At the Abbey Theatre, one long block away from O’Connell Street—up until five days ago known as Sackville Street—the second run of Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey, 44, is coming to an end.
Juno and the Paycock program
When the theatre premiered this, O’Casey’s second play, back in March, theatre director LadyAugusta Gregory, 72, told her co-founder, poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, 59, “this is one of the evenings at the Abbey which make me glad to have been born.”
Now, after its second successful two-week run, in addition to her feelings of pride in the theatre and O’Casey, Augusta is also feeling that this will be a great money-spinner for the Abbey.
The premiere, starring their reliable company regulars—Barry Fitzgerald, 36, as Captain Jack Boyle; Sara Allgood, 43, as his long suffering wife Juno; and Fitzgerald’s brother Arthur Shields, 28, as their disabled war veteran son Johnny Boyle—was such a hit Yeats and LadyGregory doubled its scheduled one-week run, the first time the Abbey had ever done this.
Arthur Shields
Last month they repeated O’Casey’s first play, The Shadow of a Gunman, for the fifth time.
The Shadow of a Gunman program
Willie and Augusta have no qualms about bringing Juno back again now for another full two-week run—two Saturday matinees!—with the original hit cast. And once again the audiences are packing in.
Lady Gregory wants to have a long chat with young Sean about the possibility of his writing future plays for the Abbey.
Tomorrow, Saturday, May 11, is the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Highland Park. Stop by the “Such Friends” booth in Writers’ Row.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
At this year’s third annual Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books we will celebrate the launch of the fifth volume in the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Halfway through the decade!
Volume V, covering 1924, continues to chronicle the private and professional lives of the key figures in the literary world in the fabulous decade of the 1920s.
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume V—1924
You can see how the year ends before the postings on this blog get there!
Like the other four volumes—all available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk—Volume V has a unique dip-in-and-dip-out layout, designed by Lisa Thomson (LisaT2@comcast.net), that makes it easy to find the writers, artists, events and dates you’re most interested in. Find out what Ernest Hemingway was doing 100 years ago on your birth date! What was Virginia Woolf doing this week?! Or read straight through from January 1st through December 31st.
The unique layout of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
Copies of the first four volumes will be available at the “Such Friends” booth in Writer’s Row at the Festival. Not only can you take advantage of the Festival discount—I’m happy to personally sign your copies!
Thanks to Amazon’s crack delivery system, you will also be able to enter the “Such Friends” raffle to win a free copy of the new “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume V—1924, when they finally arrive, shortly after the Festival.
If you can’t make it to Highland Park next Saturday between 10 am and 5 pm, or just can’t wait that long, you can order your copies of all five volumes now from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, or by emailing me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
See you at the Festival!
“Such Friends” at last year’s Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Abbey Theatre directors and co-founders William Butler Yeats, 58, and Lady Augusta Gregory, about to turn 72, have high hopes for this new kid.
Last April they premiered the first play by Sean O’Casey, 43, The Shadow of a Gunman, about the country’s recent war for independence from the British. A big hit, they have mounted five more productions of it since.
Sean O’Casey
Tonight is the first performance of O’Casey’s latest, Juno and the Paycock, about last year’s Irish civil war. Yeats and Lady Gregory feel this is going to be another winner for O’Casey and the theatre.
Yeats has been impressed with O’Casey’s work. Although, after a reading of this play, when he compared it to a Dostoyevsky novel, Augusta admonished him—in front of the actors—
You know, Willie, you never read a novel by Dostoyevsky.”
Some of the best Abbey theatre regulars are on stage tonight. Sara Allgood, 43, creating the character of Juno; her frequent co-star Barry Fitzgerald, who turns 36 next week, as Captain Jack Boyle, and Fitzgerald’s brother Arthur Shields, 28, as Boyle’s disabled son, Johnny.
Juno and the Paycock program
Fitzgerald gets to sum up the drama with the play’s last line,
Th’ whole worl’s in a terrible state o’ chassis.”
Yeats is already thinking that this is one time they should extend this run well beyond the usual one week.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about early 20th century supporters of the arts at Osher in the University of Pittsburgh.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, 58, has a brother, painter Jack, 52; and two sisters, Susan, 57, named after their mother, but always called “Lily,” and Elizabeth, 55, always called “Lolly.”
Lily and Lolly Yeats
For the past 15 years the sisters have run a business together, the Cuala Press; have lived together in Dundrum, South Dublin; and have hosted Thursday evening salons together, attracting a wide variety of local and national personalities.
They have also gotten on each other’s nerves together. Neither has been in good health.
Cuala Press produces quality hand-printed books, some written by their brother, but many by other writers.
Willie’s wife Georgie, 31, helps Lily run the embroidery department of Cuala where they turn out beautiful linens and dresses for wealthy Irish women.
Last summer, while on holiday in London, Lily developed tuberculosis. Willie arranged for her to enter this London nursing home. At the end of the year, when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, her brother used the cash prize to extend Lily’s stay there, and Georgie has been taking care of organizing and paying the bills for her treatment.
Lily is forever grateful for this break from her usual life. She writes down on paper how she feels about her sister:
“Life with her the past 20 years has been a torture…It is impossible ever to think of living with her again…And now there is hope. I want to thank Willie and Georgie for this ease of body and mind they have given me…Whether I recover or not while lying in bed I will get great happiness out of thinking that there can be a life for me of the freedom that I have all my life longed for.”
Lily decides not to send the letter.
N. B.: Thanks to Phil Mason, author of Lady Gregory, A Galway Life, for her help with details in this posting.
Later this month I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
In Ireland, poet, playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, William Butler Yeats, 58, is still basking in the glow of his recently awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.
Each time he responds to a friend’s congratulatory message, he makes sure to include,
I consider that this honor has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it is part of Europe’s welcome to the Free State,”
of which he is a Senator.
The night after the prize was announced—when he and his wife Georgie, 31, celebrated by cooking sausages—there was a posh dinner held at the Shelbourne Hotel in St. Stephen’s Green. The first cable of congratulations came from Yeats’ countryman living in Paris, James Joyce, 41.
Shelbourne Hotel
With the 115,000 Swedish Kroner from the prize, equal to more than £6,000, Yeats is able to help out his sister Lily, 57, who had been admitted to a north London nursing home last summer. Willie’s American friend, lawyer and supporter of the arts John Quinn, 53, had advised him to use the money this way. However, Quinn also strongly advised Yeats to move Lily out of unhealthy London, and not to donate the money or use it to pay off any debt:
Properly invested in good American securities [it] would bring you in 8 % income or $3,200 a year. You ought not to touch the principal under any circumstances.”
Yeats appreciates the advice. But after he has Lily taken care of, he is going to pay off his debts. And those of his father, who died early last year.
*****
In England, the Hogarth Press, operated by Virginia, 41, and Leonard Woolf, 43, has been growing well.
This past year they published 11 titles; five of those were hand-printed on fine paper using their Minerva treadle platen press. That is the largest number they have ever hand-printed in one year, and they will probably not produce that many next year. The Woolfs are primarily interested in publishing books with outstanding content, not works of art that people only look at and admire.
This holiday they are at their country home, Monk’s House in East Sussex. Just about 10 miles away, at Charleston Farmhouse, Virginia’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell, 44, is spending the holiday with her children—Julian, 15, Quentin, 13, and Angelica, just turned five—and, oddly enough, her husband, art critic Clive Bell, 42. The kids have created a special issue of their Charleston Bulletin, featuring, “A life of Vanessa Bell dictated by Virginia Woolf, pictures and spelling by Quentin Bell.”
Charleston Bulletin, Christmas
Angelica’s father, the painter Duncan Grant, 38, is spending the holidays with his parents.
At midnight on New Year’s Eve, the new radio service, the British Broadcasting Corporation, broadcasts the chimes of Big Ben for the first time.
*****
In France, American ex-pat writer Gertrude Stein, 49, and her partner Alice B. Toklas, 46, are pleased that Gertrude’s work has been published more this past year.
She was included in the “Exiles” issue of the American literary magazine, The Little Review, which finally came out this fall. But Gertrude did notice that first place in that issue was given to the young Ernest Hemingway, 24, whom she considers to be one of her proteges. She even agreed to write a review of his Three Stories & Ten Poems, something she never does.
Three Stories & Ten Poems by Ernest Hemingway
Gertrude and Alice receive letters regularly from Hemingway, who is in Toronto where he and his wife went for the birth of their first child in October.
It is clear that the Hemingways are really hating being away from Paris, and he has written to Stein and Toklas that
It was a bad move to come back.”
Ernie asked for tips on where to live in Paris when they return early in the new year.
*****
In America, New York World columnist Heywood Broun, 35, and his wife, journalist Ruth Hale, 36, are throwing their annual New Year’s Eve bash at their brownstone on West 85th Street.
They invite all the literary friends they lunch with regularly at the Algonquin Hotel in midtown: free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 30; magazine illustrator Neysa McMein, 35; novelist Edna Ferber, 38; fellow World columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, (FPA) 42.
Neysa McMein, left, in her studio with a model
Thanks to her association with the “Round Table,” Neysa recently made it into the papers for her Christmas project delivering toys and turkeys to families on the Lower East Side. She convinced her successful friends, including composer and Broadway producer Irving Berlin, 35, and World editor Herbert Bayard Swope, 41, to donate chauffeured limos to the cause.
Ferber sent her most recent novel, originally called Selina, but changed to So Big, off to her publisher with trepidation a few weeks ago. He wrote back immediately that it was so good he had cried while reading it! It’s going to be serialized in the Woman’s Home Companion.
FPA has been confiding in Edna for months that he is thinking of divorcing his wife. In his column he has even admitted that he was “as low-hearted as ever I was in my life.”
Tonight, he seems to Ferber to be downright giddy and boyish, not feeling guilty at all about the affair he’s been having with English socialite Esther Root, 29. Ferber tells FPA that in his tuxedo he looks as though he is a young boy who has just been confirmed.
I am a confirmed admirer of you,”
he tells her.
This year Broun and Hale have put their five-year-old son Heywood Hale Broun—“Woody”—in charge of the punch bowl, filled with Orange Blossoms–equal parts gin and orange juice with powdered sugar thrown in.
Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
William Butler Yeats, 58, poet, playwright, and now Nobel laureate, is about to take the stage to give his Nobel lecture on “The Irish Theatre.”
Nobel Prize medal
Yeats feels confident about the speech. Last month, two days after the prize was announced, he gave a talk on the same topic to the Elizabethan Literature and Debating Society of Trinity College at the Café Ritz on Grafton Street. A friend of his sisters’ had asked him to address the young women—who formed the group because none of the university’s debating societies would allow women members—and it was a good opportunity to try out his lecture.
Grafton Street
Yeats gave full credit to his friends in the Irish dramatic movement, who contributed to the founding of the Abbey Theatre. For example, Douglas Hyde, 63, and his Gaelic League; Edward Martyn, who recently died, and his generous funding. The late playwright John Millington Synge and of course, Lady Augusta Gregory, 71, who is still running the Abbey.
Augusta did object to one line in the speech. Where he said that two forms should have stood on either side of him to accept—”an old woman, Lady Gregory, sinking into the infirmity of age, and the ghost of a young man, John Millington Synge…”—she had asked that he change “old” to “living,” and he obliged. Although too late to change the version which appeared in the newspapers.
Since arriving in Stockholm last week, Yeats and his wife Georgie, 31, have been learning about Swedish culture and enjoying the formalities of the celebrations. The King bestowed the diplomas and medals on the recipients on Monday, and this coming Saturday there will be a performance of Yeats’ play, written with Lady Gregory, Cathleen ni Houlihan. He is looking forward to seeing the differences between the Irish and Swedish theatre companies’ interpretations.
Yeats arriving in Stockholm
In his speech, Yeats will decry the violence that his country has experienced in the past 10 years, including a successful fight for independence followed by a civil war, as well as the obstacles he and his friends had to overcome to establish a national theatre like the Abbey.
In this version, Yeats is planning to end by saying that he had “seen little in this last week that would not have been memorable and exciting to Synge and to Lady Gregory, for Sweden has achieved more than we have hoped for our own country.”
Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
“Such Friends” once again interrupts its usual chronology of what was happening in the literary world 100 years ago with the solution to your holiday gift giving problems.
What to get for those bookish friends? You know they are fans of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf—even Gertrude Stein. But what have they read and what haven’t they read?
Betcha they haven’t read this!
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV
The four volumes of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, covering 1920 through 1923, contain fascinating vignettes about the personal lives of the literary characters throughout this decade.
The easy-to-read layout means you can dip in and out of any volume or sit down and read it straight through from January 1 to December 31.
Sample pages from “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV
Can’t decide which volume to start with? Choose Volume I, covering 1920—think of it as your entry into the network.
But wait! Amazon can’t get it to you on time?! Shame on them!
If you’re of the European persuasion, head on over to Thoor Ballylee, W. B. Yeats’ tower in Co. Galway, and pick up some copies in the bookshop.
And if none of those options work for you, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. I can send out copies from our vast inventory through the local post office, or, if you live on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit route, hand deliver signed copies in person.
Everyone’s reading “Such Friends”
So one way or another, make “Such Friends” part of your gift giving this year.
Happy holidays!
Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Another gift for your bookish friends, Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
In Tullira, his family estate, Irish playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, Edward Martyn, 64, is dying.
Tullira
One of the only wealthy Catholics in the country, throughout his life Martyn served as the sponsor of many Irish organizations, including the nationalistic political party Sinn Fein, Palestrina boys choirs at Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral, and the Abbey.
The theatre continues under the direction of the co-founder, Lady Augusta Gregory, 71, this week presenting one of their popular standards, The Building Fund by William Boyle, who recently passed away.
Martyn has been ill with rheumatism and osteo-arthritis for a while now, so has had time to plan. He has willed his extensive library and a painting by his Abbey friend AE [George Russell], 56, to the Carmelite order of nuns he has supported. Any other paintings will go to the National Gallery in Dublin. The rights to his plays he has bequeathed to his long-time friend, playwright George Moore, 71, despite their constant bickering.
The Abbey Theatre
Martyn has also left money to support the training of Irish teachers, and some to his male nurse.
Because he has no spouse or children, Tullira will go to distant cousins.
Martyn has requested that his body be dissected for science and then buried in a pauper’s grave.
In the new year, I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century arts patrons in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
You are definitely too stuffed to go out and fight your way through Black Friday crowds. Relax. Avoid the crowds and instead go out tomorrow for Small Business Saturday and shop your local bookstore. #smallbizbump
For example. If you are lucky enough to live near Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, stop by Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue.
Riverstone Books merch
Perhaps you are of a more Ohio-an persuasion. Then Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin is the place to be.
Pan Yan Bookstore
And if you find yourself on the West Coast of Ireland, stop by Thoor Ballylee, the tower owned by poet and playwright W. B. Yeats, and visit their gift shop.
Thoor Ballylee
At any of those three you will be able to pick up copies of “Such Friend”: The Literary 1920s. They all carry volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923, and in the two American shops the copies are signed—by me!
If none of those locations is convenient, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. If you live on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus line I’ll even deliver them myself.
Have a safe holiday weekend and support your local small businesses!
“Such Friends” at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books
P. S. Remember–they make great gifts!
Early in the new year I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Institute at the University of Pittsburgh.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available from me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com .
The excitement starts a bit after 10 p.m. when Irish poet, playwright and senator, William Butler Yeats, 58, takes a phone call from Irish Times reporter Bertie Smyllie, 30, who informs Yeats that he has been announced as this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
82 Merrion Square
Yeats had heard a rumor about a week ago, but he didn’t think anyone in Sweden’s Academy had any idea who he was.
Swelling with pride, Yeats knows that this is not just recognition for his own individual work, but for his newly independent country, the Irish Free State, as well. This is a welcoming gesture from Europe.
Yeats’ next thought is whether they have a decent bottle of wine in the cellar. He and his wife may have to celebrate with sausages.
Tonight!, Tuesday, November 14th I will be talking about art collector John Quinn at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library, co-sponsored by the Heidelberg University English Department, in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, OH. You can still register here for free, and the Zoom link will be sent to you. The recording of my talk will be archived on YouTube at a later datet.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 