they are better off by purchase or by money made during the war. Roxboro’ land, outside the wall, is sold, but there is not much change yet, two or three staring houses, some hay but no tillage. The house—the ruin—is very sad, just the walls standing, blackened, and all the long yards silent, all the many buildings, dairy, laundry, cow-houses, coach-houses, stables, kennels, smithy, sawmill and carpenters’ workshops empty. Some of the roofs falling in. I am afraid the house will never be built up. Yet the road by the deer-park and the avenue most beautiful, river and hills, and the trees in their autumn foliage. All silent that had been so full of life and stir in my childhood, and never deserted until now. The garden is grass and weeds, but some phloxes that Kathie had planted not yet choked, and I am bringing them here, a great enrichment to my borders.

The first attack, she says, was at night, guns fired, windows broken, and a few men disguised came in and demanded guns and were given some. Then a little later a larger party, at night, this time, with a complete list of the guns in the house. These had been hidden under the floor but Arthur had to disclose their hiding-place as they knew of them. They said there was a revolver also, but he could not remember anything about it, and they went.

Kathie and Dudley had hidden it in a secret drawer of the study table, without Arthur’s knowledge. After this, they threw it and some hidden cartridges into a river. Then one morning she was called down and found the hall full of armed men. Arthur was in the dining-room, puzzled by a long typed paper saying he must give up his estate. He thought at first it was from the Free State Government but it was from the Irregulars.

She thinks the house was burned by one small gang, “a bad gang” that had been the first to come for the guns. The Steward’s wife said, what I had thought, that if Arthur had gone back when the Irregulars left, it would have been all right. She said “he might have asked a couple of them to stop and help him.” I wonder what their answer would have been. It would have been worth trying.

Nov. 26. To the woods then to see the men clearing sides of rides for the shooting. The love of the trees came back very strongly as I looked at some I had tended and cut ivy from—some ivy had rooted itself under the bark of a birch—I had not seen that before. But planting is over for me—money goes to house and rates and taxes and labour, and it may be the energy that went into these plantings has lessened, though I longed to begin again.

In 1926 Lady Gregory had to go to Dublin for an operation on a malignant growth in her breast. She always referred to the surgeon as “kind Dr. Slattery.” She dreamed as follows.

Sept. 2, 1926. I fixed my mind upon a river, the river at Roxboro’, imagined it as it flows from the mountains through the flat land from Kilchreest—then under the road bridge, then under the Volunteer Memorial bridge, through the deer-park, then deepens; salleys and bullrushes at one side, coots and wild fowl making their nests there—by the other the green lawns, past the house, past the long line of buildings, stables, kennels, dairy, the garden walls; then, narrow and deep here, it turned the old mill-wheel supplying water also for the steam-engine that helped the sawmills’ work. Then came the division, the parting of the waters, the otters’ cave, the bed of soft mud of which we children used to make the little vessels that never went through the baking without cracks; the dip of the stream underground rising later to join its sunlit branch; a rushing current again, passing by Ravahasey, Caherlinney, Poll na Sionnach, Isertkelly, Castleboy; bridges again and then through thickets of laurel, beside a forsaken garden—and then by a sloping field of daffodils—and so at last to the high road where it went out of our demesne. For a moment I think of the river that has bounded my second phase of life rising in the park at Coole, flowing under high poplars on its steep bank, vanishing under rocks that nature has made a bridge; then flowing on again till it widens into the lake. But before I had come to its disappearance under the rocks at Inchy only to appear again as it flows into Galway Bay, the Surgeon told me the knife had done its work.

Oct. 11. Yesterday was a very good Sunday. S. L. Brown came to church; it was Mr. Warren’s first service there—he reads very well, a good voice, wonderful to listen to after our former Incumbents. Then he played the organ himself for hymns and chants extremely well, that also a pleasure. His sermon was but a five minutes’ one, just a greeting to us—the text “One body in Christ.”

I was so glad Mr. Brown was here for that first service, though the congregation was about sixteen, (including Mr. Warren’s two daughters,) it looked rather a feeble one, and I said I felt as if I had landed a very fine salmon as I brought him in. After church we had taken half an hour in the garden where he was enthusiastic over the beauty of the trees, the ilex especially and the copper-beeches and the yews. After lunch we walked in the woods, and then when we came to the lake it was so sunny we walked along its edge for a while and sat on a rock and watched ten wild swans, in a group, dipping their heads under water for grass or weeds. We basked in the sun. When we came back we found Rafter and Tom and a friend, another boy, waiting for apples, they had had a long wait but were rewarded by the quantities of ripe Croftons and yellow apples that had fallen or we shook off the trees. S.L.B. who loves apples said he had not seen Irish Croftons since he was a boy, and ate and put some in his pocket, and had a long talk with Rafter who when I introduced “Senator Brown, the Chairman of the Food Commission,” had said, “Your Ladyship has often distinguished guests”—a ready compliment to both of us. Nov. 8. I went towards Pairc-na-Tarav to see what the storm had done, but in the three-cornered field I came on two lads, one very small, bending over a rabbit hole. On seeing me the elder took a ferret from the mouth of the hole and stuffed it in his pocket. They moved away but I called them to stop and they did so, reluctantly—said they “didn’t know it was any harm,” had got one rabbit, but said it was from Lisheen Crannagh, on Murphy’s land. However, as I couldn’t resist giving the little one some of the apples just brought in, I invited him, after reproofs, to come to the house, and both came, and agreed it was better to get apples for nothing than to take rabbits that didn’t belong to them.

Mar. 25, 1927. Yesterday I began writing a sort of farewell to the rooms; the drawing-room, just describing the things around me. I will go on with it, although poor Margaret came back to-day from a visit to Galway and a depressing talk with the agent about a house. I have just read in Emerson’s Journals, “They say there is a tune which is forbidden to be played in the European armies, because it makes the Swiss desert, since it reminds them so forcibly of their hills and homes.”

Mar. 31. Keller has sent the Deed of Sale to Margaret to sign. I don’t know if I shall realise then—I cannot now—that Coole has passed altogether away from us. I go on writing my little “Farewell” to the things around me—to the rooms. And I go on sowing and planting in the garden.

April 1. I have just put my name as witness to the sale of Coole—all—house, woods, gardens.

But Lady Gregory took a letting from the Minister of Lands and Agriculture, in the December of this year, of the dwelling-house and offices, gardens and front lawns, at a yearly rent of £100. This agreement was for three years but was subsequently renewed year after year up to the year of her death, 1932.

Aug. 24. Yeats here yesterday—came in the afternoon soaking, having walked from the gate in the rain. We sent his coat to be dried at the kitchen fire, and he put round his shoulders the Indian shawl that lies on the sofa. We had just gone down to the breakfast-room for tea when a motor was heard, and its occupants trooped in. I only recognised Mary Studd, but brought them in and gave them tea. While we were having it Marian brought Yeats’ coat and he put it on and discarded the shawl, and this caused merriment.

By degrees I made them out, a nice woman next me was Lady Susan Dawney, and a pretty, bright girl Lady Blanche Beresford, engaged to one of the young men, R. Girouard, he and the other Christ Church undergraduates. Mary told me they were all Yeats enthusiasts, so after tea, in the library, I brought in his new poems “October Blast,” and Yeats said “The Tower” and some others. And then he talked of clairvoyants and of religion, the need of an intellectual belief. Then, Lady Blanche being disappointed that she could not buy a copy of “October Blast,” (the edition sold out,) I found two pages of The New Republic in which the same poems were printed, and Yeats gave it to her as a wedding present, and she wanted my name written on it also, but I said that must be on something of my own and gave her Brigit and evening fell pleasantly.

More visitors. On Sunday Mr. Holberton came to the door, the maids out, Marian having a siesta. He had brought his camera, the Tourist Association having sent him on a photographing tour, to include Coole and Kiltartan! I begged him to leave that out. They wanted anything connected with my writings. Poor Kiltartan! I asked him to photograph only the old church at Ballinamantane. The better our cottages are, and they are very good now, the less their owners would like to see them exhibited as dwelling-places of my characters in Jackdaw or Spreading the News! However, he slipped away and did photo one, I know not whose, and then the lake and the house, from the back. And seeing the autograph tree he insisted on taking one of it, though I don’t know how the names will come out under the leafy boughs. A good man. His heart is in Ireland. And on Monday I was bringing flowers from the garden and trying to keep Taddy and Rotter from rambling as their owners would be coming by and by, when, coming towards the hall door, a motor dashed up, with a Dutch poet and newspaper correspondent and his wife, making a tour of the West. Van Eycks. Nice people, so I took them to the garden, with a peep at Kyle-na-gno as they wanted to see places mentioned in Yeats’ poems, and then to the lake, and gave them tea.

Oct. 20. To-day Mr. Reed, of the Land Commission, and Mr. Donovan, of the Forestry Department, came and formally took over Coole, took possession. It no longer belongs to anyone of our family or name. I am thankful to have been able to keep back a sale for these years past, for giving it into the hands of the Forestry people makes the maintenance and improvement of the woods secure, and will give employment and be for the good and dignity of the country. As to the house I will stay and keep it as the children’s home as long as I keep strength enough and can earn money enough. It had a good name before I came here, its owners were of good, even of high repute; and that has been continued, has increased, in Robert’s time and mine. Perhaps some day one of the children may care enough for it to come back; they have been happy here.

Jan. 1, 1928. The sale of the woods and house has been completed. I hope to be able to keep it as long as the children need a home. All land troubles are at an end. I don’t know how my money will hold out. I have written some of my articles about the house and its contents and am going on with the political portraits in the breakfast-room slowly, with atmosphere; they are easy to scamp but difficult to get into a meditation, a setting. That is one of my tasks for this year; and to keep the house peaceful and as comfortable for children and guests as means and my remaining energy will allow.

Love, the solution of life, of living in heaven while on earth. I seem to grasp it sometimes; it would set everything right if I could feel to all as I do to, say, Richard. April 18. Yesterday I motored in the rain to Craughwell, to the poor graveyard where Frank’s body was being laid. Only a few there, some old men from Lough Cutra who had worked under him and loved him; his daughters and sons-in-law—very few others, the time and place had by accident not been put in the papers. I joined the procession but did not go into the graveyard, for reasons besides the pouring rain. Somehow he was in my mind as I remembered him riding along one of those very roads in his early youth, on his horse Twilight. He had lost his hat in the run, his fair hair was shining; as they passed the M.F.H., Burton Persse called out “tell your mother I’m prouder of Frank than if he wrote the Bible!” The dancing light in his eyes had never gone out, was, like his kindness, still unquenched. His two daughters, with the husband of one, the widowed husband of another, came here for tea. I was glad to have them and to welcome them. This is the one house left open of all our family owned. Michael Shawe-Taylor and his mother were here, she stayed the night.

Sept. 15. I had written a telegram yesterday to Galway Hospital asking for news of Johnny Hehir but, the children motoring to Coole, I gave it to them to send if there were no news there. And they brought back sad news. There had first been a message that he was safely through the operation, and then one that his state was hopeless. It is so very, very sad; he was as good a boy as I have ever known, so trustworthy, so diligent and willing—over-willing. I have had to restrain him. This last year, since he had learned to drive a motor, had been pleasant to him, seeing so much of the country. He had a slight operation some months ago, I don’t know if it had any connection with this, I think not. The grief of his life had been his sister’s death in England last year. He had gone at once in the hope of seeing her alive but she had already passed away. Poor father and mother! I am going to Coole by and by.

Minnogue coming to sell lobsters says, “I have two sons enlisted, and one virtuous one at home.” Evening. We have been to Coole. Poor Johnny Hehir had been buried this morning at Kiltartan. I went to the house, the father sobbing, the mother more composed but in great grief. She was with him to the last in the hospital. He knew death was coming and sent messages, “My love to Lady Gregory.” He had gone through great pain but was at ease at the last in the hospital. They had called in three doctors. I will of course pay all but told John to find out if the Health Insurance helps at all.

Dec. 5. Murty here asking for “wheels”: he has a pony but nothing to harness it to. I am giving him the old phaeton, my brother Dudley’s wedding gift to me, long unused but sometimes much used, especially in my folk-loring days. It was in it I drove alone across the mountains from Chevy to Tulla to gather news of traditions of Biddy Early. And to many another haunt of legend, into Clare, alone or with Yeats, with Hyde; earlier in Robert’s boyish days to Galway to stay a night at the Croft. When poor Shamrock died it went out of use. I am glad to think it may be useful yet. But I don’t think one could gather stories of the Sidhe in a motor; the pony’s little drink of meal and water—the rests by the roadside—were more in harmony with those dream-like tales.

Dec. 29. Guy gave me William O’Brien’s Life—a clear rapid history of the whole struggle for the land. I am thankful we had no active trouble here, just a delay of payment of rents. William had always given a reduction when there was a good case for it; there had never been an eviction, and there was no ill-feeling in the stormy time. I am glad John Shawe-Taylor gets full credit for bringing about the Convention that was a great step towards peace. I was in full sympathy with him then. And even at the worst time of trouble, in this century, I remember Frank saying to me at the Broadstone as I was coming home, and he had been turned out of his house by Lough Corrib, “There is no danger for you. You have always been on the side of the people.”

My little Christmas tree last Thursday for the little Rosses, McDonoughs, Byrnes, gave them great joy. I should like all my entertaining to be of children, and workers.

Jan. 25, 1929. Yesterday a very distant cousin, Capt. Edmund Maturin Persse, “Commissioner in Uganda,” having come for a few days in search of relations and traditions, we motored to Roxboro’. I had not been there since the final sale. I was glad to see so many new houses built or being built along the Castleboy Road and the high demesne wall in part pulled down for these. The mountain-side was little changed, though the woods have but little good timber left. And the deer-park with its old tower and the Fishpond Road were much as of old. But inside the front gate—the Grand Gate as it was called by the people—all was changed, the Cottage Grove cut down and almost all the fine beeches along the river. The river itself choked and narrowed. I could not think from what cause, but now remember once a “swallow hole” that had suddenly appeared and I forget by what means had been stopped, in my early days. The chimneys and walls of the roofless house look gaunt. An old man in the yard, King, whom I had known, showed us round, through the deserted yards. A very sad sight: the dairies, laundries, cow-houses, kennels, piggeries, all fallen to ruin or pulled down. The garden in rough grass, the pleasure-ground rough grass, the walks overgrown. I should hardly have found my way about, all so changed and desolate. I thought of Oisin’s return to desolate Almhuin.... For as he was the last of the Fianna so am I of my generation, the brothers, the sisters; and now the homestead that had sheltered us all a deserted disconsolate ruin.

Jan. 28. Going to Dublin to-day. Edmund Persse looking for family history still; he wrote and I dictated last evening bits from Dr. Fahey’s Kilmacduagh. I forgot he had given so much about Roxboro’; very valuable now, for he took it from the Rolls Office—it and its records destroyed since then in our civil war. He tells that “by the first of these grants made by Charles II to Dean Dudley Persse in 1677 he received land in Roscommon and Galway; the MacHuberts estates in and around Iser Kaelly also passed into the possession of the Persses. In 1677 he received in addition grants by James II, 10 Feb., 1686, by letters patent to the same Dudley Persse, confirming grants of 2,500 acres, profitable and unprofitable, in the baronies of Longford, Clonmacowen, Leitrim, Loughrea, Dunkellin and Kiltartan. This does not include certain other grants made in the Galway Liberties and certain portions of Roscommon county ... they included the mansion house of Cregrosta which Dean Persse used as his residence (Roxboro’).”

April 2. Curley the Piper has been here, much elated by his reception by Royalty at Portumna. (Princess Mary and Lord Lascelles.) He was “let in through the gate and then it was locked and the devil another one let in from outside.” He told the Princess of having met King Edward and the Queen at the Killeries in Connemara, and also gave Lord Lascelles “news of some of his relations in Co. Mayo, Knoxs and others.” But he liked the Lady better, “she put five pounds in my hand, and then I was let out through the gate, and it closed behind me.” He laments Roxboro’ in the old times, “a very good place for God’s poor.” And he laments Robert who “would leave his cricket and come up the avenue and put something in my hand.”

April 24. Reading last evening an article in The Nation but broke off here, a Mulkere girl having come for flowers for the Mission for the windows in Gort. I had already given all but all to constant seekers, but found a few more for her—anemones chiefly—and as she wanted evergreens I broke branches from the bay-tree, and now I hear the postman, Lally, wants some flowers, and Gillane the baker.

April 25. My back aches from gathering flowers, which seem inexhaustible—as are the calls for the decorations wished for by the Missioners. My best wallflowers sacrificed to-day, that I had hoped to save seed from; and the very buds of a tree peony. Narcissus and anemones and the sunflower bush hold out wonderfully, but as a reward—“The Missioners spoke from the altar in Gort of the beautiful flowers on the altar at Kiltartan—tulips and narcissus”—these are all mine. But my own drawing-room and library vases are empty and the big copper bowl holds but a columbine, which had sowed itself in a pot in the vinery.

April 26. Flowers, flowers, flowers still. This morning the postman—his ready from last evening. Then, as I did my housekeeping, Mary asks me for some for Mrs. Connolly, the carpenter’s wife; went out in a hurry, took some of my last few tulips and anemones, narcissus, white clematis just opening, even some bluebells, but these they will not care for, they are “upbreaking” in Shanwalla beside the avenue. Now I think of Peter’s neighbour, Mrs. Ballinger, I have kept some in water for her since Peter asked for them last night, and can add some more.

Another call for flowers—“a poor sort of a girl,”—Maureen reports. So Income Tax must wait.

The rain having almost stopped I went in search of flowers for the waiting girl, first the few remaining narcissi, and then through the railing and into the phlox border, and found there some wallflowers, hidden, and took some of the purple honesty that had seeded itself, and, with much pricking of hands, some sprays of yellow berberis, and then some branches of bay. So with all I have supplied for to-morrow’s procession I feel that the welfare of those Gort windows has benefited by my “pursuit and occupation” of gardening.

April 27. Rain at last, very welcome. (I am typing this on Feb. 1, 1930, when the pump is far away in the lake, and Pond Field amongst others flooded over its little birches.) And I thought, “No more flower seekers.” But opening Lally’s book to write some orders, there was a note from Mrs. Lally asking for some. And Ellen told me Miss Shaughnessy who supplies The Connacht Tribune would also like some! So in the rain I went out and plucked at last the two little groups of tulips I had been sparing, just inside the gate, to have still some pleasure to the eye from their delicate pale tints. That and fighting with Income Tax difficulties tired me. But this last burden I sent off at the last moment to ever-kind Kiernan.

April 28, Sunday. And at half-past eight o’clock, all the maids having gone to the Mission, I heard a knock at the hall door, and looking from the cloak-room window saw two Civic Guards. So I opened to them—“We came to ask for a few bits of laurel to decorate the barracks!”—and I was glad that having found John in the garden earlier I had got some old wood and brambles taken from the foot of the sunflower bush, which had still on its summit some well-covered branches. So I took them out there, in the dark, and they got a good armful of the bright flowers. And then I left them at the laurels outside to cut what sprays and branches they liked. And to-day going through Gort to church and seeing flags waving, yellow and white, I heard they are the Papal colours. So I could not have given a better bundle than they had taken.

May 6. Yesterday church, and then to Lough Cutra. We walked by the lake, through the pines. It looked tranquil and beautiful; the grounds also, so well kept—and thought of Yeats’ line “The rich man’s son inherits lawns,” that was afterwards cast out for—

“Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns,

Amid the rustle of his planted hills,

Life overflows without ambitious pains

And rains down life until the basin spills——”

But no envy came near me. The beauty, the romance of our Seven Woods, the mysteries of the ebbing and flowing lake are dear to me, have been well loved, and are now in hands that will care and tend them it is likely for ever.

June 25. Yesterday Cat motored me to Castle Taylor to lunch with Michael Shawe-Taylor. He has done a great deal, has put new windows into the drawing-room, where the broken ones had long been boarded up—has had drawing-room, hall, study and two or three bed-rooms done up also. And outside he has had the little “spring garden” cleared and cleaned and filled with annuals, the grass mown, and has cut away two or three of the trees too near the house. Has made a tiny fishpond also, rather a variety this in so waterless a place—it has to be supplied from the pump. He hopes by degrees to get the kitchen-garden into order and grow vegetables for sale. He has been blamed for not, on leaving Oxford, having entered a profession—his mother wishes for the Army or the City. But had he taken an agency, say, to restore and improve some other owner’s place for pay, he would be held to be doing good work, and why not when it is for the home of his ancestors?

And coming back we called at Tulira. I had never been there since poor Edward Martyn’s death. It also had been let go to weeds outside and damp within. But young Hemphill and his American wife are getting it into order again—they will make it their country home, though he will do his law-work in Dublin. And the tiny baby son, eleven months old, exhibited by him with pride as he took us round the house, will be brought up in a home. The garden had gone to wildness and weeds, but in the midst of these there are now large patches of ripe peas and lettuce and other vegetables, and in the little glass-house, tomatoes—plenty of variety there.

July 23. Yesterday Richard motored me with Anne to Ardrahan Church where the service is being held while ours is being painted. I think it is fifty years or more since I was last there, and the few, very few, faces were new. In my early days, except for the Incumbent’s family, the congregation was entirely of my near relations and their households; Clanmorris, my first cousin; Walter Shawe-Taylor and his wife, (a more distant cousin), and their children; Walter Shawe-Taylor and his wife, my sister, their children. Richard and Anne were amused when I told them I had been a bridesmaid in that church to Florence Bingham, dressed in white embroidered muslin with a wreath of violets. I had lately been ill and had a moment’s faintness when kneeling in the aisle, and was brought very indignantly back to liveliness by hearing a whisper that the bridegroom had been known to admire me and perhaps I coveted him from the bride! A simple wedding in that little church had been that of my sister Adelaide to the Rev. J. Lane—our parents not allowing it to take place at our own little church in the Roxboro’ demesne. An unhappy marriage, yet that clash of opposing temperaments in wife and husband brought forth him (Hugh Lane) of whom Augustus John said, “He was one of those rare ones who, single-handed, are able to enrich and dignify an entire nation.” And outside in the green burial plot is the grave of his cousin and fellow worker, John Shawe-Taylor, who brought together the Conference that under George Wyndham and Dunraven led to the peaceable and friendly settlement of the thorny Land Question quarrel. In dedicating a play, The Image, to their dear memory, I wrote, “And so we must say ‘God love you’ to the Image Makers, for do we not live by the shining of those scattered fragments of their dream?”

July 24. Yesterday Anne coming from Lough Cutra told us Michael Shawe-Taylor had come over while they were at breakfast and told them Castle Taylor had been fired into during the night, several shots from the garden side—the glass in study door, and of the bedroom Mrs. Norman is sleeping in, broken. Mrs. Norman has been brought over to Lough Cutra. Poor Michael, he had done so much to house and garden and had been so proud to show it to his grandmother and hoped she might stay on there! The people had seemed glad at his return and his intention to keep up his home. Heart-rending! Our ill-wishers will make so much of it.

Dec. 31. I used to think and say—as a sort of vanishing point in the distance—that I should like to live to see Richard come of age. And now this has come. He is well and doing well—happy in work, in riding and in play. I thank God he has come so far “unspotted” and unspoiled. The coming-of-age is not now the coming into ownership of his property and home that were owned by the generations before him. And although I am thankful it is in such good hands as those of the Forestry Department, there is a little sadness in this. Sadness also about Lough Cutra for that breach is not healed. Guy has had one threat, and doubts coming even to Coole as arranged. Peace seems to be unlikely; no move towards it on either side. (Feb. 25. But that is all right now, though they have not come back to the house yet.)

Jan. 4, 1930. Richard, Anne, Catherine arrived yesterday in time for lunch, all so well and cheery. R. and C. went out to the woods, then for tea Guy arrived. A very happy evening and the wireless worked well, Richard turning it on to Paris. He must be back at Chatham by 9 o’clock on Monday.... The darlings’ bright faces have turned up the coin head instead of tail, and I am thankful.

Jan. 9. I find a scrap I had written in pencil: “My time is past and maybe what I think green is withering, and what is dry like ashes is breaking into leaf.” I have nearly finished answering and writing a mass of Christmas and other letters. And I have been marking with blue pencil the parts of my diaries relating to the fight for Hugh’s pictures. But the most interesting part may be too personal—yet I had better go on. I would rather do anything this morning than make up accounts for the maids’ wages, due on Monday, for they have come back on different dates and—except Mary’s—each will be a problem!

Jan. 12. Now I have turned on the wireless to try and get the evening service from a London church—the preacher, the Rev. Pat McCormick.

I forget if I ever wrote of that Sunday when I was staying at the old Martin house, Ballinakill, in Connemara, with its then tenants. They were Catholics and on Sunday asked if I would like the car to take me to church. I hesitated, not wishing to give trouble, but said, “Yes,” to show respect for our disendowed church. And I was rewarded. The congregation was but four or five: I made another and the chauffeur also came in, the first time he had been to a church service since he left England. And after the service the old rector came to the door as I went out and welcomed me, saying he had known Hugh Lane who had been a friend of his son, the rector of a London church. And that when this son had married, Hugh had come to the wedding, and had brought some beautiful gift and had made the whole room bright with his cheery ways, (as he had done in many another house).

So this Sunday morning the wireless gave me the hymn and the organ and the reading of the lesson. And then there came a sudden silence. I thought a violent wind that had arisen outside might be the cause. But this morning also it refuses to speak—just when I should like music, for I have been making up accounts. And now I’ve been gathering Christmas roses and sweet-smelling branches, rosemary and salvia and verbena, and some hyacinths, to send to Marian, Mary going to spend the day with her.

Jan. 23. This day ten years ago my child left this earth. And it is time for me to go. So very tired this morning and that scar throbbing. I am still working at those diaries, hoping to leave nothing that would give trouble.

Jan. 26. A peaceful day except that the grass upon the edge of the drive round the yard is being ploughed up by Mr. O’Beirne’s car and I must remonstrate. But Mr. Ross and Co. have been shooting to-day, Sunday, (like Mike when I reproved him for arranging some business expedition saying, “That would be breaking the Sabbath,” and he answered, “Sure we have no other day to break!”), and they have left me six woodcock, a fine gift to send someone—kind Gogarty, I think.

March 15. This my birthday, my 78th! The last of the Roxboro’ generation. And although that cold caught in Dublin has turned to a cough, I am wonderfully well, took that three hours’ walk among the woods the other day; sleep well, eat very little, no meat—porridge, and a slice of bread for breakfast; vegetables or broth or an occasional egg for lunch, 1.30; tea at 6.30, bread and butter, jam, perhaps cake; a glass of milk and some biscuits at night. I keep strength and my mind clear (I think!).

Stephen Aldridge, my brother’s tutor, of I suppose sixty years or more—yes, more—writes, “I feel sure you retain your former charm of manner and appearance, notwithstanding the passage of the years!” He has never seen me since then!

March 20. Margaret wrote yesterday that poor old Sarsfield has died, at Lough Cutra, where he had spent these last few years. I am glad he has gone by natural death: it is sad when through infirmity or old age an old horse has to be shot. And he was much associated with Robert’s early twenties. I had been looking yesterday at a cup he had won. There had been other triumphs in races, (that one where Richard had ridden to the goal after his bit had been lost!) and at shows. And then later Robert would now and again put him and Sarsfield to the wagonette and drive so that all the windows rattled as he went the Kiltartan Road. I often had these lines in memory these later years:

“Long, long will his ladye

Look from the castle down

Till she’ll see the Earl of Moray

Come sounding through the town.”

It touched me a couple of years ago when Anne mounted him. He went quietly in the woods, but when they came into the hobble field he grew excited and made a rush for the high bank, the “leap” put up in early days for his training or exercising. I felt he had a sudden thought it was Robert who was riding him again.

And I remember that Outlook lunch where Roosevelt told the company, “Lady Gregory’s son has splendid horses—he has called one Patrick Sarsfield and the other Theodore Roosevelt!” And indeed Robert had admired him before I—not so much interested then as later in the U.S.A.—had realised his personality.