[James Winder Good, Irish journalist.] Five Autograph Letters Sgned (four 'J. W. Good' and one 'J. W. G.') to Walter Riddall, mainly on Paul Henry and the offering of a play by Riddall to the Ulster Literary Theatre and Abbey Theatre, Dublin.

Good was educated at the Royal Academical Institution and Queen's College, Belfast. He was a reporter on the Northern Whig before moving to Dublin where he became leader-writer for the Freeman's Journal. He then became assistant editor of the Irish Statesman, and later joined the staff of the Irish Independent. Good and Riddall were part of a circle that included the essayist Robert Lynd and painter Paul Henry, and the present five items, written in an entertaining and friendly stye, cast light on the theatrical and cultural worlds shortly before the Easter Rising. The five items total 29pp., 4to; and 4pp., 12mo. The collection is in fair condition, on aged and worn paper. ONE: On letterhead of The Northern Whig Office, Belfast, cancelled and replaced by '18 Wolseley St | Sunday'. 4pp., 12mo. Bifolium. 'Every day I've been looking out for the fourth act of "Homes on Sand", and all the U[lster]. L[iterary]. T[heatre] people are on my back wanting to know when they'll get a chance of seeing it. Warden is clamouring for our programme, actors are gasping for parts, and unless we make a beginning immediately the December fixture will have to be cancelled. So hurry up with it like a good soul if you don't want to stick us all badly.' The letter continues with references to 'the A.A.A part' and 'Gordon'. 'Tell Lynd I'll write to him this week. Somebody told mee he wasn't looking well after his holiday, wh[ich] astonishes me, as when I left him at Boulogne he was at the very top of his form. [...] I've had some letters from Henry who as usual is neck-deep in worries of his own. He had arranged for a show in Belfast in October apparently without consulting anybody. [...] I hope he'll find the venture luckier than when he was running in double harness with "AE." [the poet George Russell]'. TWO: 'Sunday | 9th June'. 8pp., 4to. 'My dear Walter | I am delighted to hear that luck has been running in your favour, even if it has kept you from finishing your play. Now that you are secretary of the Alleged - I beg your pardon - Allied Artists and an art critic no less things should begin to boom [...] When is the novel to come out? [...] Harry Morrow, to whom I gave an outline of your play, thinks it a top hole idea. [...] By the way you shouldn't miss the Abbey Co. now they're in London. In particular go and see "Patriots" which, I understand by the advertisement is being staged this week. [at the Royal Court, in 1912] [...] it's hardly likely to catch on in London where people fed on Synge & Yeats will say it isn't Irish enough I'm afraid. I'm beginning to hate the new school of sympathetic Englishmen who think we are all minor romantic poets here at home more than the old unsympathetic school who damned us out of hand as crazy buffoons.' He asks if Riddall has 'ever met O'Donovan & Kerrigan, two of the company [...] Kerrigan is a keen critic of dramatic stuff [...] He helps Yeats & Robinson, I believe, in reading plays. He sends news of Paul and his wife in Achill. 'By the way I had an offer the other day to go to Dublin as assistant editor of the "Irish Times". The money wasn't much more than I'm getting on the "Whig", but of course the prospects are much brighter'. He discusses the Irish Times's position on the Home Rule bill, of which he is a supporter. THREE: 'Saturday'. 7pp., 4to. The letter begins: 'My dear Walter, | You'll be sorry to hear poor old Brill died this week & was buried to-day. He had gone to scrapings during the last few years & was no more than a bag of bones. It was the old spear-wound he got at Isandhula [sic] that did it; between the poison in his blood & the patent remedies he took to keep it down he wrecked his whole system. [...] I think those stray bottles of stout we three used to consume in the Fountain Head were the big things in his later life. The Library will hardly seem the same without him & his reminiscences of the Boer War, in wh the chief point of interest seemed to be the exorbitant prices charged at the front for liquor.' Other topics include 'Jones' ('a battered veteran whose day was over twenty years ago'); the election of mayor; a work Riddall is planning to write, 'poaching' on Good's 'territory' ('The play I was to write also dealt with our municipal rulers'). The rest of the letter is concerned with Paul Henry and Robert Lynd. 'Henry is in great form, as fresh as paint & as fit as a fiddle, & Mrs. H, though she plainly does not want to go back to Achill, professes that she enjoyed herself hugely. As to the work it's a big improvement on anything Paul has done. For the first time he seems to me to have seen men & women not as trees walking or patterns in a decorative scheme, but as human beings. The fact that he was also forced to work from memory has done him a lot of good; he has got rid of a good many frills & is trying for breadth & simplicity. His colour is a bit heavy & monotonous without the sparkle you expect, & he still lays it on in slabs, in the way t[hat] used to make you say he was colour blind. But he has got the feeling of the place & the quaintness of the people, and honestly I do think he's on to his right line at last. Mrs. Paul's work astonished me. It is strange & more original in many ways than Pauls, and indeed it looks as if she had b[ee]n influencing him. The sales up to the present though not great have b[ee]n good on the whole, & I expect the weary one will clear a few quids. If he gets enough he says he'll go straight back to Achill & I think he's right.' He enquires whether Lynd has 'started on his book yet': 'Tell him we are all waiting anxiously for news. By t[he] time he takes over it it shd be a masterpiece. I don't know what you mean about giving me away to the Lynd girls. Where I score all along the line is that I haven't got a character to lose.' FOUR: 'Thursday'. 6pp., 4to. Since his last letter he has been 'up in Dublin three times; stopping a night each time, down at Dundalk for the accursed Healey election petition; & twice at Mountstewart doing that blazing ass Londonderry'. He discusses a coming meeting of the Ulster Literary Theatre regarding a play by Riddall. 'However, as far as I understand, the intention is to go to Dublin at the end of March or early in April and produce some stuff at the Abbey. We have a piece by Harry Morrow "Thompson in Tir na n'og" [produced, under the name 'Gerald MacNamara', in 1912] in which a Lurgan Orangeman encounters the heroes & heroines of Irish legend; a short comedy of Ulster town life, not much good, &, I presume, "The Drone." [by Rutherford Mayne, premiered in 1908] [...] Send your stuff as soon as you have it ready, Davy Parkhill [playwright under the pseudonym 'Lewis Purcell'] is very keen on it.' Good suspects that Henry is 'still up to the neck in Mayo bogs'. Of the poet 'A.E.' he writes: 'Russell, by the way, is thinking of becoming a painter himself, he'd be far better advised to stick to the | From what I hear Paul's stuff was quaint, a word which damns it to my mind, and, according to Jack Morrow, not a fair critic I admit, it lacked guts.' He concludes: 'Remember me to Lynd, who, I'm afraid, is so absorbed in London that he forgets his friends at home.' FIVE: '108 Fitzroy Av | Saturday'. 8pp., 4to. In a letter entirely devoted to Riddall's play, Good reports that it was rejected by the Ulster Literary Theatre 'not for its weak parts but for its good parts. Ever since Parkhill left for New Zealand the show has b[ee]n dominated by a crowd the vast majority of whom know as much abt drama as I do about linen-lapping, and are satisfied with nothing that won't tickle the stalls. [...] Please remember that Forrest Reid had nothing to do with the rejection. [...] I still think the piece is the best thing the U.L.T has ever bn offered, [...] I have bn thinking all along that the Abbey shd get a look at it, but since re-reading I feel there are some changes that m[us]t be made. [...] If you work over the piece a bit I think the Abbey wd rise to it'. From the Lynd family archive, and with one of the letters annotated by the daughter of Robert and Sylvia Lynd, Maire Gaster: 'From James Good to Walter Riddall, their other great friend who died of T.B. later.'?>