“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, early summer, 1924, Coole Park, Co. Galway, west of Ireland

He’s only been here 10 minutes and already he feels at home.

Playwright Sean O’Casey, 44, is so pleased to be invited by the co-founder and director of the AbbeyTheatre, Lady Augusta Gregory, 72, to spend time here at her home, Coole Park. As he anticipated, the food is lovely and the conversation is about books and theatre and Ireland.

Coole Park house

Lady Gregory met O’Casey at the Athenry train station, and they took a third-class carriage to nearby Gort, where the Coole “side car” picked them up. Upon arriving at the house, Augusta said to him,

One and twenty welcomes, Sean, to the House of Coole.”

As she has with so many who have spent summers at Coole before him—fellow Abbey founder William Butler Yeats, about to turn 59; playwright and politician Douglas Hyde, 64; the late writer John Millington Synge—Augusta sensed that Sean needs extra care for his digestion and his eyesight.

Two of his plays have premiered at the Abbey, The Shadow of a Gunman last year, and Juno and the Paycock just this March. Both have been such big hits for the theatre that they have already been repeated.

Lady Gregory is hoping that, with a bit of rest out here away from Dublin, O’Casey can maybe come up with a third tragi-comedy about Dublin tenement life, to round out a trilogy of plays about the horrible effects of the Irish War for Independence and the Civil War.

O’Casey is hoping that he can have a much-needed rest, walk down by the lake to see the “mysterious and beautiful” swans Yeats wrote about, and join his predecessors in carving his initials into her copper beech “Autograph Tree.”

Lady Gregory’s Autograph Tree, Coole Park

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through V, covering 1920 through 1924 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, a short drive from Coole Park, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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”: 100 Years Ago, March 3, 1924, Abbey Theatre, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin

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.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin, OH, City Books on the North Side and Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

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 20^th century supporters of the arts at Osher in the University of Pittsburgh.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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”: 100 Years Ago, April 12, 1923, Abbey Theatre, 26 Lower Abbey Street, Dublin

When William Butler Yeats, 57, and Lady Augusta Gregory, 71, started a theatre, almost 26 years ago, this is exactly what they had in mind:  Presenting plays by a young, working-class writer who would put the authentic dialects and feelings of Dubliners on the stage.

Tonight’s presentation, The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey, 43, is the first time the Abbey has had a premiere sold out. Buzz around town has been good.

Sean O’Casey

Of course, O’Casey—born John Casey in Upper Dorset Street—actually was from a Protestant middle class family. After his father died when John was just six, the family fortunes went downhill and he worked as a newspaper delivery boy and on the railroad for a time.

In the early years of the century, Casey joined the union movement and also the Gaelic League, organized and run by one of the other founders of the Abbey Theatre, poet Douglas Hyde, 63. That’s when John Casey changed his name to Seán Ó Cathasaigh and began writing political ballads and plays.

The Shadow of a Gunman, set in a Dublin tenement in 1920 during the Irish war for independence from the British, is the first of O’Casey’s plays to be produced. His original submission to the Abbey was almost 20 years ago; the rejection came with an encouraging note from Lady Gregory, so he kept trying.

O’Casey’s home, 422 North Circular Road, Dublin

Lady Gregory can tell from the audience reaction that this one is going to be a hit. She’s only scheduled this run for four performances, including the Saturday matinee. Augusta is thinking the Abbey should maybe put it on again, later this year.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also availableon Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.