Entrepreneurs and publishers
The Yeats sisters – Susan, known as Lily, and Elizabeth, known as Lolly – kept and supported their famous brother, William Butler Yeats, throughout his impecunious youth. Later they played an important part in the Gaelic Revival when they founded and ran their own publishing house. Lily also ran a successful embroidery business.
The family into which the Yeats sisters were born was dysfunctional by any standard. Their father, John B Yeats, a middle-class Protestant from County Sligo, rejected his bourgeois life as a barrister in order to follow his inclinations as an artist. Unfortunately, he was completely incapable of making or holding onto money, or even of completing his commissions on time. The girls’ mother, Susan Pollexfen, was terminally disappointed in life and became a recluse. Her mental instability obsessed the whole family who worried in turn about going mad themselves. Their two brothers, Willie and Jack B, were obviously gifted, but not in areas likely to produce a regular income. Therefore, the burden of supporting the family fell on Lily and Lolly.
Arty, sensitive and apolitical, the Yeats sisters wanted nothing more than to be the submissive and cherished wives of successful Anglo-Irish men. But instead of making a début into society and finding husbands, they found they had to work for a living as soon as they had finished their less-than-adequate educations. They led what Lily called ‘a man’s life’ of work and worry.
In the late 1880s and 1890s, when the family was living in London, Lily trained in embroidery under the famous designer William Morris, rising through the ranks to become an instructor. Lolly trained as a teacher, lectured in art, published two books on water-colouring and taught herself typesetting in her ‘spare’ time. Their salaries went towards supporting their father, mother, Willie and Jack. The burden lightened somewhat in 1895 when Willie started to receive royalties and moved out of the family home.
By the turn of the century, the sisters had a decade of working in London behind them and were desperate to get back to Ireland. They felt like outsiders in England and they were not meeting any potential mates. In addition, their brother seemed to be almost single-handedly orchestrating the Gaelic Revival at home, and the sisters knew that, with their skills and experience, they could make a contribution.
In 1902 the whole family moved to a house called Gurteen Dhas in Dundrum, Dublin. Soon after, along with their friend Evelyn Gleeson, they founded a cottage industry, the Dun Emer Guild, in Dundrum. The guild was named after Emer, wife of Cú Chulainn, and her image appeared on one of their press marks.
The guild was a home-grown arts and crafts co-operative that employed Irishwomen to produce high-quality Irish embroidery and books. Although successful, within a couple of years it was beset by cash-flow problems and destructive personality clashes between its three founders. The result was that the Yeats sisters broke away in 1908 and set up their own business in Churchtown, Dublin. Cuala Industries, as it was named, comprised both Lily’s embroidery business and Lolly’s Cuala Press. It retained the idea of using only women workers, Irish materials and producing only the highest-quality articles.
While Lily produced piece after piece of finely crafted embroidery, from large ornamental banners to dresses to small domestic items, Lolly ran the publishing arm alone. WB Yeats had no hands-on function at Cuala – he was the ‘editor’, which meant he decided what was published and roundly criticised any mistakes. Cuala Press published first editions of Yeats’ own work as well as books by other ‘suitable’ authors, including Lady Augusta Gregory, JM Synge, Ezra Pound, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty and Elizabeth Bowen. The responsibility for design, typesetting, proofing, production and quality fell to Lolly, who worked incredibly hard for thirty-two years to make Cuala Press the best-known literary press in Ireland.
Meanwhile the sisters still lived at Gurteen Dhas, the upkeep of which they paid for from their low salaries. But by 1909 they were living there alone: their remaining brother, Jack B Yeats, had married and moved away while their father, John B Yeats, had visited the USA on holiday, liked it and decided never to come back, leaving his daughters to get along as best they could. This was unfortunate because, as the sisters aged, their differences became more pronounced and there was constant tension between them. Lily was non-confrontational, maternal and languid, whereas Lolly was twitchy, blunt and something of a workaholic.
As time dragged on, they grew to hate living together. However, as single women with little cash the sisters had no choice but to stay manacled to each other until marriage or death released them. As for relations with their famous brother, Lily, who claimed to be psychic, was the only one in the family Willie had any time for, whereas Lolly, the one with whom he had to work most closely, irritated him beyond endurance.
Although deeply interested in Ireland’s cultural life, the sisters were uninterested in its political struggles. The events of Easter 1916 left them frightened and they had little time for radical organisations, such as Sinn Féin. Neither had they time for politically minded women, and they strongly opposed the unfeminine undertakings of Constance Markievicz, Maud Gonne, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, et al, with their marching and their prisons and their hunger strikes. However, after witnessing the behaviour of the Black and Tans during the War of Independence, the sisters both became supportive of Irish independence and Lolly even did some voluntary work for Sinn Féin.
This changed again during the Civil War. The Yeatses were a firmly pro-Treaty family and Willie was elected to the Dáil as a senator in 1922. When the republicans attacked Willie’s houses in Galway and Dublin, the sisters withdrew any support they might once have given to republicanism and again became apolitical.
In 1925 the sisters moved Cuala, press and embroidery, to a larger premises at 133 Lower Baggot Street. A couple of years previously, Lily had survived tuberculosis, but her health remained delicate and she worked at her embroidery less and less. Instead she spent her time on the Yeats family history, which she had started as a labour of love some years before. In contrast to her sister, Lolly did more than ever. After supervising the move, she increased the output of Cuala Press, went on business trips and taught art twice a week. Her famous pupils included Mainie Jellett and her own niece, Anne Yeats. Ironically, she remained chronically short of money, even though some of her early books were now selling for large sums at auction.
In 1931 Lily’s embroidery stopped altogether and she relied on Lolly and Willie to support her. By now in her sixties, Lolly had no intention of retiring and worked doggedly on, ignoring the economic climate, which fostered distrust and resentment of professional women. She had a last major spat with Willie in 1938 when he reorganised Cuala, bringing in new people to sit on a managing committee. A year later, Willie was dead, and a year after that, in 1940, Lolly herself died of a heart attack. Lily, despite being an invalid, proved the stronger of the two sisters and lived on at Gurteen Dhas for another nine years. When she died at the age of eighty-three, she was buried beside her sister – still forced together, for eternity, whether they liked it or not.