Books of the Month

'Lady Gregory's Toothbrush' by Colm Toibin

Lady Augusta Gregory is something of a tricky character to get to grips with. Her life was full of ambiguities and contradictions, but she herself seemed to have no trouble balancing her support for the poor with her status as a landlord; her connections amongst the English ruling class with her Irish nationalism; and her fierce battles for freedom of expression with her acceptance of others taking the credit for her literary work.

Lady Gregory is famous for being the supporter of WB Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and others, and for establishing the hugely influential Abbey Theatre in Dublin. This brief biography by Colm Toibin sketches her life: her trips to Arran plundering the locals for folk tales, learning Irish and translating the Cuchulain stories, battling anyone who attempted to censor the plays at the Abbey, and in her later years enjoying notoriety (and an apparent love affair) in the United States. Much of her story centres around Coole Park, the house and gardens where many writers, artists and thinkers were entertained, and which were made enduringly famous by the poems Yeats set there. In her relationship with Yeats she is at times admirer, controlling benefactor, (frequently uncredited) co-author, and bountiful landlady. Toibin describes a dream she once had, in which 'she had been writing some articles, and Yeats had said to her: "It's not your business to write. Your business is to make an atmosphere."' Another poet wrote of her that 'she is the only woman I have known of real intellectual power equal to men and that without having anything unnaturally masculine about her'. The greatest contradiction of her life seems to be that while she was busy idealising the Irish peasantry and dreaming up a mythical national past of honourable folk tales, her husband's contribution to politics was to have a devastating impact on the depth and extent of poverty during the Great Famine.

This is an insightful and illuminating account of one of literature's fascinating figures.

Susan Tranter

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