Lady Gregory's Toothbrush by Colm Tóibín Page A

showed a Tricolour being brought into a pub. But the overall message of the play was even more offensive: it did not glorify those who fought for Irish freedom at a time when manyof them were hungry for glory. Soon, the play was read by George O’Brien, the government representative on the board, who wrote of “the possibility that the play might offend any section of public opinion so seriously as to provoke an attack on the Theatre of a kind that would endanger the continuance of the subsidy”. In his letter to Yeats he listed words which he though should be removed (these included “Jesus”, “Jasus” and “Christ” as well as “bitch”, “lowsers” and “lice”). Of the presence of the prostitute, he wrote that “the lady’s professional side is unduly emphasized ”. The tone of his letter suggested that he was within his rights to demand the removal of words, characters and undue emphasis.
    When Yeats came to Coole to discuss this, Lady Gregory , according to her journal, “said at once that our position is clear. If we have to choose between the subsidy and our freedom, it is our freedom we choose. And we must tell him that there was no condition attached to the subsidy .” She and Yeats did, however, discuss cutting the offensive song from the play. At the subsequent directors’ meeting, Lady Gregory gave George O’Brien a lecture on the theatre’s battles with censorship. O’Brien still wanted the song removed. “We had already decided it must go, but left it as a bone for him to gnaw at,” Lady Gregory wrote.
    On 11 February there was a riot in the theatre. Lady Gregory was at Coole and read about it in the newspaperon her way to Dublin. Yeats had been in the theatre and had addressed the audience, who had difficulty hearing him, from the stage. However, he sent his speech to the Irish Times: “You have disgraced yourselves again … Is this … going to be a recurring celebration of Irish genius? Synge first and then O’Casey! The news of the happening of the last few minutes here will flash from country to country. Dublin has once more rocked the cradle of a reputation . From such a scene in this theatre, went forth the fame of Synge. Equally, the fame of O’Casey is born here tonight. This is his apotheosis.”
    Yeats met Lady Gregory at the station. He wanted to have another debate, as they did after the Playboy riots, but she realized that this was different: many of the rioters were women who had lost men in 1916 and the War of Independence; they were not the rabble, and they would always have the support of the public. Some of them owned toothbrushes. They were led by the ardent republican Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, whose husband had been shot in the Rising while trying to prevent looting, and they included Maud Gonne MacBride. Lady Gregory had very little time for women, and no interest in debating with them. In 1906 she wrote to John Quinn: “I should be content to have Jack Yeats and Douglas Hyde here for six months of the year, but a few weeks of their wives makes me hide in the woods! And I have felt the same with AEand his wife.” She had a rule, which she wrote down in her journal for 29 September 1919, “of never talking of politics with a woman”. Five years later her position had not changed, as she believed that the badness of the newspaper Sinn Féin was a result of there being “too many women on it”. Thus there was no Abbey debate. Four years after her death, Yeats wrote that “Lady Gregory never rebelled like other Irish women I have known, who consumed themselves and their friends”. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt wrote of her: “She is the only woman I have known of real intellectual power equal to men and that without having anything unnaturally masculine about her.”
    Mrs Sheehy Skeffington, however, was eager for more rebellion and wrote