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YOUNG LENNOX ROBINSON AND THE ABBEY THEATRE'S FIRST AMERICAN TOUR (1911-1912) IN HIS VOLUMINOUS DIARY, The Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer,l Joseph Holloway noted, under date of August, 1911, that he had seen W. B. Yeats, "with a big dark butterfly bow arranged over his chest," standing at the corner of Nassau and Grafton Streets and waving in vain, "after the car I was in, because he wanted it to stop at the wrong place. . . . Robinson was in the car I returned home in-he sat in the corner next the door-all legs. nose Be glasses. He wore a soft brown felt hat. I bid him the time of day as I sat down Be said, 'it had been a heavy shower?'-he replied 'it was' Be lapsed into silence. He had nothing to communicate to me nor I to him. His aloof manner freezes me. He apes the insolence of his master-W B Yeats-exactly. The copy is more contemptable [sic] than comicl Robinson has, I regret to say, developed into a most unlovable personality, since he became tainted by the ways of the Abbey 'bosses.'''2 Holloway, a professional architect and the designer of the Abbey Theatre, was a skillful artist with the pencil. The drawings with which he illustrated his diaries bear witness to this fact-rapid sketches done with the eye on the subject and catching just those distinguishing characteristics that make a portrait easily recognizable. But his sketches remain, for the most part, surface impressions. And so it is with the numerous prose pictures3 which illuminate 1 Holloway left his diaries (1899-1944) to the National Library, Dublin, where they are bound as The Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer. The inscription on the title page, in Holloway's hand, varies from volume to volume. 2 Holloway, July-Dec., 1911, pp. 308-309. 3 Peter Kavanagh, in The Story Of the Abbey Theatre, N. Y., Devin-Adair, Co., 1950, p. 7, writes: "Holloway was present at every Abbey Theatre J;lerformance. and his impressions total approximately fifteen million words in a scnpt which is almost illegible." On page 99, he gives a curious misreading of the entry of A?ril 26. 1914: "'It would 'be a well spent £.50, 'wrote Holloway' and would frighten the life out of these other potentates, Lady Gregory and Yeats neither of whom has even a sense of humor.''' Holloway's entry was: "He (L) thinks Edward Martyn should apply for a patent for a new theatre. It would 'be a well-spent £.50 &: would frighten the life Qut of the other patentees (italics mine). "L" was William John Lawrence, a dramatic critic and authority on the Elizabethan stage. 74 1966 YOUNG LENNOX ROBINSON 75 his gossipy, provocative, and sometimes provoking journal entries. While the physical outline suggested in the "impression" quoted above is that of a figure as familiar to those who knew him in 1958 as in 1911, the character interpretation is far from accurate. One surmises that the judgment, obviously hasty and unfair in the light of future events, was prompted more by Holloway's distrust of the Abbey's directors than by any deep-seated dislike of the young man in the corner, for it is well known that Holloway and Robinson later became close friends. Only two years before Holloway made his caustic observation, Robinson had been appointed by the "bosses" as manager of the Abbey Theatre and producer of its plays. He had weathered Miss Horniman's severe criticism of him for his decision to go on with the matinee of May 7, 1910, although King Edward VII had died late the night before. Miss Horniman withdrew her financial support of the Abbey, but Robinson was retained as producer-manager. He had written three plays of his own by this time, somewhat under the influence of Ibsen-not very good plays he admitted, but realistic, all of them-and definitely opposed to the Yeatsian ideal of poetic drama. To this extent at least, he was not aping his master. Perhaps when Holloway encountered him that day on the Dublin street-car, Robinson's head was filled with ideas for new...

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