Lady Gregory's Toothbrush

I have read just about everything that I've found available (in English) of Colm Toibin. As the list of books has grown, I've come to appreciate his candor and writing skills. I appreciated Lady Gregory's Toothbrush because of this refreshing presentation of history. Toibin's connecting of historical persons was delightful since this doesn't often seem to be done (and done so extremely well) by many other authors. Lady Gregory was a real 'corker' to use a bit of slang, someone I just might have enjoyed knowing. I hope some day to connect with Colm Toibin. If his writing style is anything at all like he speaks, he would certainly be more than a delight as someone with whom to spend time!

The tension of the Anglo-Irish, Toibin argues, can be charted in Lady Gregory's own life, as she negotiated the difficult balancing act of a Coole landowner hosting balls for British nobles before going off to her next social engagement, a tea party for the ladies in the local workhouse. Speaking of the latter, the infamous if well-intended Famine-era "Gregory Act" enacted by her family, that pushed off so many from their small plot of land into emigration, ironically making the conditions for those who remained behind in Ireland better off, is delved into efficiently. Toibin, with sympathy but not apology, notes how she, no less than Pearse, Joyce, O'Casey, Synge, Hyde, Gonne, or Yeats during the period from 1890-1925 (for those among the Revival who managed to live through the Rising and the subsequent strife), had to constantly reinvent and embroider and disguise her contested Irish identity. This extended essay, more a monograph than a full-fledged book, briefly sums up the general trajectory of how the rise of the Free State paralled the life and successes of the coterie led in no small part not only by the more prominent and grandstanding Yeats but also by Lady G. It's not recommended for those who may be unfamiliar with "The Countess Cathleen," for example, or the plays put on by Yeats, her, and their colleagues/rivals for the Abbey Theatre. While a well-chosen list of primary sources and scholarship is appended, no footnotes are given, and Toibin seems to expect his readers to be already familiar with the Irish political, cultural and literary currents of the early 20c. Little description of her writings and no literary analysis to speak of can be found here. Rather, Toibin seeks to uncover what the title of the book indicates: the gap that Lady G. sought to close but never fully could...between those like Lady G. who used a toothbrush, to cite her bon mot--that is, who were civilized, and those--such as the peasants that she alternately romanticized, ministered to, and ridiculed--who had no such dentifrice.