Words Celia Donoghue
A plaque at 3 Blenheim Road in London’s Chiswick area commemorates the famous Yeats family who lived there from 1888 to 1902 – artist John Butler Yeats and his two sons, the writer William Butler and the painter Jack B. However, there is no mention of the two girls in the family, Susan and Elizabeth, nicknamed Lily and Lollie, who carved out important careers in the Arts and Crafts movement in England and Ireland. At times, their incomes kept the rather precarious family finances afloat.
History has lumped the two sisters together, and indeed they lived and worked at close quarters for much of their lives. Apparently, though, they didn’t get on at all, being radically different in character – William once described them as ‘the angel and the demon’.
Susan (‘Lily’; 1866–1949) was quiet, gentle, often in poor health, but a superb prize-winning embroiderer. She worked for the famous textile designer William Morris, a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. Her work included elaborate bed hangings for his home at Kelmscott Manor, which were exhibited in the 1893 Arts and Crafts Exhibition. Her younger sister Elizabeth (‘Lollie’; 1868–1940) was a formidable person who could turn her hand to anything. She wrote, painted, trained as a Froebel teacher, taught art in schools, wrote four manuals on painting, and learned the art of printing at the Women’s Printing Society.
So Lily and Lollie were obvious choices when designer Evelyn Gleeson set up the Dun Emer Guild, a crafts collective in Dublin named after the legendary artistic wife of Cuchulain. The guild’s mission was to ‘find work for Irish hands in the making of beautiful things’. Lily and Lollie moved back to Ireland with their father, settling at a house in Churchtown opposite the Bottle Tower pub, and began work in the guild: Evelyn managed the rugs and tapestries, Lily ran the embroidery projects (such as banners for Loughrea Cathedral) and Lollie produced books with the aid of a second-hand printing press. Young girls were trained in the various skills, and Dun Emer’s first publication was William Butler Yeats’s book of poems In the Seven Woods. This unwittingly got them a mention in Joyce’s Ulysses – the character Buck Mulligan refers to ‘five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.’
The Dun Emer Guild was moderately successful, but finances and personality clashes caused strain. In 1908, Lily and Lollie set up their own enterprise – Cuala Industries – which became a visual counterpoint to the Gaelic literary revival. Cuala Press, with an all-female staff, promoted new writing by Yeats, Pound, Gogarty, Lady Gregory, Patrick Kavanagh, Frank O’Connor and more – in all, over seventy titles from 1908 to 1946. Jack B. Yeats edited and illustrated eighty-four broadsheets, which were published monthly and sold by street sellers. Cuala prints – reproduced from wood blocks and hand-coloured by the employees – were showcased in Tailteann and Oireachtas exhibitions at home, as well as prestigious international events such as the Chicago World’s Fair. Cuala favoured Irish landscapes and rural scenes featuring a country of prosperity and stature, rather than the poverty-stricken tenement life of previous decades. Money was often tight; Elizabeth would turn to brother Willie for a bail-out, which he would do with a certain amount of disdain for his sister’s ‘hungry press’. Nothing daunted them in the early years; they were committed to the ideal of an Ireland where women and men could be equal participants in the arts, as Susan Mitchell’s poem ‘Cuala Abú’ shows:
Gladly we come to our work every morning,
Daughters of Ireland, faithful and true;
Some setting stitches to help your adorning,
Some printing magic words, Cuala, for you.
Neither Lily nor Lollie ever married. As their health declined, they were happy to leave the running of Cuala to their loyal workers and Georgie Yeats, wife of William Butler. Lollie did become interested in republican politics, publishing Thomas MacDonagh’s last and inspiring address in 1917. Lily was at the offices in 1923 when two workers, members of Cumann na mBan, were arrested by Free State troops. Cuala Press closed in 1946, but recently the sisters have been getting belated recognition for their important work. The Cuala Press Project was established at Trinity College to conserve and promote the prints, and many of the books are in the National Library.
But were they individually happy? Lily once wrote to her father that her life was ‘an uncomfortable, unsatisfying mixture of a man’s and a woman’s.’ Lollie’s biographer, Joan Hardwick, says she was increasingly ostracised as ‘mad’ by her family and spent evenings alone in the house. Lollie died in 1940, Lily lived another nine years; ironically, they are buried together in St Nahi’s Churchyard, Dundrum.
- ‘Lily and Lollie Yeats: Sisters with a vision’ is published in Anthology Volume 21. Read more features from this volume or buy it now.
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