Alice Milligan: Republican Tableaux and the Revival Catherine Morris

FIELD DAY REVIEW

132 Alice Milligan: Republican Tableaux and the Revival Catherine Morris

Alice Milligan (1866–1953) was a cultural and political activist who rejected the unionist politics that sustained Ireland’s place within empire to become an internationalist republican. She was a key figure in the formation of the anti-colonial movement from the 1890s and a founding member of the Anti-Partition Council from the 1930s. A prolific writer for over six decades, she published her work in a range of genres (including poetry, short stories, novels, plays, journalism, letters and memoirs). From 1891 to the 1940s, she founded a series of cultural, feminist and political organizations that not only put the North on the map of the Irish Literary Revival but also gave a new resonance to Irish Wood engraving: Cluithcheoirí na hÉireann, Postcard, 1907. visual culture. Her work shows Holloway Collection, National Library of Ireland. her commitment to the human

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Alice Milligan. 1896. Photo: Seamus MacManus. Courtesy of Moya Cannon

rights of political prisoners and of women. northern Protestant who had relinquished She used visual and performance arts to the unionism of her background, her create the cultural conditions that would give identity was never easy to ‘translate’ the Irish language contemporary meaning. within a sectarian society. Her legacy was Everything Milligan wrote was not celebrated by the Northern Ireland published in the unindexed pages of state, nor was it accorded an important now obscure national newspapers. As a part in the official narrative of the

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1 Ireland: Weekly Bulletin Irish Literary Revival. After her death, Declan Kiberd has called ‘an attempt to of the Department of one obituary noted: ‘the radius of her release the still-unused potential buried in External Affairs No. friendship was an index of her quality. past moments’.3 183, Dublin, 20 April 1953, 7. W. B. Yeats, Standish O’Grady, Arthur Tableau vivant is a hybrid of theatre 2 Death notice of Angela Griffith, John O’Leary — these are only and pictorial art; its political implications Doyle (1907–25), a handful of the names which add up to a can only be fully recognized in relation (who died of anorexia roll call of modern Irish history’.1 to other pictorial representations. The nervosa), Cumann na mBan, September 1925 1923 performance enabled the confined 3 University College *** prisoners to transform themselves into Dublin: Visual Cultures a community. This was characteristic of postdoctoral fellowships Those who were in B Wing, the Irish Revival in general; its aim was proposal outline, 2006. Kilmainham, during the summer of 1923 to produce a communal consciousness by will ever remember Angela Doyle as creating the ‘past’ through street parades, Robert Emmet ... Angela chose Robert collecting folklore, staging and publishing Emmet and to all of us who had ever Irish legends and histories, initiating art visioned Emmet, Angela seemed to and museum exhibitions, by travelling with embody every idea of ours. Young, pale, theatre productions and magic lantern fair, tall, with an earnest sad expression shows. Milligan was concerned essentially in her eyes, she seemed the ghost of the with how this emergent nationalist culture hero of 1803.2 depicted itself in public space as both an act of, and a search for, self-representation. In 1923 Irish women prisoners on hunger In particular, her theatre work explored strike in A Wing of Kilmainham Jail staged how the body itself became the subject of for their comrades in B Wing a series of repressed history in nationalist iconography costumed tableaux vivants that evoked and commemoration. Visual culture in this their republican heroes Robert Emmet and period of radical transformation offered a Anne Devlin. With its roots in English site for the rehearsal and performance of and French state-censorship of spoken possible identities. Irish public space was language in theatre, the voiceless form reclaimed and redefined in print culture, of tableau vivant also proved, because of in performances enacted on official and the suppression of Irish, to have a special unofficial stages, in the opening up of potency in the colonial (and immediately theatres, galleries and cinemas. The post-colonial) context of Ireland. The unwritten story of Milligan’s political women who staged these tableaux in mobilization of visual culture is located in 1923 were responding to their memory of a wide range of archival materials, such as how ‘living pictures’ had been radicalized photographs (nicknamed ‘the mirror with a during the Irish Literary Revival by Alice memory’ in the 1890s), magic lantern slides Milligan. In fact, many of the prisoners had and travelling lantern shows, illustrated been trained in the making of tableaux by fiction, theatre posters, newspapers and Milligan through her association with the journals, tableaux vivants (also known as Gaelic League and Inghinidhe na hÉireann ‘living pictures’ and ‘poses plastiques’), (Daughters of Ireland). ‘Living pictures’ was representing scenes from well-known Irish a particularly appropriate theatrical mode melodramas, public commemorations, for these women prisoners to display their costumed pageants, banners carried at allegiance to historical forebears whose public demonstrations, murals, paintings legacy was, like their own experience, one and public monuments, street theatre, of disempowerment, bodily torture and sculpture and film reels. silence. Their enactment of these tableaux In this essay I want to investigate a in such circumstances is an example of what whole series of questions and contexts that

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will help us better understand the latent explains how it would have appealed so 4 Adrian Frazier, Yeats, visual community dynamics that fired directly to Ireland’s ruling elite: Horniman, and the Struggle for the Abbey Ireland’s national theatre and Irish language Theatre (Berkeley, movement. What were tableaux? Where did The picture of the countess was so 1990), 1. this silent form of drama come from? What flattering, and that of the peasants so 5 Pamela Hinkson, made it so popular in Europe, America amusing, that the ladies of the Chief Seventy Years Young: Memories of Elizabeth and England at the turn of the twentieth Secretary’s Lodge — Lady Balfour, the Countess of Fingall century? Milligan’s first tableau show was countess of Fingall, and others — begged (London, 1937), 235. actually planned with the help of members Yeats to let them perform the work 6 Cited in Peter of the Anglo-Irish colonial establishment as nine tableaux vivants six months Somerville Large, The Irish Country House for performance at the Chicago World Fair before the performance scheduled for (London, 1995), 355. in 1893. It is worth asking how she began the Ancient Concert Rooms ... Their to transform this theatrical genre into a performance was a complete success: it powerful expression of the Revival’s most was such fun for the gentry to act the radical ideas. peasants, who must have seemed like fabulous talking beasts out of Grimm The Irish Village and the Chicago World Fair ... Certainly, the chief virtue in the ethical scheme of the play is generosity, Look how well we’ve captured these a quality most accessible to the rich. unhappy ridiculous people aching for The main virtue to which the poor may an impossible escape! We feel we have a aspire is gratitude.5 special hold upon them because we have had, for what it is worth, possession of In her autobiography, Lady Fingall observed the future for which they yearn. that the Anglo-Irish lived in ‘a world of their own with Ireland outside the gates’.6 Thomas Kilroy, The Seagull: after This is a useful description of how the Chekhov (1993) ‘Countess Cathleen’ tableau (and other unionist appropriations of this dramatic Six months before it became ‘the Irish mode) functioned in Ireland before 1916. cultural event of the decade’,4 Yeats’s play As a private entertainment, the tableau The Countess Cathleen was performed offered Ireland’s ruling elite an opportunity as a series of living pictures at the Chief to rescript themselves as benevolent heroes Secretary’s Lodge in Phoenix Park on 24 of the Great Famine. The rightness of and 25 January 1899. It is a piquant irony empire, with its reliance upon rigid class that the lords and ladies of the British distinctions, was reconfirmed in the frozen establishment in Ireland first enacted pictures mounted at the Lodge: ‘The this particular story, for its dramatized chief secretary, Arthur Balfour ... found a version would soon launch the Irish pleasant satisfaction in the graceful way the Literary Theatre. Nicknamed ‘the pet of countess of Fingall, as Countess Cathleen, the Castle’ by Edward Martyn for this died to save the peasants who could not initiative, Yeats nevertheless agreed not save themselves.’7 Despite the fact that the only to the production of his play at the play was set during a famine, the Chief chief secretary’s official residence, but also Secretary’s wife spared no expense on the to rehearsing a cast that included Lady lavish costumes, designed from sketches Balfour, Lady Fingall, George Coffey and commissioned from George Russell (Æ); she members of Margaret Stokes’s family. In pulled rank to decorate her pictures with the play, an aristocratic heroine sacrifices authentic ‘Celtic’ jewels and ornaments her soul to the devil in order to save the borrowed from Ireland’s National Museum. Irish peasantry from famine. Adrian Frazier John Kelly notes that although Yeats

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‘Scenes In The Irish Village. On the Midway Plaisance’. Color plate by Charles S. Graham from ‘The World’s Fair in Water Colors’, June 1, 1893. Photo: © Field Museum Library / Getty Images

7 Frazier, Yeats, rehearsed the show at the Chief Secretary’s photograph] ... to give a picture of the Horniman, and the Lodge, he could not be seen on the opening average Irishman’,9 these descriptions are in Struggle for the Abbey Theatre, 10. night: ‘No self-respecting nationalist themselves a kind of tableau: they are still 8 The programme for could go to the Chief Secretary’s Lodge, pictures that the English reader as potential the Countess Cathleen the locus of English rule, and WBY did tourist is invited to view. Tableaux were tableau was republished not attend the tableaux.’8 Milligan’s early often designed as a shop-window display in Warwick Gould, John Kelly, eds., Collected involvement in the tableau form developed to sell goods, and Milligan first designed Letters of W. B. Yeats within her own early unionist familial scenes of Irish tableaux for the Chicago II: 1896–1900 (Oxford, connections to the colonial administration. World Fair in 1893. She became involved in 1998), 327. In a chapter entitled ‘Sketches of Country the Irish exhibit through working with Lady 9 Seaton Forrest Milligan and Alice Life’, published in Glimpses of Erin, the Aberdeen in the Irish Industries Association Milligan, Glimpses political travelogue she wrote with her that same year. Seaton Milligan was on the of Erin: Containing father, Seaton Forrest Milligan, in 1888, board; he arranged Lady Aberdeen’s first an Account of the there is an attempt to capture the flavour meeting with Alice. Extensive records of the Ancient Civilisation, Manners, Customs, and of native Ireland for English readers: ‘Here Chicago World Fair and of Lady Aberdeen’s Antiquities of Ireland an old woman presides, comforting herself, trip around Ireland are stored in numerous (Belfast, 1888), 19, 183. as she waits for customers, with a short volumes of press cuttings. These documents cutty pipe which she puffs vigorously.’ In help us to understand the extreme departure the milliner’s shop, the reader is invited Milligan made in the mid 1890s when she to ‘look on’ as ‘Biddy is trying on a hat began to use tableaux as a key element before a glass, turning her head this way in the cultural repertoire of the emergent and that, whilst the smart shop girl induces independence movement. her to buy’. Although the reader is told The poet Alfred Percival Graves that ‘It would be impossible [in a single praised Milligan’s intriguing plans for a

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Milligan: Cover of Glimpses of Erin, 1888. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

tableau show, because they fitted in so admirable letter on the subject of suitable completely with those of the London- entertainments at the Irish Village at based literary committee that was part Chicago promoted by Lady Aberdeen of the Irish Industries Association: ‘Your has been before our committee.’ In the

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10 Alice Milligan Papers, same letter Graves informed Milligan that what they want and experiences only Brother Allen Library, the tableau was a genre that could both pleasure and happiness. Baum tapped O’Connell School, enlighten audiences and re-enact scenes into this myth. Indeed, he too was deeply Richmond Road, Dublin 12 (hereafter, Milligan from Irish history: ‘We favour a costume influenced by the Chicago exposition.’ Papers, Allen Library). concert or rather Tableaux concert ... to Transformed into ‘a neo-classical 11 Barbara Kirshenblatt- illuminate three periods 1. The Ancient wonderland’, Jackson Park was Gimble, Destination Irish 2. The Elizabethan & Jacobite 3. The appropriately renamed the ‘White City’ — Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage Modern period before the Famine.’ Graves for, according to contemporary reports, (Berkeley and London, promoted images of a pre-Famine era as the exposition was designed on the basis 1998), 96–97. appropriate for contemporary Ireland. Like of ‘racial compartmentalism’.13 At the 12 William R. Leach, The Milligan, he also recognized the practical centre stood grand palaces and mansions Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum advantage of staging early histories or to display art masterpieces, advanced (Belmont, CA, 1991), scenes from rural life because they required technologies, transport systems and 163–64. less technically achieved costumes: ‘Songs of architectural splendours; these had been 13 Robert W. Rydell, All life, sport and occupation such as Lullabies, erected by the French, American and British the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at loobeens, smith spinning wheel, fishing, as a showcase of colonial power, wealth and American International hunting songs etc. would be suitable to modernity. The ‘savage races’ (non-white Expositions, 1876–1916 the modern village and would not need peoples, and the Irish) were situated on the (London, 1984), 39, such elaborate costume as the ancient Midway, at a distance from the exposition’s 64. It was ‘white’ also because it was period requires.’ When Lady Aberdeen imperial splendour. Robert Rydell argues illuminated by electric unexpectedly visited Derry in November that the reason for this racial classification light. See also the 1892, Milligan gave her a preview of her was to prove how close the American dream description of the ‘living picture show’, even though Aberdeen was to completion: ‘The Midway made the Chicago World Fair in Thomas Pynchon’s had been sceptical about Milligan’s ability dream of the future seem all the brighter Against the Day (2006). to organize a preview of this ‘semi-dramatic and the present civilisation all the more 14 Rydell, All the World’s a performance’ at such short notice.10 progressive.’14 The Midway also hosted Fair, 67. The Chicago World Fair was a ‘curious exhibitions’ of ‘peasant life’, like 15 Julius Ralph, Harper’s 15 Chicago and the World commercial exposition in which countries Ireland’s two ‘villages’. James Gilbert Fair (New York, 1893), competed for international markets by argues that ‘these ersatz communities 187. promoting national produce. It aimed were touristic dioramas, a pageantry of 16 James Gilbert, Perfect to surpass the Paris Exposition of 1889 verisimilitude’ that offered ‘romanticised Cities: Chicago’s Utopias of 1893 by more successfully commodifying versions’ of home for, among others, the (Chicago, 1991), 78. ‘authenticity’, linking commercial products Irish, one of the largest groups of foreign- with their place of origin. The directors born immigrants in the city.16 The first created a theme park that included Turkish, village was a simulation of a working Persian, Egyptian, Algerian, Moroccan Donegal village, devised by the American and Tunisian ‘villages’. ‘Live ethnographic Mrs. Ernest Hart. The other, more displays were a featured attraction at extravagant village was built under the international expositions in Europe and tutelage of Lady Aberdeen, and was located America where entire environments were near the fairground. re-created complete with inhabitants.’11 L. With its ornate reproductions of Irish Frank Baum was there; his Wizard of Oz costume and native life, Lady Aberdeen’s (1900), remade as a film in 1939, reflected Irish village operated as a large scale the commercial fantasies activated by this tableau vivant. Her plans were reported in new type of urban commerce. Writing detail by the Chicago Sunday Post: about Baum, William Leach commented: ‘These urban fairs ... helped form in the The village is to be quadrangular in form, popular mind a sanitised myth of complete to be entered by a doorway taken from urban abundance in which everyone gets Cashel, through the cloisters to Muckross.

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In all we shall have seventeen cottages. an allusion to the writer Jane Barlow, who 17 Chicago Sunday Post, We shall have weaving from Donegal had accompanied Lady Aberdeen on her 12 March 1893. 18 Marjorie Pentland, A and spinning from the north, and we 1893 tour of the country. Even Graves’s Bonnie Fechter: The Life shall have a dairy with some Kerry cows costume design, an important feature of the of Ishbel Marjoribanks — and better still, some pretty Munster village tableau, drew extensively upon an Marchioness of dairy girls to milk them ... We shall have earlier textual source; he acknowledged his Aberdeen and Temair 1857–1939 (London, an Irish piper [Torlach MacSuibhne of prime influence to be a 1788 essay by Joseph 1952), 98–99. Donegal] and an Irish songster, Irish jigs Walker entitled ‘Ancient and Modern 19 Pentland, A Bonnie will be danced and Irish entertainments Dress of the Irish’.22 Graves recommended Fechter, 98. of all sorts given every night. In Blarney this book to Milligan as a source of Irish 20 Quoted in Neil Harris, ‘Selling National castle our girls will be lodged so as to costume design suitable for tableaux Culture: Ireland at the make them more Irish than they were vivants because it provided rare visual World’s Columbian when they went out.17 documentation about early Irish social life. Exposition’, in T. As in the Milligans’ earlier Glimpses J. Edelstein, ed., Imagining an Irish Lady Aberdeen took responsibility for of Erin, the Irish ‘village’ was a touristic Past: The Celtic Revival organizing the ‘official’ Irish contribution to advertisement. In the midst of the 1840–1940 (Chicago, the World Fair. In the early months of 1893, aggressively mercantile centre of American 1992), 96. she conducted a tour of Ireland in search of modernism, the patrons of the World Fair 21 Daily Free Press, 5 March 1893. genuine Irish peasants who could personify could witness traditional folk crafts of 22 Milligan Papers, Allen 18 her ‘cabin idea’. She then transplanted Ireland and then purchase the wares they Library. these workers more or less as commercial saw manufactured. Gilbert describes the products. According to her daughter, Lady status of Chicago in the early 1890s as ‘a Aberdeen ‘visited workers in the farthest commercial centre of unbounded energy. corners of Kerry, Connemara and Donegal, This was the grandest city in the Midwest, chose the girls who were to spin, sing, make the second in the nation, and the seventh in butter and dance jigs; promised parents to the world.’23 Mindful of the marketability take care of them’.19 The journalist Teresa of rural nostalgia, Lady Aberdeen promised Dean collected criticism of Lady Aberdeen’s readers of the Chicago Sunday Post that Irish village from workers in the ‘Donegal she would ‘make one cottage a thoroughly Village’: home cottage, and by the fireside have an old woman knitting’.24 In this theme-park A Donegal villager, asked the difference experience of simulated hyper-Irishness, the between Mrs Hart’s enterprise and Irish-American delighted at how audiences Lady Aberdeen’s, replied succinctly could walk into cottages in which ‘half that the difference was ‘the divilish a dozen pretty Irish girls in cool-looking poor imitation they aire ov us’. ‘Lady prints were busied with embroidery and Aberdeen may be a bonny lady, and knitting’.25 The framing of Irish identity may want to help the poor of Ireland,’ within a commercial enterprise moved commented another, ‘but it’s not the true Andrew Carnegie to describe the central industries of Ireland, the real workers, exhibition piece as ‘a facsimile cottage’;26 that she has here’.20 Carnegie, one of the village’s main sponsors, attempted to dissuade Lady Aberdeen from Standard ‘aesthetic’ representations rather investing her own money in a scheme to than practical knowledge informed Lady reconstruct Irish cottages. Aberdeen’s conception of Ireland. The The main opposition to the Daily Free Press, for example, praised the representation of the Irish at the Chicago way her ‘touching reference to the life of World Fair came from the north of Ireland the Irish peasant ... had been so faithfully and from the extremes of Protestant mirrored in Miss Barlow’s Irish Idylls’,21 unionism. Although Lady Aberdeen’s trip

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23 Gilbert, Perfect Cities, was well accepted in the south of Ireland, exploited tableaux of peasant life to support 26. the Orange Order prevented a visit she had a colonial myth of Irish backwardness, 24 Chicago Sunday Post, planned to Belfast. Describing her Irish Milligan and her comrades produced living 12 March 1893. 27 25 Irish-American village as ‘sentimental charity’, the Order pictures of a dynamic culture. Newspaper, 6 May1893. objected to the way Ireland was depicted Brenna Katz Clarke suggests that the 26 Lady Aberdeen Papers, as the ‘beggar nation of the world’.28 This ceilidh staged by Milligan and Inghinidhe Haddo House Estate. was exactly the political line that Milligan na hÉireann at the turn of the century 27 Evening News (Belfast), 4 August 1893. herself would later take against the colonial provided the inspiration for the influential 28 A ‘Rev. Kane’, in Belfast administration in Ireland, after she became ‘peasant plays’ of James Cousins, Pádraic Newsletter, 3 August a radical nationalist. However, unlike the Colum and John Millington Synge. 1893. Orange Order or other northern unionists She claimed that these tableaux scenes 29 Shan Van Vocht, 7 June 1897. (such as her own father), ultimately believed offered a kind of cathartic recognition 30 Shan Van Vocht, 7 June that Ireland would not be strengthened for the urban bourgeoisie: ‘Dubliners, a 1898. within the Union. After 1894, she began to generation removed from the land, took 31 United Irishman, 13 argue that Ireland should empower itself great delight in viewing a slice of rural April 1901. from within and that culture was a crucial life, the exact replicas of western cottages, decolonizing agency. In the Chicago village, and the traditional singing and dancing the Irish women were merely stereotypes. of their parents’ generation.’32 Synge Yet, while Milligan later came to reject worked very hard to replicate on stage, in Lady Aberdeen’s work in Ireland as a plays such as Riders to the Sea (1904), the dangerous example of English philanthropy costume as well as the vocal intonations acting ‘under royal, vice-regal, and of the people he had lived with (and aristocratic patronage’,29 she often used the photographed) on the Aran Islands. Such same conventional images of Ireland and the physical ‘realism’ disconcerted audiences, Irish to her own different purposes. who were expecting and seeking social The iconography of the nationalist and psychological realism, but not in that tableaux Milligan produced after 1898 setting. Neil Corcoran argues that these is strikingly reminiscent of that of the theatrical productions ‘providing an image World Fair she had contributed to five of rural life — particularly of life in the years earlier. But the difference was that West’, were a crucial project of the Irish these tableaux were performed in Irish Literary Revival: ‘The rural image would communities by Irish people as part of a represent a tested, endured solitude and movement to regenerate national theatre the generous supportiveness of community; and national language. The show Milligan the patient effort of labour and the nobility devised at Belfast’s Exhibition Hall in of suffering; the ideal of dedication and May 1898, for example, deployed ‘scenes the reward of courage.’33 According to the from peasant life’ and ‘lovely red-cloaked United Irishman, the highlight of the April colleens’.30 Similarly, the poses plastiques 1901 show in Dublin was ‘the introduction she mounted in conjunction with Inghinidhe for the first time in the metropolis of a na hÉireann in April 1901 drew upon the cottage céilidh scene representing the familiar repertoire of domesticated female actual everyday life — the amusements images that Lady Aberdeen had also staged and occupations of the people of the Irish- in Chicago; in one scene, an ‘old woman speaking districts’.34 The response to the working the spinning wheel’ was juxtaposed scene by theatre critic and architect Joseph with ‘the young one rocking her baby’.31 Holloway in his famous diary reveals the These examples imply that the process of radical nature of the new Irish theatre cultural revivalism relied not so much on in which the rural worker and the urban the replacement as on the redeployment of a bourgeoisie sat side by side. The man sitting unionist iconography. Where Lady Aberdeen next to Holloway, for instance, was so

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engaged with the theatrical performance of for the first time as national. Milligan also 32 Brenna Katz Clarke, a scene from rural life that he commented helped to introduce the language movement The Emergence of the Irish Peasant Play at upon minor discrepancies in its realism: as radical anti-illusionist theatre. In 1901 the Abbey Theatre she arranged for a special appearance of (Michigan, 1982), 17. The céilidh (caly) or Irish social the Gaelic League’s co-founder, Douglas 33 Neil Corcoran, After gathering round the fireside in the Hyde, on the stage where a tableau was Yeats and Joyce: Reading Modern Irish cabin was well carried out, (though a being performed. Hyde was ‘recognised’ Literature (London, countryman beside me said that the in the audience by the ‘cottagers’ on stage. 1997), 57. woman who rocked the cradle should His movement from one space (in the 34 United Irishman, 13 have done so with the foot instead of her theatre audience) into the imagined cottage April 1901. 35 National Library of hand if she were an industrious girl & scene (on stage) connected both: ‘As the Ireland (hereafter, NLI), also that countrymen never light their man of the house looked out through his Holloway Diaries, MS. pipe with matches but with a lighted coal door who did he see coming up the road 1798/1799; April 1901; or bit of turf).35 but An Craoibhin, and when Douglas Microfilm: P 8517 Reel 4, 103. Hyde appeared on the stage with his big 36 A. P. Graves, Songs It was precisely these aspects of Irish Irish frieze coat and with a fine Irish of Old Ireland: A public and private social life, which would blackthorn in his fist the audience cheered Collection of Fifty Irish have been excluded from the ‘facsimile’ him enthusiastically.’37 In May 1905 Melodies Unknown in England (London, cottages built by Lady Aberdeen, that were Milligan depicted the significant role taken 1882), 1. given a prominent visual part in the new by women in the language movement in a 37 United Irishman, 13 Irish national theatre. In his introduction tableau, ‘The Gaelic League (Miss Hanna April 1901. to Songs of Old Ireland, Graves argued Cotter) instructing the youth of Ireland’, in 38 Cork Examiner, 20 May 1905. that Irish music represents the ‘various St. Mary’s Hall, Cork.38 The relationship 39 United Irishman, 13 characteristics of the people, from which between the actualities of Irish life and the April 1901. they sprung. Thus, glimpses into the stylized rituals of the tableau was being lives of the Irish peasant, fisherman, and reconfigured. mechanic are given through the Lullabies, the Love Songs, the Lays of Sport and *** Occupation, and the Lamentation for the Dead.’36 A tableau reconstruction of the Community Drama, the most killing of Brian Boru provided Milligan immediately powerful form of literature, with the opportunity to stage the first actual the most vivid image of life. performance of the caoine, or keen, the W. B. Yeats, United Ireland (1903) collective female vocal lament for the dead. The United Irishman reported: Milligan and her associates seized upon the popular tableau form to re-animate The rendering by the choir of that a history that had been buried and beautiful old Irish tune, ‘The Return suppressed. Their tableaux offered a from Fingall’, in which the fierce cry of counter-narrative to officially sanctioned victory and the wild wail of sorrow for cultural entertainment. ‘England is the slain monarch so wonderfully mingle, monopolising the eye of our public’, claimed was excellent ... The mournful strains of the United Irishman, and it was only by the Irish caoine, which followed the death taking control of visual culture that ‘the of Brian, was weirdly impressive. character of the country will be altered’.39 As early as 1843, Thomas Davis had The tableaux performed scenes not usually stressed the importance of visual culture witnessed in public; events that were for the formation of national identity in familiar and domestic yet culturally hidden Ireland. He believed that the pictorial arts aspects of Ireland were shared collectively had an instructional and commemorative

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40 Thomas Davis, ‘Hints duty: ‘art is biography, history, and wicked step-mother scene had a light of from Irish Historical topography, taught through the eye’.40 Like poetry and legend about it.44 Painting’, reprinted Davis, Milligan stressed the capacity of the from The Nation (July 1843) in Thomas Davis: pictorial arts to re-imagine the ‘illustrated A member of the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Essays and Poems with history’41of a people whose contested Club and the Antiquarian Society from a Centenary Memoir past was not officially recorded or taught. the 1880s, Milligan photographed many 1845–1945 (Dublin, Milligan’s complaint in 1901 that ‘there Irish historical sites. She then transferred 1945). 42 41 Shan Van Vocht , 4 was no Irish art worth speaking of’ echoed these images onto glass slides, which were September 1898. an appeal she had made some years earlier projected onto a wall by a magic lantern. 42 United Irishman, 7 July for Irish artists to depict and popularize Under the auspices of the Gaelic League, 1901. Ireland’s nationalist history in painting.43 which she joined in 1895, she presented 43 Irish Weekly Independent, 6 For its part, the colonial administration numerous lantern lectures in Ireland and December 1894. organised tableaux as part of the Lord Britain. Initially, she relied on a hired 44 ‘Cois Na Tineadh’, in Lieutenant’s public parades, in which the gas lantern and operator; in 1898 she ‘Newspaper Cuttings of streets were taken over and militarized complained that her lecture tour of Donegal Alice Milligan’, Francis Joseph Biggar Papers, in official public commemorations and had been seriously impeded by the lack of a Belfast Central Library, affirmations of the Empire and the mobile magic lantern: MS. A86. Union. Unionist tableaux vivants were disseminated in print form through It is not possible to get a lantern for a magazines such as The Illustograph, which lecture in Donegal without entailing showed images of the Irish as bucolic, non- the expense of hiring one and paying political creatures. In fact, these pictures an operator from a distance. Lecturing were, in their attempts to depoliticize, in Letterkenny in January I met with deeply political. Milligan was consistently this difficulty. A man had actually to be drawn towards visual forms of cultural brought from Belfast to operate it. I would production — magic lantern shows, like to establish a good lecture lantern photography, tableaux and melodrama — and set of slides in the control of some because they enabled her to reach a wide energetic Gaelic worker in Donegal. The range of audiences, while sidestepping explanation of the slides could be supplied the thorny issue of spoken language. Her in Irish, and it would not take an orator commitment to the educational efficacy or a Gaelic linguist to give an interesting of tableaux vivants was encouraged by Gaelic lecture. You would attract the her earlier experiences of delivering magic young people in crowds to such an lantern slide lectures; indeed, lantern slides entertainment. The sum of £3 10s. would, and tableaux were combined on many I understand, purchase a first class lantern occasions. For example, in April 1901 she working by oil light, an instrument which used lanterns to generate atmosphere and in the average schoolroom would show lighting for a tableau: slides as well as needs be.45

I returned from Dublin where Ethna In 1898, she convinced an American Carbery ... Anna Johnston ... and I had sponsor to donate a portable oil lantern been helping at the historical tableaux to the Gaelic League, which was itself in the Ancient Concert Rooms, with sometimes called ‘the Shan Van Vocht’ as Brendan Rogers conducting a grand a salute to Milligan and Anna Johnston’s choir befitting the scenes, and a limelight newspaper of that name. The Derry Journal operator throwing blue and white and reported how Gaelic League workers red radiance from in front ... My most donated magic lantern slides that could be successful tableaux in Dublin had told used for educational lectures, as well as for the story of the children of Lir, and the local fund-raising events. The mobility and

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independence of the lecturers was a critical the United Irishman in 1900, Milligan 45 Shan Van Vocht, 6 June factor in Milligan’s plan to do away with made a forthright case for the suitability of 1898. 46 Derry Journal, 12 the type of magic lanterns that depended on magic lantern and tableaux shows for the September 1898. hired gas cylinders: advancement of the Revival’s educational 47 United Irishman, 7 July and nationalist agenda. She stressed the 1900. At Mountcharles that evening a case necessity of entertaining in order to instruct was opened containing a splendid magic audiences. Moreover, she argued, theatrical lantern, presented by a friend of the and lantern images could be used effectively cause to the Shan Van Vocht, Belfast. to draw in revenue for the language This lantern is to be used at meetings and movement: entertainments through Donegal, where the lecture and description of slides is Magic lanterns and tableaux could given in Irish. Mr Patrick McManus be pressed into service for teaching presented a beautiful collection of slides, history, and even if these attractions collected during his travels round the cost something, they will be found to be world and these include views of Rome, self-supporting and frequently profitable, Paris, India and Japan, as well as views whereas the lecture on the ordinary lines of Ireland. Miss Milligan presented a is purely a source of expense. People are set of historical slides dealing with the rarely charged for entrance, and in some lives of Red Hugh O’Donnell and Hugh cases it would look as if they expected to O’Neill. It had been intended to use the be paid for coming.47 lamp in Glenties the following evening, but as the case was only opened now for After the April 1901 performances in the first time no one had time to learn to Dublin, Arthur Griffith acknowledged operate with sufficient dexterity. It has, how useful the tableaux were in conveying however, been promised to that town narrative without language. The bilingual for an early date to be exhibited at an programme and offstage orator meant entertainment on behalf of the Cathedral that it was possible for people to have an building fund.46 experience of Irish and be inspired to learn more: ‘The performances this week have When she was officially employed as a done splendid service to the national cause. travelling lecturer by the Gaelic League in People who never studied a line of Ireland’s October 1904, Milligan began to travel history in their lives and who thought across Ireland with her own portable magic nothing about their native language went lantern and a camera that she used to away from the Ancient Concert Rooms collect pictures for slides. These pictures determined to study both.’48 Holloway’s were both projected and accompanied by commentary on one particularly poor storytelling, public talks or music. Milligan performance at the April 1901 show in also then worked with local communities Dublin indicates how central the orator was to re-embody the pictures as theatre and to the success of Milligan’s magic lantern devise new pictures for the stage from local and tableaux entertainments: folklore, the cultural life of the community and from Irish songs and legends. Her Mr Wyse Power in the character of formal appointment as a lecturer indicated a ‘showman’ was a hopeless failure recognition by the League of the structural as he barked out his remarks in an reality of the local economic and cultural unintelligible way which could not be practices (such as magic lantern and theatre followed, he might as well have spoken shows) that she had already been developing in Chinese for all I understood of his unofficially for over a decade. Writing in subject matter relative to the tableaux.

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48 United Irishman, 13 Certainly he takes the cake for indistinct country, old seats of piety, power and April 1901. public speaking!49 learning, were flashed on the screen, each 49 NLI, Holloway Diaries, being appropriately referred to, and the April 1901 MS. 1798/1799. In the 1890s, Milligan took photographs of whole so skilfully blended and interwoven 50 Milligan was asked by Gaelic League workers and projected them as to make the subject interesting to all, the IRB activist Mark as magic lantern slides to Irish communities and to bring the members of the league Ryan to give a talk abroad. She displayed and further enriched in London into still closer touch with entitled ‘In the Gaelic Speaking Country’ at the new context of the Revival by connecting their friends in the movement at home. the Bloomsbury Hall. emigrant Irish communities (most often Each picture on being recognised was An Claidheamh Soluis in places such as Scotland, Liverpool and greeted with enthusiasm, and often published a report of the London) with those involved in the revival with an Irish blessing ... A picture of ‘illustrated’ lecture, 10 February 1900. of language and culture ‘at home’. It was Thomas Concannon received a very essential that the audience recognized the hearty greeting ... The vote of thanks figures they saw on screen. The power of to the lecturer was proposed by Father the image was critically important in the O’Sullivan of Hounslow, seconded by formation of a community that was based W. B. Yeats, and supported by F. Hugh on the complex dynamics of recognition. O’Donnell. After Miss Milligan had The Gaelic League paper An Claidheamh suitably replied a selection of Irish airs Soluis (The Sword of Light) published was exquisitely played ... Miss Charlotte a report of one of Milligan’s lectures, Milligan Fox next played on the piano her delivered in London, called ‘In the Gaelic own beautiful arrangement of the grand Speaking Country’. The magic lantern old war song, ‘Cath Ceim an Fheidh’ and show was very similar to the structure of a also of a charming Jacobite ballad.50 tableau performance: the images that were projected onto a screen for people to see Fund-raising was a key part of this cultural were accompanied by stories provided by project. In October 1904, Milligan herself an offstage narrator (in this case Milligan was appointed by the League to present herself). Live Irish music was also an slides and living pictures of ‘Irish historic important component of these shows. On and literary subjects’ in order to ‘propagate this occasion, Milligan’s sister, Charlotte the cause and get in funds’.51 Michael Milligan Fox (founder of the London Irish Booth notes that the ‘sheer spectacular Folk Song Society), provided post–slide-show effect’ exhibited by many of the British music, but live music and singing from the living pictures relied upon copious financial audience also often accompanied the pictures resources: ‘A great deal of money could as they were projected from the magic be and frequently was spent on costumes lantern or performed as tableaux on stage: and properties for the tableau vivant.’52 Whereas tableaux in America and Britain Every available seat was occupied, and were often extremely expensive, Milligan’s many were unfortunately unable to living pictures were performed as fund- obtain admission. ... Miss Milligan, who raisers for Irish cultural and political received a great ovation, immediately groups with limited resources. For example, began her lecture, which she delivered in some of the money raised by Inghinidhe a chatty, pleasant, and very interesting na hÉireann’s tableaux show in April manner. She had a magnificent set of 1901 funded the publication of Poems and views shown by the magic lantern as Ballads (1902) by their comrade William the groundwork of the lecture ... Photos Rooney (1873–1901). Money collected by of Gaelic League gatherings, groups of Milligan on her touring tableaux shows Irish speaking people and of prominent was ‘sent forward to the language fund’.53 Gaelic workers, beauty spots in the Gaelic Milligan organized the Gaelic League in

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and around Cork with Thomas MacDonagh from Ireland’s pre-colonial past were at 51 The Leader (San and helped set up League branches and raise that time already a common feature of Francisco), 10 January 1905. funds in the North with Roger Casement. the historical Irish stage. For example, 52 Michael Booth, With Ada MacNeill, she toured Donegal processional stage displays that ‘appealed Victorian Spectacular and the Glens of Antrim in 1906 to raise to the incipient nationalism’ of some theatre Theatre 1850–1910 money for the establishment of an Irish spectators achieved great popularity in (London, 1981), 18. 53 An Claidheamh Soluis, college in County Donegal.54 The college late eighteenth-century Ireland. Richard 15 April 1905. was opened in October of the same year. Sheridan’s farce St. Patrick’s Day was 54 An Claidheamh Soluis, At this occasion it was reported that ‘Eilis introduced and concluded by the first 31 March 1906. Ni Mhaeleagain [Alice Milligan] delights ‘patriotic extravaganzas’ to resemble a 55 An Claidheamh Soluis, 6 October 1906. students, visitors and country people with series of Gaelic tableaux vivants. Staged in 56 NLI, Mary Hutton 55 tableaux vivants illustrating Irish history’. Cork in August 1776, ‘colourful pageantry’ Papers, MS. 8611 (13). As late as 1910 Milligan informed Mary framed the drama: 57 William Smith Clark, Hutton that she had once again assisted in The Irish Stage in the County Towns 1720– the production of tableaux vivants to raise A long and motley procession of 1800 (Oxford, 1965), 56 ‘some money for the building fund’. ‘Hibernians’, including ‘Irish Kings, 105. Milesians, druids, bards, Dermot Living Pictures, Living History Roderick O’Connor, Bryan Borro, Sitric O’Neill, Strongbow, O’Neal, Earl of Fintan O’Toole: Doesn’t the whole Field Pembroke’, opened the performance, Day project then depend on political and a musical number ‘Carolan the Irish nationalism and on the achievement of a Bard’ by ‘the full grand chorus of all the united Ireland? characters’ concluded it.57 Brian Friel: I don’t think it should be read in those terms. I think it should lead Robert Owenson’s 1777 entertainment, to a cultural state, not a political state. The Shamrock; or, St. Patrick’s Day, has And I think out of that cultural state, a been described by Luke Gibbons as a ‘Celtic possibility of a political state follows. Disneyland’ that similarly resembled living picture shows.58 Owenson (1744–1812) Interview with Brian Friel, In Dublin, was the father of the novelist Lady Morgan. 28 October 1982 His production of Sheridan was of a piece with those of the ‘National Theatre’ he Milligan radicalized Thomas Davis’s ideas later opened in Ireland. The performances about visual culture in her work with a included music that drew the audience in for broad range of Irish cultural activists in the stage productions: Ireland and abroad and in making theatre in local communities. Her theatrical In 1784 he leased the Fishamble Theatre pictures were not just about teaching in Dublin ... to mount a ‘National ‘through the eye’; they were participatory, Theatre’ with the support of the patriot communitarian and localized. By creating aristocracy ... Besides the anthem of for the stage pictures in which people the Irish Volunteers, songs in Irish embodied representations of Irish history, were regularly sung in his theatre, with she helped to release this history from the harp accompaniment by his daughter frozen official narrative. Milligan was aware Sydney, who deemed it ‘very Irish’ in her of the broad contemporary international Memoirs.59 context for the tableau form, but she was also looking back to the late eighteenth Milligan’s own ideas about tableaux seemed century when a re-animated Irish national to have developed from her participation in identity was contesting public space. Scenes the unofficial cultural activities conducted

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58 Luke Gibbons, for the 1798 centenary. Street parades and paraded through the streets of Dublin.62 ‘From Ossian to other public events constituted a form of In 1907, An Claidheamh Soluis reported O’Carolan’, in Fiona radicalized commemorative art. She declared how the festival was an integral part of Stafford and Howard Gaskill, eds., From in the Shan Van Vocht that decorated developing the revival of the language as a Gaelic to Romantic: banners were infinitely more effective for living movement. Costumed representations Ossianic Translations young people in conveying national history of Ireland’s historical and mythical past (Amsterdam, 1998), and forging anti-colonial resistance than were an intrinsic part of this project. 229. 59 Robert Welch and any textbook. In a report on the Wolfe Tone Groups participating in the language parade Bruce Stewart, eds., The procession held in Dublin, she commended were invited to choose a scene and perform Oxford Companion participants from the north for their this as a tableau on the day, while moving to Irish Literature ‘magnificent banners’ portraying the United through the city streets: (Oxford, 1996), 463; Sydney Owenson, Lady Irishmen. She asserted that the pictures Morgan’s Memoirs; of ‘Wolfe Tone and his comrades on Cave The results of the activity of the Autobiography, Diaries, Hill; McCracken at Antrim’s fight; Tone’s Tableaux sub-committee promise to be and Correspondence, interview with Napoleon; McCracken’s of the happiest. A list of the incidents 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1863), vol. 1, 17. execution’ would act as ‘illustrated history illustrative of the Irish history from the 60 Shan Van Vocht, 2 lessons to the young people in the black beginning, and divided into periods, was September 1898. north’.60 As a member of the Gaelic League’s drawn up and from this each Craobh 61 Timothy G. McMahon, Tableaux Committee from 1902, Milligan [branch] was invited to select one or Grand Opportunity: The Gaelic Revival and also co-ordinated costume pageants of Irish more tableaux already selected: (1) Irish Society 1893–1910 history for the annual Irish Language Week Mythological or Tuatha Dé Danann (Syracuse, 2008), 210. parades in Dublin’s city centre. Timothy Period — Mananan Mac Lir bringing 62 Irish News, 17 March McMahon describes the appeal of these the Arts back to Eire (2) Red Branch or 1902. pageants and processions: Cuchulainn Period — Oilioll and Meadh comparing their possessions (3) Fenian As long as they remained a viable or Ossianic Period — Oisin and Niamh means of public appeal, the language in Tír na nÓg (4) Christian Period — processions provided revivalists with dialogue between Oisin and St. Patrick a unique way to bring their cause into (5) Danish Period — Brian of Banba the streets of the capital. By drawing meets Mathghamhain, his brother (6) on traditions of civic pageantry, the Norman Period — Lorcán Ó Tuathail League addressed Dubliners through appealing to the chiefs for unity against a familiar medium that allowed foreign invader; Marriage of Eva to unions and trade societies, temperance Strongbow (7) O’Neill and O’Donnell organisations, friendly societies, Period — Reception of Red Hugh at and other advocacy groups to align Gleann Maoiliughra (8) Confederation themselves opportunistically with the Period.63 language cause. In practice, therefore, pre-existing associational networks, Image, Vision, Culture the socioeconomic conditions of the city, the condition of the League as an My notion of an Irish National Theatre organisation, and the spectacle of the is that it ought to be the nursery of an processions themselves all combined Irish dramatic literature which, while to affect how people interpreted and making a worldwide appeal, would see internalised the League’s linguistic life through Irish eyes. For myself, I must nationalism.61 say that I cannot conceive it possible to achieve this except through the medium The 1902 language demonstration included of the Irish language ... English as spoken ‘picturesque’ and ‘emblematic tableaux’ by educated Englishmen differs from that

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spoken by Irishmen ... the subtle Gaelic appealing Deirdre, a frowning King and 63 An Claidheamh Soluis, mind struggling for expression through stalwart young heroes who would stand 17 May 1907. 64 Derry Journal, 27 May an unsympathetic medium. for no betrayals. I was in an audience 1938. of some hall devoted to nationalism 65 Pádraic Colum, ‘The Frank Fay, United Irishman, and Gaelicism when I saw the tableau Early Days of the 1 May, 1901 of ‘Silent O’Moyle be the Roar of thy Irish Theatre’, Dublin Magazine (October/ Waters’ and watched the enchantment of December 1949), 14. In 1938 Milligan was invited to judge the children of Lir.65 the tableaux presented at the feis in Omagh, County Tyrone. She readily accepted the Milligan staged ‘Avenging and Bright’ offer because of her extensive ‘experience in several times as a tableau vivant. Writing in organising tableaux in places as far apart 1938, she described the disasters that had as Carndonagh and Skibbereen, in Dublin befallen the League when it held a feis in and in Belfast, in spacious premises like Carnlough, County Antrim, in 1904: the Antient Concert Rooms and the Ulster Hall and often in tents at Feiseanna and Tableaux were shown at a hall and little country school-houses’.64 In the late Deirdre was very ambitiously proposed 1890s and early 1900s, tableaux had been to me as a subject of local interest. crucial to her political activities. Following We were to show her with the sons a highly successful exhibition of living of Uisineach riding in the chariot and pictures in Belfast in May 1898, staged in pointing towards the red cloud of ill conjunction with the city’s Gaelic League omen over Emania, while a choir sang and Arts Society, she was inspired to mount ‘Avenging and Bright. ... We just gave the further shows in Derry (1899), Belfast hindquarters of the horse, suggested by a (1900) and Dublin (April and August 1901). deerskin flung over a bolster which was She subsequently took poses plastiques to lashed to a high music stand. A brown schools and Gaelic League branches across sweeping horse tail projected between Ireland, tailoring her visualizations of the chariot shafts and Naoisi leaned national history to suit the demands of local forward holding the reins ... Alas, before constituencies. Tableaux were accessible the curtain rose the music stand began in two senses; they readily engaged their to lower itself; our horse was sinking to audiences and they could be produced by diminutive proportions. ‘Never mind,’ groups with limited funding and modest said Louis Walsh consolingly, ‘they are dramatic skills. Thus local communities, used to Cushendal ponies here.’66 language groups and small scale political and cultural organizations were able The actress Maíre Nic Shiubhlaigh also to participate directly in the theatrical remembered living pictures directed by memorialization of national identity. Milligan that re-enacted scenes from history Accounts written by those who witnessed or legend: ‘William Rooney’s “Dear Dark the tableaux shows include Pádraic Head”, or, perhaps, something out of Colum, who recalled that the April 1901 Moore’s “Rich and Rare” in which would show, organized by Milligan in Dublin, appear a lady, richly bejewelled and garbed included scenes from Thomas Moore’s Irish in silks, wooed by a glittering Sir Knight to Melodies, which he defined as the accompaniment of appropriate choral music’.67 living pictures that were carried along In 1949, Colum recalled more precisely by the music ... [for instance] ‘Avenging how the living picture shows were a hybrid and Bright Falls the Swift Sword of Erin’ of music and narrative in which ‘statuesque in which the audience would see an groups [were] introduced by some familiar

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66 Derry Journal, 27 May piece of music ... holding their pose for some accompanied by Irish airs, many composed 1938. minutes — an elementary show in which by her sister Charlotte. An unseen chorus 67 Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, costume, music, and striking appearance sang along with the tableaux from behind The Splendid Years: 68 Recollections as Told to were ingredients’. Thomas Moore was the stage curtain. The United Irishman Edward Kenny (Dublin, integral to Milligan’s own project because noted that the invisible source of the music 1955), 2–3. he was taken to be one of the principal during tableaux in Dublin added to its 68 Colum, ‘The Early Days advocates of the United Irishmen in popular ethereal presence: ‘strains of melody’ from of the Irish Theatre’, 14. 69 J. L. Molloy, Songs Irish culture. His Irish Melodies were based an ‘unseen harpist ... accorded perfectly of Ireland: Including on airs transcribed at the Belfast Harp with the pictures’.72 the Most Favourite of Festival in 1792 by the musician Edward Milligan herself expressly conceived of Moore’s Irish Melodies Bunting (1773–1843), who lived with the the tableau vivant as a vehicle for communal (London, 1873), 1. 70 Irish News, 7 May McCracken family in Belfast. In 1911 and national unification. Her recollection 1898. Charlotte Milligan Fox and Alice Milligan in 1913 of a show that she had helped to 71 Irish News, 28 April wrote a history of the Harp Festival, organize in west Cork underscores the 1909. Annals of the Irish Harpers, based on lost collective nature of the enterprise: 72 United Irishman, 15 March 1913. Bunting manuscripts that had been found by Charlotte and which Alice bequeathed to Some nine or ten years ago I visited Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1916. Music Macroom as envoy of the Gaelic League, operated as a key part of the tableau show and organised a historical tableau in the in the same way as it did in the late plays Market House. I found myself supported of Sean O’Casey: in both contexts, Irish on all sides by the clan O’Leary. One music and song evoke a strong connection stalwart Gael of that name impersonated between audience and players. As with the Brian Boru in his death struggle with the instance of Douglas Hyde walking onto the Danes; another gave in Irish a recital, stage out of the audience, music that was describing the pictures as the uprolling both familiar and revered could break the curtain disclosed them to view, whilst a separation between those who watched and third O’Leary manipulated the lighting those who performed. apparatus — and there were, I know not In his collection Songs of Ireland (1873), how many, juveniles of the name among J. L. Molloy had suggested that music was the dramatis personae, singers and the key to the Irish ‘national character’ and dancers.73 that songs were the surest representation of the ‘popular mind’.69 The connection Milligan and Ada McNeill worked together between pictures and music was overtly during the 1906 feis in Cushendall, County introduced in May 1898 when a series of Antrim. This was the occasion when ‘legendary and historic tableaux’ were Casement took the initiative to clear a considered an appropriate conclusion to the disused overgrown field after a unionist Gaelic League’s week-long music festival, landowner refused the League access to a held in Belfast. In order to make sure people site on his land. Milligan choreographed from different communities could attend, ‘The Mask of the Nine Glens’, which was the League negotiated with the railways both a tableau vivant and a procession to put on extra services. The Irish News that formed ‘a unique open-air spectacle ... carried a report that ‘in May 1898, the Feis headed by the Irish War Pipes and by the Ceoil held its meeting in Belfast, and the artistic banners’. The music was provided by local Gaelic League determined to have an Francis Joseph Bigger’s Belfast Pipe Band. innings’.70 In 1909 Milligan recalled how The ceremonial, processional pageantry, the Gaelic League orchestrated the show which involved music and Irish language ‘with the assistance of members of the Art recitation, became Milligan’s trademark in Society’.71 Milligan’s tableaux vivants were the Gaelic League movement.74

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Tableaux vivants became the central robbery’. The manuscript indicates how the 73 Quoted in Seamus focus of her work with amateur groups visual action of the various tableaux should Clarke, Feis na nGleann: A History of because they were easier to stage than be staged. The numbers in the following the Festival of the Glens dramas; as Kirsten Gram Holstrom extract indicate key moments announced to (Holywood, 1990), 17. observes, living pictures did not make the audience, rather than to the number of 74 Clarke, Feis na ‘excessive claims on the talents of the tableaux performed: nGleann, 18. 75 Kirsten Gram Holstrom, participants’.75 An especially illuminating Monodrama, Attitudes, insight into Milligan’s nurturing role for 8. The Danes were at last routed. Tableaux Vivants: amateur theatre groups is provided by the Though Murrogh fell in the front of Studies on some Trends letters she received in 1899 from Mary the fight the power of the foreigner was of Theatrical Fashion 1770–1815 (Stockholm, Spring Rice (1880–1924), president of the broken forever. As Brian knelt at evening 1967), 229. Foynes Branch of the Gaelic League. Spring prayer there came two Danes that were 76 Milligan Papers, Allen Rice later organized the Howth gunrunning flying from the battle & they looked at Library. in 1914. She was heavily involved in the him through the trees — (curtain rises) Gaelic League movement and Milligan’s It is the king said one — no said the theatre practice seemed to her vital in other it is only the priest. No said the creating and stimulating the language other it is Brian the high king himself let community. Because her language group us kill him as he kneels. was eager to stage living pictures, Spring 9. They fell upon Brian and a great Rice wrote to Milligan requesting assistance struggle followed. with costumes and scenery: He seized his sword — fought them bravely. I think they would hardly be up to acting 10. And though they killed him his The Last Feast of the Fianna but we had soldiers returning found him lying thought of having tableaux [drawn] from victorious in death upon the bodies of the Fianna, one of the murder of Brian the foreign foemen. Boru, one of Malachi and the collar of gold, the last two the same as the ones In response, Spring Rice explained: they had in Belfast in May. I wonder could you lend us any of the costumes I do quite agree that Brian Boru would for these? It would be a great help if be so much better in a series than you could, and we would, of course, isolated and we all think your plan take great care of them. The people here most effective. But I’m afraid we have are getting so keen about the Irish that no one good enough for Brian and we they would be very much interested in should like to see your plan for Oisin anything of the kind.76 before deciding. You say Oisin is simpler. Perhaps we could attempt Brian next Milligan suggested that it would be possible year ... of course I see it would be so to devise a coherent series of tableaux much better to have several tableaux centred upon the Brian Boru narrative. on the same subject, just changing the This manuscript is the only surviving pose and position; besides being more example of a tableau vivant script by her. historically instructive to the audience She redesigned his death scene to include a than several of different ages and periods retrospect of his successful reign in Ireland. altogether.77 The first scene is based on the story from which Moore’s poem ‘Rich and Rare’ is The overarching consideration, as Spring derived; a ‘young maiden of great beauty Rice makes clear, was to ensure that the adorned with jewels’ walks alone ‘from end presentation was ‘historically instructive’. to end of Erin without fear of danger and

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Women and Nation with leading cultural activists such as Anna 77 Milligan Papers, Allen Library. Johnston, Mary Hutton, Edith McCann and 78 Katherine Mullen, Katherine Mullen explores the (un)conscious Rosamund Praeger taking part. Yet a major ‘“Typhoid Turnips and presence of sexual visual culture in James cultural genre that was led by and included Crooked Cucumbers”: Joyce’s Ireland: ‘Joyce places on show what so many women has been ignored in the Theosophy in Ulysses’, Modernism/Modernity, commonly issued from the spirit cabinet; standard histories of Ireland’s anti-colonial 8, 1 (2001), 77–97. 77. scantily clad “ghosts”, who disconcertingly struggle. 79 Mary Chapman, resembled the smutty postcards, indecent The silence of these shows was important ‘“Living Pictures”: stereoscopes, and tableaux vivants of in opening up a radical inclusive space, Women and Tableaux 78 Vivants in Nineteenth- popular erotic entertainments.’ Milligan, particularly in contested areas such as Century American in contrast, accorded Irish women more Belfast. Women could work together Fiction and Culture’, dynamic roles, in public space, on stage and on the production of tableaux despite Wide Angle, 18 (1996), behind the scenes. Mary Chapman observes holding (and indeed, sometimes, because 22-50, 29–30. 80 Shan Van Vocht, 4 that women in America gravitated towards they held) opposing political views. October 1897. staging tableaux because of the genre’s Tableaux made it possible for a radical elements of participatory democracy: nationalist such as Anna Johnston to work alongside the staunch unionist sculptor The performers and producers of Rosamund Praeger. Praeger designed tableaux vivants were predominantly the sets for the 1898 show that Johnston women ... In Wharton’s The House of performed in and Milligan directed. Mirth and Alcott’s Behind the Mask, Women contributed to such events without for example, young unmarried women defined titles as ‘director’ and ‘stage perform lead roles, while men observe. designer’; they produced and performed in Married women serve as hostesses or unscripted shows in which they remained stage managers. The manuals support largely unnamed, where their roles were this division of roles. There are on contributions to a whole. It was, in essence, average more than fifty percent more a collective ‘event’. At issue in the debates roles for adult women than for adult men about native language and national theatre in all the manuals I examined.79 was the question of who had the right to speak for the Irish nation and how that Women in Milligan’s tableaux were not nation could be spoken for. The Gaelic identified by their sexual relationship to League was not just about reinstating the men. It is important that these shows were Irish language; it was part of the Revival performed in public space rather than in project to create the cultural conditions that elite drawing rooms and by women who would give the Irish language and national often identified themselves as part of a theatre meaning. In this context, the tableau cultural or political collective. The silence of was a symbol of the national body awaiting the tableaux was in itself a politics. Women, speech. At the turn of the century these Milligan had complained, ‘were not called living picture shows were crucial for the upon to have any opinion whatsoever in huge numbers of people who did not have constitutional politics’.80 Their silence, Irish but who wanted to participate in the when staged, became a form of speaking formation of ‘national’ theatre. Tableaux back. Milligan produced tableaux with were vital in forging communities, for women who were artists, educators, women in gaining space in the public life of community, cultural and political activists. the nation, for connecting people in difficult The Gaelic League included many women. political contexts, for learners at different The very first major show of tableaux levels of Irish-language training, for the Milligan helped produce in Belfast took inclusion of northern Protestants, like Alice place in 1898 at Belfast’s Exhibition Hall, Milligan herself, whose upbringing led them

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Weekly Freeman cartoon: ‘Rejoice Oh! Greatly’: Free supplement with Weekly Freeman, 4 June 1887. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

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81 United Irishman, 4 to believe that Irish was not their native Without your help we feel very much January 1902. language or part of their national culture. afraid of trying them as none of us have 82 12 July 1901; Clontarf Silence represented a halfway house, a had much experience in tableaux. I branch: C[rime] S[pecial] B[ranch]. 1901 space, a means of crossing borders and feel sure in as far as attracting a large 24060/S. transgressing the barriers erected by years audience they are quite sure to be 83 NLI, Alice Milligan of colonial occupation. successful, everyone in Dublin seems Papers, MS. 5048 (36). In addition, tableau vivant shows anxious for them ... you are so clever and were clearly significant in providing a have such a genius for dramatic effects cultural platform for women, who were that if you came we are certain of a often banned from nationalist political magnificent success.83 organizations. Milligan aligned her work with Irish feminist organizations such as Milligan and Johnston joined Inghinidhe na hÉireann, which had been Inghinidhe na hÉireann and helped with founded by Maud Gonne in April 1900. the organization’s drama classes. In 1901, Griffith declared: ‘The starting of Cumann along with the Fay brothers, they staged na nGaedheal called into existence another two shows: the first took place in April, body, composed of Irishwomen, called the second, as a protest during Horse Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and whatever the Show Week in August. The performances men might do in forming the Irish national included short plays by Milligan, as well character it rested principally with the as several different ‘types’ of tableau: some women of Ireland to form it.’81 The Crime conveyed stories, others enacted narratives Special Branch reports reveal how the from music; pictures were enacted by colonial administration in Ireland viewed the women almost like the pageants that this organization: would characterize the later Gaelic League language demonstrations. The construction This society was formed in Dublin of the tableau shows exemplified the towards the end of the year 1900, material skills of local production. Great and has its offices at Lower Abbey care and attention were devoted to making Street. It consists of a central branch the clothes, to the designs for the costumes, in Dublin with as many branches as and to sourcing the materials in Ireland. can be promoted in the different other The United Irishman commended the counties of Ireland & Gt. Britain. The organization’s work: ‘We have heard central branch has Miss Maud Gonne nothing but praise on every side of the for President ... It will be observed that tableaux, and the Inghinidhe na hÉireann this Society and the Confederation of are deserving of all praise.’84 Despite the the Gael Society are almost similar in popularity of the event, however, Holloway their constitution, Rules and Objectives, felt that an atmosphere of ‘funereal gloom and that the distinction between these & melancholy’ marred the tableaux: consists almost entirely in the fact that the one society is composed entirely by Can’t one be cheerful & Irish at the same women, whilst the other is composed of time? ... The scenes of tableaux illustrative nearly all men.82 of the events in the story of ‘The Pursuit of Diarmuid & Grainne’ were sometimes The tableau had already proved a major effective & the choral music — though attraction for the Irish Women’s Association ever doleful — was capitally sung by the in Belfast. After witnessing the 1900 series invisible choir. This part of the show was of tableaux in Belfast, Maud Gonne sought drearily produced ... The tableaux of ‘The Milligan’s aid for a show she was planning Children of Lir’ was effective & pretty, for Dublin with Inghinidhe na hÉireann: but I did not think much of the ‘Red Hugh

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Weekly Freeman cartoon: ‘At Their Mercy’: Free supplement with Weekly Freeman, 8 April 1882. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

O’Donnell’ series.85 Maud Gonne described how the children’s matinée in August 1901, staged by Milligan One of the most often performed and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, repeated the tableaux in pre- and post-partition Ireland tableau of Ireland as a woman eventually was that of ‘Erin Fettered, Erin Free’. liberated:

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84 United Irishman, 3 As the curtain rose on the last tableaux or saying’. They are very similar to the April 1901. of Erin Fettered and Erin Free, and Erin tableaux that Milligan staged, in which 85 NLI, Holloway Diaries, as a beautiful girl with broken chains the physical body was also a symbolic April 1901 MS. 1798/1799. falling from her and a drawn sword in representation that generated broader 86 United Irishman, 7 her hand appeared, the little children political and cultural meaning. In tableaux, September 1901. rose to their feet and their voices joined then, Milligan reactivated familiar codes 87 Derry Journal, 27 May sweetly and shrilly in the chorus of ‘A that were already in circulation in Irish 1938. 86 88 Chapman, ‘“Living Nation Once Again’. melodrama, costumes pageants and street Pictures”’, 26. parades, in theatre posters and in the Milligan witnessed an identical living illustrations in the nationalist press. picture during a post-partition tableau show In the American women’s movement, held in the grounds of the Loreto Convent similar living pictures were used as part of in Omagh. She reported the event for the public processions. In 1913, for example, press. People, she declared, did not need members of the National American to hear the orator because ‘everyone knew Women’s Suffrage Association marched to what the pictures meant’: the Treasury Building in Washington, DC, ‘to present a series of tableaux representing At the outset three figures faced the Justice, Plenty, Columbia, Peace, Charity, attentive multitude at the front of the and Liberty to campaign for the woman’s platform. Pale, downcast, mournful, vote’.88 The 1925 International Council a figure in white, veiled to the knee in of Women was also held in Washington transparent black, wearing heavy fetters. and opened with an ‘Allegorical tableau’ Behind her at the back of the stage an that portrayed an image of the conference’s empty throne. Every individual in the agenda.89 The Inghinidhe na hÉireann event audience knows at a glance it is Eire, of April 1901 concluded with a tableau that our Motherland ... Justice at length ‘represented the Boer fight for freedom’, advances, the fetters are removed and an anti-colonial struggle that served as a fall with a clang. The Green and gold rallying point for Irish nationalists.90 The cloak is placed around Eire. She is led United Irishman reported how the audience to the empty throne to the air of ‘A at this show appealed for the women to re- Nation Once Again’ and the white-robed enact the series of tableaux several times. figure, symbolising the faith she has Indeed, it was in this very show that many defended, sets the crown of independent of the later prisoners of 1923 gained their nationhood on her brow.87 first experience of performing tableaux:

People were familiar with the images and Maeve, greatest of Ireland’s heroines, knew how to interpret them, largely because Grania Mhaol visiting Elizabeth they had appeared regularly in the Irish and pulverising the virgin monarch, nationalist presses since the late nineteenth who strove to impress the splendid century. Both the Weekly Freeman and Irishwomen; St. Brigid, the Inghean United Ireland carried a regular, glossy, Dubh, Red Hugh’s mother; Sarah pull-out, colour supplement illustrating Curran, and Anne Devlin, the betrothed images (usually female) of Ireland struggling and faithful servant of Emmet. Ireland against her colonial oppressor. Her ankles fettered and crouching over her unstrung or wrists are chained; sometimes she is harp at the base of the Celtic cross, and gagged, usually depicted in a doorway, then Ireland Free, erect against the cross, entering or pointing to a prison cell. Such her harp now strung at her feet, her sketches were always accompanied by green robe flowing round her, the cap captions relating what ‘Erin’ was thinking of liberty on her head, and in her hand

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a shining sword. This tableau evoked a might be found in those assuaging notes 89 Leila J. Rupp, Worlds tremendous outburst of enthusiasm and and those hushed rhythms and in those of Women: The Making of an International shouts of ‘Aris! aris!’ caused its repetition silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing Women’s Movement 91 again and again. as if language no longer existed because (New Jersey, 1997), 56. words were no longer necessary ... 90 United Irishman, 13 Gibbons writes of Anne Devlin’s April 1901. 91 United Irishman, 13 unwillingness to betray Robert Emmet Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa (1991) April 1901. to the British in the face of torture as 92 Luke Gibbons, ‘The an ‘act of intransigence’, suggesting that Milligan’s dramas relied on a kind of Politics of Silence: ‘Anne’s silence is similar to her domestic performance practice that makes their value Anne Devlin, Women and Irish Cinema’, in or maternal persona. It is not a submissive and meaning almost inaccessible to us now; Transformations in Irish silence, standing outside signification it is as though they are written in a language Culture (Cork, 1996), and, by extension, language, power and that is not English or Irish, but something 114. representation.’92 The pictorial stillness in between. Can what was released to of Pat Murphy’s 1984 film Anne Devlin audiences then, be rereleased to us now? is visually similar to the tableau versions Anna Johnston, as the waiting maid, forever performed by Irish women earlier in the pours the sleeping potion into a silver pot century. It was the memory of this silence held by Princess Grania, who was played by as an act of resistance that the women Edith McCann in 1898 in the Ulster Hall prisoners of 1923 re-animated when they at the Gaelic League music festival. Queen restaged Devlin and Emmet. Such silence Maeve looks out at us directly, clasping her under torture was protest. Silence after spear and shield. This is the only known death was power. Just as Emmet’s speech image of Elise McGown. No records in the from the dock projected the republican official archives chart her life. Resting on struggle into the future, the pictures by her shoulder, in a white gown, hands clasped the women hunger strikers of 1923 also together, hair falling around a half secret projected, through silence, a future beyond smile, is ‘Miss Davidson’, alias Finbarr, the moment of their production. Alice daughter of Maeve. Milligan played a key part in finding and These are two of four surviving developing the form for this utopian vision. photographic images of Milligan’s theatre practice. Three of them were probably not The Radical Modernism of Ireland’s taken in context. The lighting suggests Cultural Revival that they were restaged under the glass roof of photographic studios in Belfast MICHAEL: But there is one memory of and Letterkenny. Writing in 1931 of such that Lughnasa time that visits me most nineteenth-century studio photographs, often; and what fascinates me about Walter Benjamin observed: ‘Everything that memory is that it owes nothing about these early pictures was built to last to fact. In that memory atmosphere is ... the very creases in people’s clothes have more real than incident and everything an air of permanence.’93 Yet although is simultaneously actual and illusory ... these pictures are taken in a studio, they Dancing with eyes half-closed because to are meant to represent and convey ‘live’ open them would be to break the spell. performance. The theatre show is a display Dancing as if language had surrendered of stillness, yet the photograph cannot to movement — as if ritual, this wordless capture the ‘aura’ of that stillness. These ceremony, was now the way to speak, to pictures do not have the same unification, whisper private and sacred things, to be the same confidence in ‘permanence’. in touch with some otherness. Dancing as They are part of a cultural movement if the very heart of life and all its hopes to transform the static, to alter the un-

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‘Maeve of Connaught and her Daughter Finbarr (Miss Elise McGown and Miss Davidson). Gaelic Tableaux at Belfast’, June 1898. The Gentlewoman (London). Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

democracy that has been permanent. These within a movement. Writing of the French are anonymous costumed performers. They photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927), are not people photographed for themselves Benjamin observed that he had achieved or because of who they are. They are ‘the emancipation of the image from aura’. photographed for the roles they perform. Atget ‘looked for what was unremarkable, The women photographed in 1898 perform forgotten, cast adrift’.94

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It is perhaps in Benjamin’s description of devaluation of Ireland under British 93 Walter Benjamin, ‘Little Atget that we get close to the significance colonial rule. These were people intent on History of Photography’, in Selected Writings, of the tableaux images and the community exploring utopia. For Milligan, ‘Freedom Volume 2, 1927–1934 theatre practice they played a crucial role is as yet to all appearances a far off thing; (London, 1999), 514. in forming. These extraordinary pictures yet must we who desire it work for it as 94 Benjamin, ‘Little are from The Gentlewoman, a London ardently and as joyously as if we had good History of Photography’, 518. magazine devoted to illustrated images hope that our own eyes should behold 95 The trilogy published 96 of empire — the travels of the English it.’ These women developed a powerful in the Daily Express monarchy, the decadent pastimes of the theatrical genre that was able to generate in 1899 — The Last aristocracy. The Irish tableaux in June a communal sense in a country (and in a Feast of the Fianna (September), Oisín in 1898 were an amusing addition to their city) where community was sectarianized, Tír na nÓg (October) column about the successful music festivals where women were denied votes, jobs and and Oisín and of the ‘Celtic fringe’. In this journal, these education and where Irish national history Pádraic (November) costumed images of ‘yesteryear’, from the and language were outlawed. — organized Oisín’s exploits as a linear and loyalist bastion of Belfast, were of nothing The silence of the tableau was not a chronological narrative: more than quaint ‘gentle’ women doing silence of submission. It was political. Oisín leaves the Fianna, their bit to celebrate traditions that did not Tableaux operated through code. The travels to Tír na nÓg threaten empire, but instead enhanced its women prisoners in A Wing of Kilmainham and returns to Ireland after four hundred cultural texture. They were performing in 1923 did not need to tell the prisoners years. In contrast, local, familiar, parlour games in ambitious in B Wing what they were performing. The tableaux enabled home-made native costume. people at the back of the field in Omagh in Milligan to produce a But the potion that Johnston was 1938 did not need to hear an orator describe more complex narrative on stage — one in which pouring in 1898 was anything but a drug the tableaux on stage. They recognized memory and identity to induce sleep. This was not the moment what they were seeing; they understood the are visually present. It is at which Oisín was about to leave Ireland context and the iconography. What these through an inner stage for the land of forgetfulness. Milligan’s audiences were seeing was not simply what of performed living pictures that Oisín Ossianic trilogy, staged by the Irish Literary was being performed in front of their eyes. reviews, remembers and Theatre in 1900, explored the moment The ‘captions’ to the images are implied and re-envisions Ireland’s of his return.95 In her plays, audiences therefore endlessly ‘open’. A photograph heritage and his own witness the moment that Oisín wakes up such as that of Milligan’s tableau of Oisín past. The trilogy was first performed as and touches a new Ireland, reactivating leaving Tír na nÓg is perhaps an example of tableaux in 1898 by its political consciousness. The audience what Andrew MacNamara calls a ‘contra Gaelic League branches and St. Patrick watch as Oisín’s refound picture’, in which primitivism and modernity in Belfast, Derry and memories are enacted as tableaux on an are fused.97 Tableaux were modernist Letterkenny. 96 Alice Milligan, inner stage; the personal is shared as the because they displayed a hyper-primitivism: Editorial, Shan Van historically national. The caoine enacted they were a very self-aware part of a highly Vocht, 7 February 1896. at the end of the ‘Brian of Banba tableaux sophisticated visual culture. Their stillness series’ demonstrated how the living in and costumed reference to legend and pre- 1901 were alive to the possibilities of the colonial Ireland (even in photographs) were undead; Queen Maeve and Elise McGown not antiquated or anti-modern. In a period simultaneously look out at us in battle when Ireland was considered ‘visually gear. A picture of a mythical struggle, it is illiterate’,98 visual culture was vital in also a struggle taking shape in Belfast in reclaiming public space and in capturing 1898. These pictures remain a memory of the public imagination. The idea that the beginning of re-memory. They depict modernism was something that happened radical cultural and language activists abroad (such as the Chicago World Fair) who were concerned with all that had been ignores the radical modern technologies and ‘unremarked, forgotten, cast adrift’ by the culturally nuanced activism that was at the economic, social, political and cultural heart of the Revival.

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97 Andrew MacNamara], The communities Milligan was involved work ... the reason ... they find drama ‘Early Photographs with had formed numerous organizations: the easiest way of reaching the public in Ireland’; talk people were members of more than one of ... It is far easier to induce 300 people delivered at Roundtable ‘Modernism, Visual these various groups and alliances, such to come to a hall and witness a play Culture and Ireland’, as the local co-operative societies, Gaelic in Irish than it is to induce 300 people NLI, 25 September League branches, women’s associations, to purchase and read a book in Irish. 2009. socialist republican party branches, and Even persons who do not understand a 98 MacNamara, ‘Early Photographs in Ireland’. literary societies that were being formed in word of Irish can come to a play in that 99 NLI, Piaras Béaslaí Irish communities in and outside Ireland. language ... while those large numbers of Papers, 33, 952 (15). The image we have now is not ‘the’ event, English speakers who cannot read their no more than is the posed gesture of a own language can only be reached by the tableau. This is what makes Milligan’s plays medium of drama.99 and tableaux so difficult to comprehend. They cannot be reproduced. Archival traces, As Béaslaí suggests, the audience could such as the photographs reproduced here, follow the action and understand the Irish give a glimpse of a national theatre practice through interpreting the staged gestures and that was linked with the movement to tableaux. The pictures illustrate the words regenerate the Irish language. Community in the same way as the personified body of was at the heart of this project. Ireland often expressed meaning in the pull- A photograph of ‘St Patrick at Tara’ was out colour illustrations of the nationalist sent by Milligan to An Claidheamh Soluis newspapers. These illustrations were in 1913. She wanted it to be published accompanied by text: both dialogue with as a reminder that the north had been an each other in much the same way as graphic integral part of the early national theatre novels use images to communicate narrative. movement and to remind readers that the The photograph Milligan published Irish language had been a priority for the in 1913 gives us a rare opportunity to see earliest cultural activists. Photographs the faces of key figures of the language and newspapers were critical aids in movement in the North, including Anna disseminating that memory. St Patrick at Johnston, her sister Maggie, and the short- Tara was the first recorded example of a story writer Pádraic O’Shea (alias ‘Conan drama performed in the Irish language Maol’). The cast wear the costumes and and was a mixture of tableaux and spoken headdress of the ancient Irish; one character drama. As such, the show was a forerunner strums an Irish harp; another carries the of the way in which the Ossianic trilogy was weapons that Queen Maeve (Elise McGown) theatrically realized as a fusion of dramatic held in Belfast a couple of months previously. form. Staged on 23 November 1898 at Her shield made its way to the Gaiety in Letterkenny by members of the local Dublin for the old Fenian John O’Leary to Donegal and Belfast Gaelic League, the play hold when he played a warrior in Milligan’s was in part performed in Irish and in part Last Feast of the Fianna in February through tableaux. Milligan helped organize 1900.100 Prisoners wrote to Milligan after cultural events for the Gaelic League in a 1916 saying that their moment of political number of Irish communities, including consciousness came when they participated Liverpool, where she worked with Piaras with her in forging local theatrical and Béaslaí. He agreed with her that drama cultural events. A letter from one Irish helped to create a cultural community: Volunteer in 1917 concluded: ‘If we ever write the history of [the language movement Since the inception of the language in Castlecomer] we can tell of how you came movement more plays have been written to the rescue in the days when every man’s in Irish than any other kinds of creative hand was against us.’101

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Weekly Freeman cartoon: ‘To the Rescue!’ Free supplement with Weekly Freeman, 4 April 1891. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

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100 It hung on the walls Cultural activists understood (in the of an Irish national theatre was to make of the Lyric Theatre in midst of civil war and after partition) the ‘literary drama permanent in Ireland during Belfast until 1989; it was political resonance of Milligan’s theatre our time, and give the Irish nation a new then stored in the garage 105 of Mary O’Malley, the practice. In 1926, four years after she left method of expression’. He placed the theatre’s co-founder, in Dublin to become a full-time carer in the emphasis of this ‘new method of expression’ Dublin. north (for her brother and his family) and on language. He told readers of Samhain in 101 Milligan Papers, Allen a founder of the Anti-Partition Council, 1903 that a national theatre must ‘restore Library. 102 George Russell, Irish Russell recalled her as ‘a girl of genius’, who, words to their sovereignty ... we must Statesman, 2 January in the 1890s, ‘began to have premonitions of make speech even more important than 1926. a dramatic movement’. Milligan, he argued, gesture upon the stage ... We must get rid 103 Susan Mitchell, The wrote and produced ‘little plays’ specifically of everything that is restless, everything Shamrock, 22 February, 1919. ‘to help the infant Gaelic League’. Her ‘bag that draws the attention away from the 104 John Berger, Ways of crammed with fragments of tapestry’ was, sound of the voice.’106 Yeats fined his Abbey Seeing (London, 1972), Russell explained, ‘used on the actors in actors for moving too much and for letting 3. order to create the illusion of a richly-robed the books fall from their heads during 105 W. B. Yeats, ‘Plans and 102 Methods’, Beltaine, 2 ancient Irish romance’. Susan Mitchell rehearsal. (February, 1900), 5. had argued in 1919 that Milligan was ‘the The Irish National Theatre movement 106 W. B. Yeats, ‘The most successful producer of plays before the is famous for its reliance on language to Reform of the Theatre’, Abbey Theatre started on its triumphant provoke a communal consciousness.107 But Samhain, (September, 1903). way’. Even though she made ancient Irish for Milligan, gesture was perhaps even more chariots out of rocking chairs or Gaelic important than the spoken word. Yet a sense crosses out of brown paper, Mitchell of communal identity was hard to achieve recalled that ‘so great is the power of mind, with people who did not share language and her audiences saw the plays as she intended traditions, in a colonized country where them’.103 John Berger wrote that ‘Images words were censored, the experience of were first made to conjure up the appearance women suppressed, private letters blacked of something that was absent.’104 What was out, flags banned, meetings infiltrated; absent in Ireland was an empowered public where sexuality was forced to operate in visual art that portrayed national history coded gesture; and where, as the vast archive and Irish life. It was these images that of police records shows, spoken words Milligan wanted to conjure up. in public were recorded by government colonial officials in disguise. It was out of There was a lasting structural legacy the unofficial codes of visual culture that too in the monologue, the storytelling Milligan first became aware of ‘otherness’, and the musical performance that often of what defined her as a northern Protestant accompanied the living picture. Its most from a unionist tradition: striking features — the frozen moment, the suspension of action, the strangeness of The first time the words ‘Home Rule’ breathing bodies held motionless, waiting, came under my notice, I was a small girl being heard in voices articulated by others in the county Tyrone, riding a shaggy offstage — had a profound impact on pony along a country road. A hired boy Irish theatre. Theatrical silence was key who rejoiced in the name ‘Roddy’ held to the development of the Irish modernist the rein. He was the first native Irishman aesthetic. Milligan’s influential early I remember to have conversed with, and tableaux shows were watched and admired he was a veritable Rory of the Hills. As by Yeats and by many others who went we went along he discoursed treason in on to participate in Irish theatre. Yeats’s fascinating style, and when we came to a ‘Abbey style’ was defined by stillness. In quiet and suitable corner, he danced jig- 1900, he argued in Beltaine that the aim steps to his own whistling. It was he who

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From Shan Van Vocht, ‘Notes and News’ page, with line drawings of Finn Mac Cumhaill and Diarmuid by Alice Milligan, June 1898. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

interpreted for me the words ‘Home Rule This is Milligan’s earliest recorded memory 107 Bernadette Sweeney, for Ireland’, which appeared in white in which she identifies her own otherness, Performing the Body in Irish Theatre (London, painted letters on a grey stone wall, and her sense of not belonging as a true ‘native’ 2008), 194–95. why the harp rudely shaped was there in the country of her birth. without a crown.108 In August 1898, she and her comrades transported ‘the foundation stone’ for Wolfe

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108 Milligan Papers, Allen Tone’s statue from Cave Hill in Belfast to ideas of national theatre and the cultural Library. Dublin. For her, there was no boundary regeneration of the Irish language as a 109 Weekly Freeman, 18 between disseminating ideas and protest spoken medium. But they had other elective March 1905. The new machines used on streets and performing images from affinities too. Theatre, photography and the for sorting mail at the Irish history and culture on official stages. magic lantern were the most immediately GPO cannot recognize Nor was there any ‘official’ Irish theatre obvious of these; but cinema and art or ‘read’ Irish script. stage until the Revivalists opened their installation are by now also recognizably Irish-language mail has to be taken out of own Irish National Theatre in 1904. The among them. the machine, read by a tableaux produced on formal stages (such The moving cinematic image is in fact person (who hopefully as the Gaiety, the Rotunda and the Father a series of still pictures speeded up to give can read Irish) and then Mathew Hall) often resembled public the effect of movement. But even in the placed in the correct sorting slot. All this demonstrations and the heavily costumed era of the early silent film, directors often has to take place within pageants orchestrated for the Gaelic League. suspended action to jolt the viewer into fifteen seconds. If there Tableaux took multiple forms. A good another interpretative realm. During the is not someone present example of their agitprop mode of theatre 1897 royal visit to Dublin, James Connolly who can read Irish, the mail is delayed. I took place in front of the General Post and Maud Gonne used a magic lantern to am thankful to Angus Office on Sackville Street (now O’Connell project onto Dublin’s city walls photographs Laverty of the GPO for Street), Dublin, in 1905. The Gaelic League of famine that they had witnessed in the this fascinating insight Committee, headed by Milligan, used living west of Ireland . The Land League in the into how Irish was not just impeded by a pictures to protest against the Civil Service 1880s similarly photographed scenes of colonial system, but is boycott of Irish language postal addresses. Irish distress and evictions; they often also not accommodated At this time the Irish language was under restaged evictions in cities and towns where by the modern increasing official pressure to disappear. they also projected photographs to rally technology of the Post Office in the Irish Gaelic League bank accounts were being support and raise funds. Republic. closed down by the British government; As silent films became more popular in anyone who displayed public commercial Ireland in the early years of the twentieth signs in Irish was arrested; and post that was century they were called ‘living pictures’, written in Irish to Irish-language addresses the name also used to describe tableaux. was systematically destroyed. The Weekly The Rotunda was showing living pictures Freeman reported how crowds gathered to the day that Parnell’s statue was finally watch a silent mime of this dispute when unveiled in 1910. Parnell, the figure who the parade reached the General Post Office. had haunted the Irish public consciousness The crowd was invited to bear witness to the is here about to be given a public body colonial state’s discrimination: — a lasting tableau — a voiceless bronze effigy in the middle of the street. In the The platform itself represented in a same street in the 1890s, seven years after concentrated form the G.P.O. with all its Parnell’s death, Áine Ceannt (then Áine works and pomp. There is a counter — O’Brennan) first waved across to Alice the inevitable counter. At one side stood Milligan who was then a stranger to her. By an Irishman in typical Gaelic costume the 1930s Milligan considered Áine Ceannt offering a parcel addressed in Irish to the and Lily O’Brennan’s Dublin house her affable clerk at the other side ... but as ‘political headquarters’; the three women the packages were handed over to him, forged intimate cultural and political he, in the most deprecatory way, firmly, friendships that lasted their whole lives. but surely sent them back.109 In a 1939 unpublished memoir, Ceannt remembered her affection for Milligan as In a correspondence, such as that between initially inspired by their mutual veneration Milligan and Spring Rice, it becomes clearer for tableaux: how tableaux operated as a link between

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164 ALICE MILLIGAN: REPUBLICAN TABLEAUX AND THE REVIVAL

Jack B. Yeats, ‘Communicating When did I first meet her? I was coming with Prisoners’ c. 1924. Oil on down O’Connell Street near the pillar ... canvas, 46 × 21cm. Courtesy of we had been to a Gaelic League class — a The Model, home of the Niland Collection. © Estate of Jack B. young woman with bright red hair, a hat Yeats. All rights reserved, DACS ... was in a hurry going towards Henry 2010. Street. My companion said excitedly: There is Alice Milligan. I looked towards the gleaming head with interest — I had heard of her wonderful Gaelic pageants — I had never seen them. I was not long out of school. But I loved pageants. They had fascinated me during my schooldays — those readings from Tennyson with the coloured magic lantern slides. Well, to me they were just exquisite. And this Alice Milligan loved similar scenes. She had done them for the Gaelic League — So across the bustle of the streets a sympathetic wave from me swept towards her. Yet it was not until 1916 that she and I were to know each other well, and to begin a friendship which never broke. Her dreams, her poems, her intimate thoughts, her worries, her beliefs, she poured them out to me, and I say with truth she loved me.110

Ceannt’s sister Lily O’Brennan was one of the women who staged tableaux while incarcerated in Kilmainham in the early 1920s. Jack B. Yeats’s 1923 painting Communicating with Prisoners depicts women on the outside waving across to the women prisoners inside. By staging tableaux of Emmet and Devlin to their comrades in Kilmainham, the women hunger strikers of 1923 made symbols of their bodies. Discussing the hunger strike of 1981, Maud Ellmann suggests: ‘By hungering, the protestors transform their bodies into the “quotations” of their forebears and reinscribe the cause of Irish nationalism in the spectacle of starving flesh.’111 The 1923 110 NLI, Áine Ceannt tableaux performance demonstrates how Papers, MS 41, 492 (4). the meaning of these theatrical pictures 111 Maud Ellmann, could not be confined within the moment The Hunger Artists: of their production. By embodying the past Starving, Writing and Imprisonment (London, in living pictures, the prisoners were able 1993), 14. simultaneously to envision a future.

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