“She said that Seán O Floinn told her I was going to publish a book – I was a good deal horrified to find he knew. I found D. and T. had told him, & was partly pleased to have them in the wrong towards me for once – doing something silly that they had to apologize for, instead of the other way round.”
NLI Call Number: MS, 3582/36
NLI Catalogue Link can be found here
Date Range of Diary: 12th September 1919 – 27th January 1920
WEEK 109: 8th – 13th December 1919
Monday 8th. – I went to town after the Tech, and did some of Aunt H.’s Christmas shopping & my own. – frocks for Louis & Nancy’s baby etc. I went to Holmacre after reading to Uncle E.,
(120) to a Young Friends’ gathering there that Muriel Horne invited me to. It was a party after a conference – a lot of girls & boys that I didn’t know at all, & Sam & Carrie Pim & Smith the other Newtown teacher, small & handsome, and Reg Chapman & Arthur Pitt & other Waterford ones. There was one young man who looked the image of Michael Collins. They played moods & dumberambo, which was good, and teapot, and clumps – clumps is a beastly game. Some of the girls had very nice clothes, including Annie.
Tuesday 9 Dec. – Wet day. I went to the essay meeting in the evening; Grace Bell on Mrs Oliphant, and it was comparatively dull, for she said scarcely anything about Mrs Oliphant’s books, especially her novels. It was all about her life, spoken with the help of a
(121) Life of her. She had a hard time but seemed to make plenty of money, & she might have brought up her sons better. There was a good deal of discussion.
Thursday 11 Dec. – Fine day. I went to town. Eileen Smyth visited me in the afternoon, she is going to housekeep for the Y.W.C.A. in Liverpool, and invites me there on my way to America. She was very nice and livelier than usual. I was at St Declan’s in the evening, and was looking at more Studios. I found Tom and D. agreed with me that most of the female nudes in them were not well made & had a rather flabby look. On the whole those Studios give me a feeling of depression & remoteness from the minds of almost all the people whose
(122) work appears in them, T. & D. were at Woodstown that afternoon; there are people going to stay there for 3 weeks around Christmas.
Friday 12th. – I went to the Tech and struggled with the pin of the Tara brooch which he is making me do on a new & difficult plan. Afterwards I met Brighid Dowley on the quay and brought her back with me to dinner. She can’t go to America at all at present, as her mother has been ill & is not strong enough to be left. She talked to Uncle E. about Australia, and he found her interesting. She said that Seán O Floinn told her I was going to publish a book – I was a good deal horrified to find he knew. I found D. and T. had told him, & was partly pleased to have them in the wrong towards me for once – doing something silly that they had to apologize for, instead of the other way
(123) round. I went down town with her, and to the hotel. Tash was very eloquent about the price of clothes; says travellers in blouses etc tell them that the shops make something near 50% profit on crêpe de chine or silk blouses, and agrees with me that there should be a consumers’ strike. I was let visit Mrs P., who looked well & was very cheerful, talking about setting up house in the country with one daughter & leaving the other two to manage the hotel. I wish one of them would marry, then she’d have to give it up. She told me the war was caused by the heads of the Grand Orient freemasons, to get universal dominion into their hands, & that the Kaiser would never let them into Germany. People have very large ideas of his personal power. Wilson, Lloyd-George, Clemenclau & Orlando are all in
(124) the G.O., & that was how Wilson was brought into the war. [Superscript: I think it was this day I got a letter from Dublin Castle saying French unable to recommend my application for a passport to the Foreign Office]
Saturday 13th. – I went to see the Country Girl by the Wallace Co. in the evening, & never hardly was so suffocated with smoke. It was well acted in a blatant kind of way; the chorus was very good, and Nan was good, but Maurice Murray looked very plain in the naval uniform. Manahan was a masterpiece in the female disguise. Marjorie sang very well and looked well, but I never saw such an extraordinary clamjamfrey of costumes as in the receoption in the last set. It must have been a fancy dress affair. The song about the rajah of Bong was good, but he did seem so irrelevant. I liked Johnny came from London best of the songs.