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9
A Bridle for Proteus

Annette had driven the trap from the glebe house to Ballaghaderreen to meet Douglas at the station. He stepped down from the train into July sunshine and his sister's smile. Eager to maintain their mutual involvement in each other's life through their long separation of 1890–1891, they had kept up a thoughtful and detailed correspondence. Yet as always when they were face to face, there was still so much to say that their conversations flitted from subject to subject like butterflies in a meadow. They were, they agreed, the best of friends as well as members of the same family. The only other person with whom Hyde had ever shared a similar friendship was his father's youngest sister, Sisilla Hyde.

Some things, of course, had not been put in letters, because neither wanted to upset the other. Douglas was sure that Annette had refrained from telling him half or more of the trouble she had had with "Der Alte," the term he now used instead of "the Master" or "the Governor" to refer to his father. It was an indication of his changing relationship with the Reverend Hyde. Annette suspected that Douglas was far more disappointed than he acknowledged to return to Roscommon with no prospects of future employment. It would not be easy for him, she knew, to face Der Alte's questions on the subject. No matter: in his last letters from North America, Douglas had promised that he would not go off again for at least a few weeks. In the days to come there would be time enough to talk things over. For the moment the pressing problem was to get all his bags into the trap without breaking any of


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the bottles of whiskey that had been given to him in New York or crushing the photograph he had brought home for her of himself in his Canadian backwoods hunter's outfit. It was his favorite picture of himself, he said. Everything he was wearing or carrying, he assured her—fur hat, fur coat, fur gloves, the snowshoes clutched under his arm—were necessities for anyone planning to spend time outdoors in the fierce Canadian winter.

But now it was July, and the sun was pleasantly warm rather than unremittingly hot as it had been in New York. Small white clouds propelled by a constant but gentle breeze rippled the shadows of the landscape. It was a day for tennis. Annette assured him that, in accordance with the instructions he had given her in his letters, she had attended to the spring rolling of the tennis court and had had his tennis clothes washed and pressed. She also volunteered that her game was perhaps now the equal of his, thanks to the hours that she had been spending on the courts at Ratra. In any case he would have an opportunity to practice his skills against a variety of partners, for invitations to rounds of social activities had come from Boyle, Frenchpark, and Castlerea. Other mail, she knew—for she had stacked it there herself—was also on his writing table. She could not help but wonder about letters from Fredericton addressed in an unfamiliar feminine hand. Which of the young women about whom he had written in his long, descriptive letters could these be from? Of greater curiosity were the other envelopes, for perhaps one of these might contain the news for which they were both hoping, of the possibility of a university appointment in Ireland.

For the moment, however, Hyde's questions concerned the smaller world of glebe house and village. There was no major work to be done indoors, Annette assured him. Nor was there any reason for him to involve himself in seasonal chores. Connolly had everything in good order; the prospect for a second hay crop was excellent. As for the fortunes and misfortunes of glebe tenants and neighbors, there had been the usual sicknesses and a few predictable deaths, but nothing much different from other years. Annette was pleased that she could give him so favorable a report. As the trap rolled up the drive to the glebe house, with its avenue of trees and glimpses of ripening fruit behind the orchard wall, Douglas's spirits could not have been higher. He was genuinely glad to see the Reverend Hyde, who came to the door to greet them, his limp rather more pronounced, but whether from arthritis or gout Douglas could not tell. As father and son sat down


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together indoors, Annette disappeared to give the ancilla (as the housemaid still was called in the Hyde household) instructions for the disposition of Douglas's boxes and bags.

To Douglas's relief his father did not quiz him about his prospects for the future but listened attentively to his description of Phillips Brooks's sermon in Trinity Church in Boston and the magnetic appeal of Thomas DeWitt Talmage who had packed some four thousand people into a church in Brooklyn on a hot Sunday morning. Later, while the Reverend Hyde was resting and Annette was occupied with household affairs, he went for an old-fashioned ramble, stopping as usual at some of the cottages he passed, then returned home to read his mail and look over the invitations Annette had mentioned. She was right: if the weather held, there surely would be great times during the next few weeks. The prospect pleased him, not only for himself but also because he still felt a little guilty about having left Annette solely responsible for their father and the glebe house for such a long time, with so little chance to get away on her own. Oldfields's visits apparently had been, as always, infrequent.

On July 14 Douglas and Annette went to a tennis party at French-park House. The next day they had to choose between a dance in Boyle and tennis and dinner at Ratra; they decided to skip the dance. But two days later, on the first day of the annual Boyle tennis tournament, they left home early and stayed so long after the last game, dining and visiting, that they were not back at the glebe house until nearly midnight. The tournament continued on July 17, with both Annette and Douglas participating. After a few good games Annette and her partner, Mr. Fagan, lost to a Miss White and a Mr. Smith. On July 20 there was a cricket match at Frenchpark which drew a number of people, including many Hyde had not seen since his return home. The finals of the Boyle tennis tournament were on July 21. The weather was very wet. Despite heavy showers Hyde and his partner, a Miss Marsh, played their match but were soundly beaten. Hyde kept up a good face about it at dinner at the Hamiltons, but in his diary he rather ungallantly blamed his loss on his having drawn Miss Marsh, whose game was not up to his standards. The weather improved by July 27 in time for another cricket match—Castlerea against the garrison—at Frenchpark. Playing for Castlerea, Hyde fielded fairly well but was disappointed that he got in only one or two runs.

On Monday, August 3, despite a steady cold rain, Hyde set out for a five-day visit to Cork at the invitation of Charlotte Grace O'Brien.


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Daughter of William Smith O'Brien (leader of the last battle of the rising of 1848, which had ended in Tipperary, in the widow McCormack's cabbage garden), Grace O'Brien had a modest reputation as a writer, having published a number of poems and a well-received novel. Hyde admired her not just for her writing but for her commitment to relief work among the poor, especially single women and young girls who for lack of any other means of support were forced to emigrate to America. Her home was Ard-an-óir in the Blackwater Valley near Foynes, the same area in which Hyde's ancestors had settled and built Castle Hyde. The journey by rail to Foynes was long and roundabout. It began with one train to Castlerea and another to Athlone and Athenry. There he was forced to endure a long delay before he could continue on through Gort, Ardrahan, Cratloe, and Ennis to Limerick, where he spent the night at the George Hotel. Tuesday morning, after several drinks with an old friend who by chance was also staying at the George, he proceeded by train to Foynes and by carriage to his destination.

As Miss O'Brien had become seriously hearing-impaired in recent years, Hyde talked with her, as he noted in his diary, "on my fingers." With her when he arrived was Lord Monteagle's sister. In the afternoon they were joined by Willie Stockley, not yet returned to New Brunswick, and a Miss Osbourne. On Wednesday, except for Lord Monteagle's sister, who had another engagement, the entire party went to Monteagle's home, Mount Trenchard, a mansion that Hyde found quite dazzling. On Thursday, having been invited to the estate of Sir Stephen de Vere for some shooting, Hyde took a boat to Foynes Island. A classicist and a poet with a lyrical talent as well as a fine sportsman, de Vere, second son of Sir Aubrey de Vere, was an agreeable companion. At the time of Hyde's visit he was close to completing an edition of his own translations of the odes of Horace, a task at which Hyde himself had tried his skill informally some years before.

Hyde's bag for the day was scarcely his best: a white rabbit, killed at forty yards, and a crow. Nevertheless, given host and scenery, he enjoyed himself immensely. When he returned to Mount Trenchard he discovered that the party had been increased by a Miss Knox. The entire week had been like that—agreeably relaxed and informal, with people coming and going as they wished, and much good conversation. On Friday, after walking a couple of miles or more through the spectacular countryside, Hyde dined with Lord Monteagle and his family. After dinner he had a long talk with Miss Butcher, Monteagle's wife's sister,


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who was both intelligent and independent—like Grace O'Brien, the kind of woman whose company he most enjoyed.

Back in Roscommon, with summer drawing to an end and with it the diversions that had kept him from dwelling on the bleakness of his prospects for the future, Hyde's spirits began to sag. Remembering the prizes and awards he had won at Trinity, the reviews his published work had received, and the respect with which he had been treated in Fredericton, Boston, and New York, it was difficult for him to accept the fact that he had had no offers at all, in Ireland or anywhere else, since he had returned home. The political news was unbearably depressing. With Tim Healy and other jackals after him, Parnell was losing one by-election after another. In September, to occupy himself profitably and take his mind off the current political situation, Hyde began the study of Anglo-Saxon, a subject certain to enhance his qualifications for a university post, should one become available. He also continued his own writing and translating—he was then at work on poems from the Irish to be published in Love Songs of Connacht —but he noted ruefully that successful as his publications had been, earning a literary reputation was not earning a living.

Hyde's best work was always that which he completed rapidly, during periods of inspiration. In the four days between the seventh and the eleventh of September he produced nine verse translations. These eventually appeared in Love Songs of Connacht, but while the manuscript was still in progress he allowed some to be published in the Weekly Freeman, where they attracted an enthusiastic response from readers. One of his translations of this period was "Ringleted youth of my love," the most popular poem in the collection and the one that has been reprinted most often. For all of his creative and scholarly labor, however, Hyde received no payment, only the Freeman 's promise that he could have the plates of everything they published without charge.

At the end of September Hyde was deeply saddened by the news that Parnell was seriously ill. By October 6, 1891, Parnell was dead, and half the nation was in mourning. From Parnell's home in Brighton his body was brought back to Ireland. Crowds of supporters met carriage, train, and boat at every point of transfer, despite weather as black as their mood. Thousands filed past his coffin as it lay in state in the City Hall in Dublin. A torchlight procession accompanied the hearse that took him to his grave in Glasnevin. Someone—probably Lord Wolseley, but the story has been attributed also to Arthur Balfour, among others—is reported to have said that the only crowds of which


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he ever was afraid were those that gathered to pay silent tribute to the man people called their "uncrowned king." The Parnell era was over, and with it all hope of Home Rule in the foreseeable future. But Hyde was certain that, like the phoenix that many had used as a symbol of the Irish nation, hope would rise again. Yet he could not prevent his thoughts from returning to his memories of how agreeable life had been in Canada, how well he had been treated in Boston and New York, how futile it seemed, at least for the present, to remain in Ireland.

It was with anticipation, therefore, of perhaps some interim improvement in his own particular situation that Hyde learned in December that O'Neill Russell's advance information had been correct: a formal announcement had been made of an opening in language and literature at the new University of Chicago. At the same time he received word of an opening at Queen's College in Belfast which called for the qualifications in history and English literature that he could provide. Setting aside the poems on which he had been working, Hyde concentrated on preparing a six-page summary of his academic record and other accomplishments to accompany letters of application to both Chicago and Belfast and on obtaining persuasive letters of recommendation.

Hyde's application to Belfast, addressed to the Earl of Zetland, was written by necessity in the formal and obsequious language of the day:

May it please your Excellency,

I have the honour to offer myself as a Candidate for the Professorship of History and English Literature now vacant in the Queens College, Belfast.

I beg to enclose a list of degrees and honours which I obtained in Trinity College, Dublin, both [sic] in English, Celtic, and Foreign Literature.

I am not ignorant of University teaching, having lectured during the year '90 '91 on English and Modern Literature in the State University of New Brunswick.

A presentation was made to me by the Students when leaving, and I enclose the testimonial of the President of the University.

Although I have chiefly worked at English and Modern Literature I am also fairly acquainted with the Greek and Latin Classics, with Anglo-Saxon, and with the Language and Literature of the Gaels of Scotland, and have some knowledge of Hebrew.

Praying that this Memorial may receive your Excellency's favourable consideration,

I have the honour to be your Excellency's most obedient servant.

Douglas Hyde, LL.D., M.R.I.A.

Among those who wrote cautiously to Chicago and Belfast on Hyde's behalf were George Salmon, Hyde's former professor in the


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divinity program, now the Provost, and Edward Dowden, professor of English literature at Trinity. Salmon endorsed Edward Dowden's letter as consistent with what he knew of Hyde and added that he himself considered the candidate "a good linguist, a man of minute and various reading, and a very diligent Student." He pointed to Hyde's record of publication as evidence that he had "not been idle since the termination of his college course" and drew attention to Hyde's experience as an interim professor of modern languages in New Brunswick.

Calling Hyde "one of our most brilliant and distinguished scholars of recent years," Dowden was no less laudatory. He enumerated Hyde's areas of expertise ("English, French, German, Italian, Celtic, History, Law, Literature, Theology") and noted that, "in all the wide range included by what these names imply," Hyde had "proved his ability and attainments." Like Salmon, Dowden pointed out that already Hyde's scholarship "had produced fruit in works . . . widely and favourably known to Celtic students." With this "abundance of learning," Dowden declared, "Dr. Hyde has retained his brightness and freshness of intellect and his geniality of temper; he has not lost touch with actual life and reality." Hyde would make, he avowed, "an admirable Professor" who "would augment his present roll of distinctions by works of scholarship which would do credit to the great Institution with which he would be connected."

Maxwell H. Close, treasurer of the Royal Irish Academy, did not send his letter directly to the provosts of Chicago or Belfast but addressed it to Hyde for inclusion with his applications. Close testified to his personal knowledge of Hyde's academic qualifications, his literary sensibility, and his attainments; he expressed his belief that Hyde would succeed particularly in the task of imparting to students the benefits of his intellectual capacity and cultured taste. He had the highest esteem, he declared, for Hyde's "power of acquiring Languages"—a "great advantage," he noted, "in dealing with the genius and individual character of the English."

Although everything else was put aside during the last month of 1891 as Hyde concentrated on presenting the best possible case for his appointment to both institutions, there was no further mention of these applications either in his diary or in the letters and papers that have survived to suggest the kind of acknowledgment or response, if any, that he received. What seems certain is that he was never seriously considered for either job, but there is no indication as to why. In later years Hyde often spoke bitterly of Mahaffy, whom he apparently


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suspected of continuing to undermine his efforts to secure a university position, but whether or not Mahaffy was implicated remains, in the absence of any other evidence, a matter of conjecture. Certainly Mahaffy did nothing to help Hyde's candidacy for these and other posts, and relations between them remained strained, with occasional eruptions, through the years. But the fact is that Salmon, Dowden, and Close were not much help either—perhaps because they could not be. Try as they might to emphasize the excellence of Hyde's academic background in modern history and literature, English and European, it was clear from Hyde's record of publication that his scholarship was limited to Celtic subjects, a factor that might have worked against him. Moreover, by 1891 the connection between Dr. Douglas Hyde, the public man, and An Craoibhin, the public persona of Hyde's private Irish self, was as well known to the Ascendancy as to Irish Ireland, although the extent of his Fenian connections and sympathies seems not to have been recognized outside nationalist circles, even by some who were closest to him. No one thought of Hyde as a danger, but to any alert university administrator, his dossier would have suggested that he could be an embarrassment and might be a nuisance.

New Year's Day, 1892, found Hyde again at work on the manuscript of Love Songs of Connacht . On February 11 in the library of the Royal Irish Academy he made the acquaintance of a young priest from county Meath who, like himself, had as a boy learned Irish from local native speakers. At Maynooth, Eugene O'Growney had spent his holidays mostly on Inismaan (the Aran Island later visited by John Millington Synge) but he had also made the rounds of other Gaeltachts, to get a good feel for spoken Irish wherever it survived in Ireland. Ordained in 1889, he had served for a while as curate of a small parish in Westmeath. He had contributed to the Gaelic Journal and Irish Ecclesiastical Record . In 1891 he had succeeded John Fleming as editor of the Journal and had been appointed professor of Irish at his alma mater. Hyde described O'Growney in his diary as "a young man with a large head and thick lips," "kindly and slow-speaking," who was "nice looking without being handsome or well-groomed." Their shared interests and experiences emerged in a long conversation that occupied most of their afternoon. Among the ideas on which they agreed was that the time had come—the country was ready—for a plan that would restore the Irish language to the people of Ireland. But it would have to be offered as an aspect of their culture that was theirs by choice; they would have to be assured that it would augment but not replace English; and they would have


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to be convinced that it would enhance rather than detract from Ireland's position in the world. These three concerns had been addressed by Hyde in "A Plea for the Irish Language" (1886), in his preface to Beside the Fire (1890), and in his speech on the present state of the Irish language (1891) that had been printed in full in the Gaelic American . These same concerns had informed an essay entitled "The National Language" that Eugene O'Growney had published in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record of November 1890.

As Hyde was scheduled to leave on the night boat for London, he could not continue his conversation as long as he liked with O'Growney, but he assured his new friend that he would look him up at Maynooth immediately upon his return. That evening, in one of his occasional bursts of hyperbole—piqued perhaps by his conviction that his own failure to obtain a post in an Irish university was the work of such men as Mahaffy and Atkinson—Hyde declared in his diary that O'Growney was "perhaps the only learned man in Ireland today who speaks Irish correctly." He also could not help but wonder: Had he himself been a Catholic graduate of Maynooth instead of a Protestant graduate of Trinity, would he now be in O'Growney's position? Had his Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta been about German tales, had his Beside the Fire been translated from the French, had his poems and essays celebrated the eloquence and independence of English yeomanry—had he assumed the accepted Anglo-Irish role of Englishman born in Ireland and written about almost anything but the Irish heritage, Irish language, and native traditions of his own country—would he have been more attractive to Cork or Queens or even Trinity?

In London, Hyde's sense of himself returned. He had an agreeable interview on the day of his arrival with David Nutt, publisher of Beside the Fire . The next day, quite by chance, his old friend W. M. Crook from Trinity College stopped him on the Strand and invited him to a meeting of a new Irish society that had been founded on a "wet and windy" night in December by W. P. Ryan, W. B. Yeats, T. W. Rolleston, D. J. O'Donoghue, J. G. O'Keefe, and John Todhunter—all well-known veterans of other short-lived Irish organizations. Various schemes and programs designed to promote the new society (the term "club" was rejected) had been discussed, Hyde learned, in a series of subsequent meetings which had resulted in the choice of a name, the "Irish Literary Society," and an agenda that included a missionary drive for an enlarged membership. The February 6, 1892, issue of the Freeman's Journal had published an article outlining the new society's


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aims: first, to resume the long-neglected work of Young Ireland, take up the unfinished schemes of 1842 and 1845, and voice the aspirations of 1792; second, to promote the publication of a series of books on Irish history, biography, poetry, and folklore and reprint old editions and valuable out-of-print books; third, to bring Irish books within easier reach of London readers and to improve the distribution of Irish books in Ireland. Among the difficulties encountered had been the counterproductive efforts of well-meaning members less interested in literature, the diluting effect of competing organizations that drew on the same membership pool in England and Ireland, and the skepticism of publishers. (One, quoted by W. P. Ryan in his account of the organization, had written, "I should be inclined to say that it would put another St. Patrick to the pin of his collar to convert the Irish people into a book-reading and book-buying nation".) To counter these difficulties, the organizers adopted the strategy of encouraging loyalty and involvement by assigning titles and tasks to as many different people as possible. At the February 13 meeting to which Crook had invited Hyde, twelve vice-presidents were chosen. Hyde's reputation as poet, scholar, and active participant in the language movement made him a desirable person for such a post. He was given two tasks. One was to translate a selection from the sagas sufficient to fill eight or nine volumes of a new Irish Saga series to be published by Fisher Unwin. The other was to write a guide to Gaelic literature for a second series, to be undertaken by a proposed subsidiary of the society tentatively called the Irish Publishing Company, of which Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (the Young Irelander of the forties, editor-founder of the Nation, and former prime minister of Australia) had agreed to serve as director.

On February 17, Yeats arranged a luncheon at which he introduced Hyde to David Garnett, the reader for Fisher Unwin who was interested in the idea of the Irish Saga series. Attentive, courteous, and grateful for Hyde's cooperation, Yeats insisted that in the evening Hyde visit his home in Bedford Park to meet Dr. Todhunter. With Todhunter, described in Hyde's diary as "a thin, distinguished looking man, of medium build, with finely chiselled features" whose wife's sister was a Dublin acquaintance, Hyde spent a pleasant few hours discussing folklore in general and Irish and Norse tales in particular. On the way back to his hotel he stopped at the National Liberal Club where he hoped he might have a cigar and a glass of punch with Crook. To his dismay Tim Healy was also at the club. Reluctant even to lay eyes on the man he regarded as the scoundrel who had brought down Parnell,


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Hyde studiously avoided speaking to him. But nothing could spoil his elation at feeling himself involved in the future once again.

The following week Miss Butcher, whom Hyde had met at Lord Monteagle's, had arranged for him to stay at the home of her friends, the Protheros, in Cambridge. The Prothero home seemed to him to be constantly filled with a variety of interesting and talented people whom he would have been content to stay and talk with, but Miss Butcher insisted on taking him to meet Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Although no more than sixty, the English painter seemed at first to Hyde to be "an old, grey-haired man, kindly, child-like, with a faraway look in his eyes." Hyde was therefore astonished to discover not only Burne-Jones's extraordinary interest in Ireland and Irish literature but the extent of his Irish library. Both of Hyde's books and almost every other recent publication of Irish interest were on the shelves, as well as the complete works of the French Celticist, d'Arbois de Jubainville. Moreover, to Hyde's great enjoyment, Burne-Jones talked at length on the current status of Irish literary studies, a subject on which he was also astonishingly well informed.

A week later Hyde returned to Dublin. Within a few days he kept his promise to himself and O'Growney to pay a visit to Maynooth. After an excellent lunch accompanied by champagne during which the two men discussed a recent essay by John MacNeill on the role of the clergy in preserving the Irish language, they toured the campus. So impressed was Hyde that he made notes for his diary: Total enrollment, 500. Students attend three lectures each day and study for over five hours more. They cannot have fires or friends in their rooms, or smoke, or speak at meals or in the quadrangles. During each of the first three years they are required to take both O'Growney's class and a class in English literature. Hyde could not help but admire the results: all the students spoke Latin competently and seemed well schooled in Shakespeare, Milton, and Macaulay. He wondered what would happen if such a regimen were instituted in New Brunswick. He was particularly interested in O'Growney's estimate that about two hundred students (forty percent of current enrollment) had some knowledge of Irish.

Before returning to Frenchpark, Hyde called on another friend, the historian and novelist Standish James O'Gray. Several other people, including a man named O'Clery, were there before him. With plans for new publishing projects on Irish subjects fresh in his mind, Hyde listened thoughtfully to their conversation, which included a discussion of the Irish novels based on early history and mythology on which


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O'Grady was then working. Mrs. O'Grady, who read Hyde's hand, said that among the hundreds of hands she had examined she had never seen one more interesting or more unusual. She took an ink impression of it and urged him to "have great courage and self-confidence" for he had it in himself "to do great things." He left at about two o'clock in the morning, with curlews crying over his head. Whether from the bottle of wine he had drunk or the words of Mrs. O'Grady or the talk of promising prospects (he was not sure which), he was, he acknowledged, "a little tipsy."

Back in Frenchpark, Hyde sat down to work on Love Songs but also began making a list for Garnett of the titles he would recommend including in the Irish Saga series. With June came the sad news that the Frenches were leaving Ratra. A neighbor for twenty-five years, John French had been for Hyde a direct link with Seamas Hart. As a small boy Hyde had often followed Hart over Ratra meadow and bog, asking interminable questions, receiving Hart's laconic answers. As he grew older he and Hart and John French often went shooting together, sometimes accompanied by Hyde's father and two brothers. Ratra had been the place that he had missed most—especially in fall and spring—when he was in Canada. During the entire time that he was away in Dublin, London, and North America, it had reassured him to know that the Frenches would cheer up Annette if she grew lonely and would invite her for tennis or tea. He himself, in fact, had always been glad to receive an invitation from Ratra when Annette was on holiday and he was the one who was staying alone with his father in the glebe house. The loss struck him particularly in the middle of summer when his Oldfield aunts and his sister went off to Killarney for several weeks. On the one hand, with so much to do, Hyde was glad that there was little to tempt him away from his writing desk. On the other hand, it was strange to be without the people and activities that had been so closely woven into the fabric of his Frenchpark life.

Meanwhile, in Dublin, W. B. Yeats, John O'Leary, Dr. George Sigerson, Maud Gonne, J. F. Taylor, Alice and Mary Furlong, and others had been meeting informally to discuss plans for an Ireland-based affiliate of the Irish Literary Society, to be called the National Literary Society. They named a provisional committee and organized a June meeting in the Rotunda, attended by Hyde, at which they issued a statement of purpose which read in part, "Every Irish movement of recent years has drawn a great portion of its power from the literary movement started by Davis, but that movement is over, and it is not


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possible to live for ever upon the past. A living Ireland must have a living literature." A slate of candidates for office was drawn up and distributed, officers were chosen, and at an August meeting Douglas Hyde was elected president.

Hyde knew that he had not been Yeats's first choice for the top leadership role of the new society. Yeats had made no secret of the fact that he preferred John O'Leary for his managerial skills, but he had recommended Hyde for one of the vice-presidencies because of his persuasive powers and his prominence in the growing Gaelic Revival. The membership, however, resisted Yeats's political maneuvering (even O'Leary complained of the tactics that had been used to support him) and opted for Hyde as president—"not for any merit" on his part, Hyde wrote to James Jeffrey Roche, but because he was "a good neutral figurehead." Yeats accepted the rebuff more or less gracefully until Duffy arrived, dismissed the statement read at the Rotunda, and substituted his own publication choices for the list of books and authors that had been drawn up in London. The first was to be an historical essay by Thomas Davis. To Yeats this meant creating a memorial to the Young Ireland of the forties at the expense of Young Ireland of the nineties in complete opposition to everything the National Literary Society had planned. However, since Duffy's plans were not contradictory to the prospectus of the Irish Literary Society that had been printed in the February 6, 1892, issue of the Freeman's Journal, they were not rejected out of hand. A bitter debate developed. O'Leary sided with Yeats; Taylor and Sigerson sided with Duffy. For months heated arguments broke out at every National Literary Society meeting, often lasting well into the night. Some nights the participants came close to blows. "I was in the chair," Hyde complained, "and I had a hopeless task of trying to keep order." Yeats had a different view of the situation. Perceiving himself as a young David battling the old Goliath, he wanted neither neutrality nor order—he wanted support. Later he wrote scathingly of how he had been bested by Taylor while "Dr. Hyde, 'most popular of men,' sat dreaming of his old white cockatoo in faraway Roscommon." In the end all arguments proved moot, for Duffy was not able to raise the money needed to fund the proposed publishing company; all that could be salvaged of the project were a few titles that were undertaken by Fisher Unwin at the recommendation of Garnett in consultation with Rolleston and Hyde. Among these—it looked like a compromise but more likely was based on what was then complete or nearly complete and readily available—were Davis's Patriot Parlia-


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ment of 1689, the selection by Duffy that had begun the dissension, and Hyde's Story of Early Gaelic Literature .

In the fall of 1892—already overcommitted, with Love Songs of Connacht in its final stages and The Story of Early Gaelic Literature in progress—Hyde's third pressing task was to compose a presidential address to be delivered in Leinster House on Molesworth Street on November 25. Sponsored by the National Literary Society, the event was to be open by subscription to the public. There was really no time left for refereeing shouting matches and giving pep talks to individual men and women who had expressed an interest in knowing more about the society. There was no time either, to Hyde's regret, for the Dublin or Big House social life that ordinarily he enjoyed. Even shooting, usually his principal recreation of the season, had to be curtailed. Summer tennis and teas had provided the usual opportunities, but he allowed no flirtations to occupy him. The women mentioned in his diary or letter book were primarily old friends such as Frances Crofton and Maud Gonne or members of the London or the Dublin literary society. From time to time he received a note from the Fräulein in Canada.

In October the Oldfields gave a large party. Hyde could not excuse himself without offending them. He chatted agreeably with aunts, uncles, and cousins, exchanged personal news with people he had not seen for a time, and met a young Englishwoman, Lucy Cometina Kurtz, a new friend whom Annette had encountered the previous summer in Killarney. From then on until November 25, except for meetings, his time was spent almost exclusively in the library of the Royal Irish Academy or at home at his writing desk. Tickets for the National Literary Society event were going well at a shilling apiece, he had been told. Hyde was pleased. He felt that he had selected a good topic for the occasion. Dr. Sigerson's inaugural address, delivered in August, had been "On the Origin, Influence, and Environment of Irish Literature." Entertaining and informative, it had been an education for many people who had been unaware of the extent of their ignorance on the subject. Hyde had welcomed it as a good introduction to his own lecture, "On the Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish People." Particular interest in his topic had been generated by notices and news items in the United Ireland and Weekly Freeman which suggested that in their twin presentations he and Sigerson were in fact setting the tone and establishing the level of discourse of the new Literary Society. A few correspondents from the press had expressed curiosity about the meaning of his title.


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He had declined to go into detail, and now they stood ready, their pencils poised, to examine what he had to say.

Although Hyde had revised his address again and again, he was still not satisfied with it on the morning of November 25. In the academy library he sat writing and rewriting almost to the moment when he had to leave for Leinster House. There he immediately saw that the turnout was good. He had been told that over a hundred people had subscribed in advance. The press was present. So were a number of people whose reaction and response would be very important to him personally as well as to the society. The moment came for him to speak. He heard the sound of his own voice. It carried well in the hall, rolling into the far corners and spreading to the side walls without a hint of a resonant echo. One hour and twenty minutes later his voice stopped. It was over. No one had fallen asleep; no one had walked out. The applause was satisfying. He had done a good job, he told himself. Then, smiling and shaking hands, he prepared himself to hear the opinions of others.

W. P. Ryan called Hyde's address "sensational," a statement on which he elaborated positively two years later in his overview of the period, The Irish Literary Revival . W. B. Yeats reported that as the audience left the hall he heard someone say that it was "the most important utterance of its kind since '48." Reviews in the nationalist newspapers ranged from approving to enthusiastic. On December 3 the United Ireland carried an editorial in which the writer declared, "I have no hesitation in saying that it was one of the best, and, what is better, one of the most practical lectures on a National topic I have heard for a long time." Most of the other nationalist newspaper concurred. Many called for immediate publication. Even the usually hostile Irish Times —then very much a Castle paper—could find nothing more biting to print than the curiously ambivalent statement that nowhere else in the world would "an able, well-educated man" get away with saying the things that Hyde had said. The reviews had a healthy impact on public perception of the National Literary Society. Meetings to further its aims increased in different parts of the country; other cultural societies sought affiliation; and (largely through the efforts of Maud Gonne) the planned book distribution project was launched. Nor was Hyde's success attributable simply to his heady rhetoric. On the contrary, according to W. P. Ryan, Hyde's lecture had gone "to the heart of a national evil which was preying on Irish life like a cancer."

What Hyde meant by deanglicization, the idea that captured his listeners' imagination, was simple, subtle, and bold. Giuseppi Mazzini


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had said that the Irish ought to be content to belong to the United Kingdom, as they had lost their "notes of nationalism"—language and custom—and consequently no longer had an identity of their own. Hyde challenged the people of Ireland to prove that the Italian patriot was wrong. Item by item, he reviewed with them the evidence that appeared to support Mazzini's remark and established that nothing had been lost beyond recovery, that where the Irish "notes of nationalism" had been suppressed they survived beneath a veneer of anglicization that was easily removed. Nor did he advocate an immediate and wholesale stripping of this veneer from Irish life. On the contrary: it would be foolish, he declared, to give up the best of what Ireland had borrowed from England and made its own. The English language and English customs could live in harmony with the native tongue and native traditions, if that was what people wanted. But to have a choice, both English and Irish had to be openly and freely available to everybody, with no false value being attached to one or stigma to the other.

What had to end, Hyde avowed, was the self-destructive and contradictory simultaneous hating and aping of the English that had been going on for two hundred years and more. What had to stop was the self-defeating clamor to be recognized as a distinct nation even as the distinguishing characteristics of Irish nationality, language, and custom were being discarded. If an Irishman could become a good Englishman, he thundered, there would be no problem. But as hard as some tried, as often as others had been stripped of their Celtic characteristics, they had not been able to divest themselves of the mantle of the past. It was now time for both Unionists and nationalists to accept that mantle, to transform their dim consciousness of the shaping force of place and tradition into an active and potent feeling, and thus to increase their sense of self-respect and of honor.

To the question of how to proceed, Hyde had practical answers: by arresting the decay of the Irish language and rediscovering its honorable roots in antiquity so that native speakers might use it with pride; by linking past with present by employing traditional Irish personal and place names; by enjoying traditional Irish music and games; by preserving traditional Irish customs and habits of dress; by reading Irish and Anglo-Irish books. In conclusion he appealed to everyone, whatever his or her politics, whether unionist or nationalist, to help the Irish, "even at the risk of encouraging national aspirations," to become again what they once were: "one of the most original, artistic, literary, and charming peoples of Europe."


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Practiced in the art of arousing an audience, Hyde made his points not once but several times, each time from a different perspective, thus reinforcing without repeating. He anticipated questions and objections; he provided anecdotal evidence; he appealed to emotion as well as intellect. Deanglicization would not be easy, he warned: it would require that his listeners examine themselves for the latent West-Britonism that some had allowed to settle inside themselves. He promised, however, that out of their efforts would come the reward of recovering their personal and national identity—first and most easily, perhaps, in their music, then in their customs and games, then in their history and literature, and finally in their minds and hearts.

What Hyde proposed offered something for everyone within a national context. It touched the common sensitive nerve concerned with belonging. It allowed even the most committed Irish Unionists, who traced their lineage through generations of English ancestors living in Ireland, to distinguish themselves from the English of England and explain their Irish roots through place rather than race. It provided a more acceptable alternative to Irish nationalists who hitherto had had to choose, both actually and metaphorically, between throwing rocks and hiding under them. It required no either/or commitment but suggested a range of individual nationalist behavior that could be as nonassertive as singing an Irish song or playing an Irish game or as assertive as immediate and thorough self-deanglicization. Because it was not coercive, it did not invite a coercive response.

The essential point of Hyde's address was that national identity was not something that had to be awaited through long and patient suffering or seized by violence but was available to every Irish man or woman who would simply deanglicize—that is, give up imitating the English. It was foolish, he declared, to express a hatred of the English and at the same time adopt English names, English customs, and English culture. It was equally foolish to reject a bilingual, bicultural solution when, as in the case of language, it might be necessary to employ English in certain contexts without there being any reason to use it in another. In discarding what was their own, he pointed out, the Irish had thrown away the best claim they had to the right to be recognized as a separate and equal nationality. To regain that claim, they now had to discard what they had not made their own and indeed what they did not want or need.

For Douglas Hyde, the radical and revolutionary doctrine of deanglicization, delivered at a time when for many people the alterna-


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tives appeared to be only acquiescence or violence, made his National Literary Society presidential address the most important speech of his career. He was immediately invited to talk on the same subject in Cork on January 23, 1893. Two weeks after the Cork lecture, on February 9, Hyde spoke to the literary society in Dublin about Irish books that had been published during the past year. A week later he presided at a lecture presented by Standish O'Grady. On February 28 he took the night ferry to London to attend a March 1 meeting of the Irish Literary Society. At the meeting he was introduced to Alfred Perceval Graves and Stopford Brooke. Brooke's lecture to the society, on the English language as a medium for the Irish people, interested Hyde particularly. He like Brooke, who invited him and Rolleston to dinner and who turned out to be not only a good lecturer but an intelligent and amusing conversationalist. Unfortunately, Hyde's days were so full that they had no chance to meet again during this London trip, but they vowed that they would make a point of seeing each other in the future.

March 3 was filled with appointments with publishers; March 4, with a meeting of the council of the Irish Literary Society; March 5, with an afternoon lecture and dinner with the Todhunters; March 6, with an examination by a new eye specialist, a visit to the British Museum, and a dinner party at the home of Fisher Unwin. The next week had fewer meetings but more social engagements: lunches, dinners, theater; a visit to the British Museum and Parliament and to the Grafton Galleries to see an exhibition of Impressionist paintings; long talks with Lady Wilde, Francis Fahy, and John Redmond; and social calls on the Protheros, Miss Butcher, and others. On March 17 Hyde "drowned the shamrock" in champagne with Rolleston. On March 23 he returned to Dublin. By the end of the first week in April he was relieved to be again in Roscommon, enjoying the unhurried quiet of Frenchpark after months of frantic activity, and putting the finishing touches to the manuscript of Love Songs of Connacht , which was about to go to press. Already the days were longer, and there was a pleasant warmth to the sun that appeared between April showers. Annette had invited Lucy Kurtz for a visit. Hyde remembered meeting her in October at the Oldfields' party and hearing much about her from his sister and his aunts, but he had not seen her since.

Lucy Kurtz was tall and slim, with a mass of wavy hair, an oval face, high cheekbones, large and expressive eyes, a slender, acquiline nose, and full womanly lips. Annette had been particularly eager to introduce her to Douglas not only because she herself enjoyed Lucy's company


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but because she knew that he liked educated, clever, and independent women. Their Oldfield aunts also approved of her, which Annette took to be a good sign. Her brother Oldfield, unmarried and remote from his family, seemed cynical and lonely on the rare occasions when they met. She knew he had been disappointed in love as well as in other aspirations; she remembered his dismay in 1887 when he did not succeed in his application for an appointment as resident magistrate. Both she and her aunts agreed that little could be hoped from him. But for Douglas, who was charming and gregarious and who enjoyed the company of women, marriage to a compatible wife would be an advantage. Surely it would relieve their anxieties if he were married and settled in Ireland, for then perhaps there would be no more talk of his going back to America. A good marriage, they assured each other, might even help him secure the university position in Ireland that continued to elude him.

Annette had anticipated the situation correctly: Douglas and Lucy were immediately attracted to each other. At the end of Lucy's April visit Annette prevailed on her to return in May, before she went home to England. After their fortnight together in May, Lucy and Douglas began to exchange letters, usually in German. She was a witty and charming if sometimes saucy correspondent. "Mr. Know-it-all," she called him, when he insisted too much on his own ideas. Hyde's diary was neglected as he devoted his time to their increasingly frequent playful and teasing correspondence. The only entry he made in June, on the twenty-fifth, began exuberantly, "ANNETTE AND MISS KURTZ CAME HOME." During July there was again not a single entry in his diary until two days before the end of the month when he wrote:

I do not remember exactly what we did. . . . However, things took their course, between hope and despair, certainty and uncertainty, doubt and assurance, anxiety and confidence, but each day the net was closing about my neck until we decided firmly and finally that we were going to get married, and we were publicly engaged.

As the news spread, cousins, friends, and neighbors flooded the couple with invitations to luncheons, dinners, and teas. To Douglas's delight he was able to arrange a lease with John French that would allow them to live at Ratra, from the beginning of 1894, for fifty pounds a year. Eager to become a full partner in Douglas's life, on July 21 Lucy accompanied Hyde to Athenry, where they stayed with the Roches near Monivea and she enjoyed the company of the neighboring Dalys,


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Frenches, and Blakes while he wrote stories and songs from the mouth of an old man and spoke Irish with him and with other local people. On July 29 Hyde and Lucy went to Dublin. There, between shopping for furniture, sitting for photographs, and more visits to friends and relatives, Hyde managed to spend the evening of July 30 with Sigerson and O'Neill Russell and attend the short afternoon meeting on July 31 in Martin Kelly's rooms at 9 Lower Sackville Street[*] at which, almost parenthetically, the Gaelic League was founded.

On August 1, Lucy sailed for England, and the furious letter writing resumed. Now their correspondence (usually beginning "Dear Muffin" and still almost entirely in German) was less playful, more serious. In one letter Lucy discreetly referred to Hyde's relationship with the Fräulein of Fredericton; in another she responded emotionally—"You must not go to Canada without me!"—to news that again Hyde was considering a position in North America. Hyde filled his letters to her with a complete account of all his activities. Interested in everything that involved him, even the Irish language (proudly she scattered the phrases he had taught her through her letters and assured him that he would be astonished when he saw how rapidly she would learn more), she responded with comments and questions and a full account of her own, including her latest successes in the investment market. She had been dabbling in stocks, she told him—initially to the horror of her brothers—for several years. But as her cautious and astute analyses had brought her a considerable return on her money (in addition to her other attributes, she clearly had a good head for business), they no longer said a word against it and indeed sometimes asked her advice.

Although someone had said that Lucy was "half Austrian, half West Indian," and Hyde had later repeated this description to John O'Leary, she was in fact, according to Diarmid Coffey, a descendant of "a distinguished Würtemberg family" that had settled for a time in Odessa before coming to England in 1815. Among the Kurtzes who had arrived in 1815 were Lucy's great-uncle, a distinguished research chemist, and her father, Charles Kurtz, who was then only a boy. Charles Kurtz had been educated at Trinity College, where he studied chemistry; he then had gone to work for his uncle, also as a research chemist. According to Coffey, Lucy's great-uncle and father had prudently invested the comfortable fortune they earned from their profession in works of


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art. Charles Kurtz had married a Miss Hill whose father was "an English West Indian planter of good family." When Kurtz died in 1880 (apparently preceded by his wife, as nothing is said of her having survived him) his art collection had been valued at £27,000. He had left four children, of whom Lucy was the only daughter and the youngest child. At the time when Lucy and Annette met in Killarney, Lucy already had inherited three thousand pounds from her father; still pending when she and Douglas married was a share of profits from property sold by the court that she would later receive. Eventually she became the beneficiary also of substantial amounts from the residual estates of her three brothers, Charles, Alexander, and Harold.

Hyde remained in Dublin, mostly on Gaelic League business, for a few days following Lucy's departure. The session on July 31 (so casually mentioned in his 1893 diary, so significant later in restrospect) had been the outcome of efforts, principally by John MacNeill, to bring together a number of men with new ideas about how and why the Irish language ought to be preserved. it was he who had sent out a printed letter on June 12 to a number of people, including Hyde, asking if they would attend a planning session for the development of an organization to "maintain and promote the use of Gaelic as a spoken language in Ireland ." Hyde had responded immediately and affirmatively, in a letter that included specific recommendations drawn from his 1891 observations of the Irish language study groups he had visited in Boston and New York. The emphasis, he declared, must be on the spoken language: "There is no other way to revive Irish," he insisted, "than for a crowd of people to spread it." He preferred, he said, five people speaking Irish to ten people trying to read it.

Hyde and MacNeill met by prearrangement to introduce themselves to each other in the library of the Royal Irish Academy shortly before the July 31 session in Kelly's rooms. Hyde was impressed not only by MacNeill's Irish but also by the fact that while waiting for him MacNeill had been reading the Book of Leinster. The others they joined on Sackville Street were Martin Kelly, C. P. Bushe, J. M. Cogan, the Reverend William Hayden, S.J., P. J. Hogan, Patrick O'Brien, and T. O'Neill Russell. As president of the National Literary Society, Hyde volunteered to arrange time and space for future meetings in the society's quarters at 4 College Green. At the first of these, held on August 4, Hyde was elected president and J. H. Lloyd honorary treasurer. The first order of business, everyone agreed, was to enlarge the membership, so for a time they proposed to retain their Dublin base.


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Nevertheless, all sessions were to be Irish-speaking, and to encourage conversations in Irish and otherwise emphasize that Irish was a living language, the organizers agreed on a format that would include free admission to readings and lectures in Irish at each weekly meeting. Even before Hyde left Dublin to return to Frenchpark, George Sigerson, David Comyn, and Michael Cusack had been added to the membership list. Their support was expected. More heartening to the organizers, in the weeks and months that followed, was that there were raw recruits as well. This was by no means insignificant in a city in which, as W. P. Ryan observed, new Irish societies rose and died "with perplexing regularity." Writing in the Gaelic Journal in August, John MacNeill attributed the instant success of the league to the fact that the idea had been in the air for a long time. He cited particularly the arguments that had been "put forward by Dr. Hyde in New York" just two years before. He emphasized that literature in Irish would be left in other hands—that the league would concentrate on spreading Irish as a spoken language.

Before leaving Dublin, Hyde made sure that everything was in order in both the league and the Literary Society. By mid-August he was in Roscommon, arranging his own affairs, enjoying the shooting season that he had missed during the previous year, and contemplating his future. He had taken care in July, when he had struck his bargain with John French, to guarantee his shooting privileges over the meadows and bogs familiar to him from the time he had learned to hold a gun. The July 20 agreement was drawn up to last, with renewals, until 1910. It gave Hyde exclusive rights to shoot certain bogs near Ratra. In return the tenants and "occupiers" promised to preserve the game on their land for him and to keep off all others. For these privileges he agreed to pay eight pounds immediately and three pounds each year for the next four years to twenty-five tenants, all but one of whom signed with an X .

Six weeks after his return to Frenchpark, Hyde was back in Dublin; on October 9 he sailed for Liverpool, where he was met by Lucy, who brought him to the home of the Caroes, the family of the Danish consul, with whom he was to spend the night. Hyde's diary for October 10, 1893, begins, "MY WEDDING DAY." A carriage arrived to take him to the church, then returned to pick up Lucy. The priest, a Mr. Winslow, married them "straight out of the book" despite Hyde's request that he omit certain parts of the Church of England ceremony. "I got my own back on him," he wrote in his diary, "when I signed my name in Irish in the register."


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Douglas and Lucy spent their honeymoon in France, the country he loved best after Ireland. They went first to Paris where they visited Douglas's favorite places, the bookstalls on the Seine and the Bibliothèque Nationale, as well as the new Eiffel Tower, erected for the exposition of 1889. From Paris they traveled south by rail to the Riviera, in part along the route he had first seen with Mackey Wilson, to whom he dearly wished he could introduce his new bride. In Nice they visited Sir Charles Gavan Duffy who was hungry for political anecdotes about Ireland. Duffy had moved to France with his wife and three daughters in 1880, following his retirement as prime minister of Australia. From Nice they went on to Monaco for a few days and then began their return. On their way home they stopped in England to attend the London theater and visit Lucy's brothers.

By November 17 Lucy and Hyde were in Dublin, visiting Hyde's Oldfield aunts and again making the rounds of luncheons, teas, and dinners in their honor. On November 22 Hyde recited the Irish text of "Monachar and Manachar," a folktale he had translated for Yeats's Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry , at a meeting of the Gaelic League. The next day he and Yeats attended a meeting of the council of the National Literary Society. A paper he had promised to read to the Gaelic League on November 29 had to be cancelled on account of a cold, but he attended the meeting. Thus having taken care of his Dublin obligations, on December 1 Hyde bought a brougham for thirty-three pounds. On December 3 he and Lucy received a warm welcome in Roscommon. "WE CAME HOME," began his diary entry for December 3. At the first crossroads out of Ballaghaderreen hundreds of people were waiting to welcome them with music and cheers. Across the road an arch covered with ivy carried a green banner reading "Fáilte " (welcome) in large letters. Similar arches and crowds greeted them at other points along the way. At the road into Ratra, under another green arch, the crowd unharnessed the horse and themselves drew the brougham into the yard with "such shouting and hullabaloo you never heard." Douglas responded with half-barrels of porter, sent out to the crowds gathered at each arch, then went to the glebe house to see his father. The Reverend Arthur Hyde was not well. He had been spending most of his time in bed, Douglas was told. One hand was badly swollen, and he had a touch of eczema.

In December 1893, in his usual summary inserted in his diary at the end of each year, Hyde wrote, "The greatest thing I did in the past year—indeed, the greatest thing I ever did in my life— was that I got


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married." For the moment it seemed, at least to his sister Annette and his Oldfield aunts, that this happily uxorious man would remain content at home, writing his books, perhaps eventually teaching in Dublin, where there were again rumors of a possible future appointment. What they had not reckoned with was the Gaelic League, now nearly six months old and growing, against all the conventional wisdom that had predicted its early demise. In March 1894, when an Irish Language Congress was held in the Mansion House in Dublin, under the presidency of Lord Mayor Valentine Dillon, more than half the addresses were delivered in Irish by Gaelic League members. In September 1894 the league's first annual report showed that membership had grown from the nine founders who had met in Dublin on July 31, 1893, to three hundred men and women scattered throughout the country—and that its budget came exclusively from members' dues. By the beginning of its second year the Gaelic League had branches in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Derry, and New Ross. By its third year it had seventeen branches in Ireland, four in England, and one in Scotland, while in the United States three Irish societies (in Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco) had all come under its umbrella. It was this continuing phenomenon that later led Yeats to write, in a poem addressed "Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin":

You've dandled them and fed them from the book
And know them to the bone; impart to us—
We'll keep the secret—a new trick to please.
Is there a bridle for this Proteus
That turns and changes like his draughty seas?


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