NONE of my family on either side had any con-
nexion with the arts except a maternal uncle who, in
an evil moment, much against the wishes of his relatives,
became an engraver. It was looked upon as a frivolous
method of earning one's bread, not sounding enough
like work. This uncle of mine, I may say in passing,
went off to Birmingham and started to do jeweller's
enamel work, which was then a new invention and
special to that city, and afterwards he went to New
York. When I first went there myself with my Irish
Players a long time later, I made a point of looking
up the scapegrace, but all I could tell you about him
now is that he was working for Tiffany's, which meant
that he had climbed to the top of his particular
tree. Also he went every day to Sing Sing Prison
to chat with the prisoners, write letters for them and
cheer them up a bit. I couldn't tell you now what he
looked like.

But, as I said before, Uncle Frank was one of the
sports that you can't keep out of a long family, no
matter how god-fearing and well-doing, and I don't
know of any others at all till I come to myself and my
brother Frank, as I will presently, and Frank comes
first always.

The Dowlings, strong farmers from the Midlands
on the one side, were my mother's people; the O'Fahys,
tailor bodies from Galway, my father's. Farmer
Dowling's son, my mother's father, was disinherited
for becoming a Roman Catholic, so he came up to

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