Getting to root of Coole’s legendary tree

Lifestyle – Family visits to Coole Park through the years gave historian William Henry the inspiration for his latest work. When he realised nobody had ever written a book profiling those who had signed Coole’s famous Autograph Tree, he undertook the task. The result offers a new insight into one of Galway’s best-loved attractions and into a crucial period in Irish history. He tells JUDY MURPHY about it.

When historian William Henry handed a copy of his latest book, The Autograph Tree, to his daughter Lisa recently, she admired the cover before skimming through the contents.

“And her eyes welled up,” her father recalls. Because what he hadn’t told 21-year-old Lisa was that the book was dedicated to her, in memory of the many happy days the family had spent in Coole Park with friends when she was a child.

It was those trips to the historic nature park near Gort that inspired this book, which gives an insight into the men and women who signed the famous Autograph Tree in Coole’s walled garden.

Back then though, William’s main concern was stopping the kids from swinging from the legendary tree and damaging it, he says with a laugh.

Over the years, the historian and author was constantly being asked about the men and women whose names were engraved on the famous copper beech.

Many of the questions came from his children, Lisa, Patrick and David, and inspired this book. Published by Cork-based Mercier Books, The Autograph Tree gives an account of some 27 men and women who were invited by Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932), the owner of Coole Park, to leave their mark on the beech.

A playwright and folklorist, Lady Gregory was a leading light of the Irish Literary Revival and most of her invitees were also deeply involved in the movement to revive and promote Irish language and literature and, most importantly, to establish a national theatre.

WB and Jack Yeats, JM Synge, and Seán O’Casey carved their initials on the tree, as did the Faye Brothers, whose role in founding the Abbey Theatre is often overlooked now, according to William.

Douglas Hyde, later to become Ireland’s first president, signed it. John Masefield who later became England’s poet laureate is there too, as is Robert Ross, Oscar Wilde’s first homosexual lover and lifelong friend, especially after Wilde’s fall from grace.

Dame Ethel Smyth, Violet Martin, Sara Allgood, Lady Margaret Sackville and the Countess of Cromartie are among the female writers and actors whose initials are carved on the tree.

Lady Gregory signed it, and her son Robert, who was later killed in World War I, carved his name too. William’s Henry’s book contains a brilliant account of Robert Gregory’s dislike for Yeats, whom he regarded as a freeloader taking advantage of his mother’s hospitality.

It was a ‘lightbulb moment’ for William the day he realised that nobody had ever written an account of Coole Park’s autograph tree.

Previous books on Coole and its role in the Irish Literary Revival focused mostly on Yeats or Lady Gregory, he says. This left a serious gap and when William approached Mercier with his idea for this book, they were enthusiastic.

“It was a simple idea but it wasn’t simple to execute it,” he says with a laugh of the research and the cross-referencing involved.

“By the time I was writing the 13th or 14th biography, I was saying to myself, ‘am I doing the right thing at all? Why didn’t I do something simpler?’ It was a difficult but a good book to write.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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