Page 106 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

A QUIET WOMAN?

all members of the Actresses’ Franchise League (AFL). First
performed in April 1909 in London, the play had toured to
resounding success in England, proving to be a very effective
propaganda tool to persuade the hesitant. By April 1910 it had
8
already been performed at the Molesworth Hall.
The 1911 venue is not known, but since the play was easy to
stage in small spaces an obvious candidate is Mount Offaly,
Killincarrig Road, the home of Mrs Caroline Lydia Beauchamp
(‘Colie’) West and her husband, Langley Arthur West, the
Grafton Street jeweller. Colie lent her drawing room to the IWRL
for their meetings, and hosted Housman on his Irish tour in 1912
to discuss ‘The Woman Question’. Her neighbour Mrs Deverell
was not averse to the occasional measure of support either,
arranging a tennis tournament in June 1914 to raise funds.

The Wests were typical of the ruling Anglo Irish class:
Langley’s brother Henry was a QC and County Court judge who
married into the Le Poer Trench family and whose daughter
Frances married Henry Guinness, a Colonel with service in the
second Boer War. But Colie was no stranger to hardship: in 1873
aged 12 her father, Dr William Beauchamp Clayton died after
being thrown from his vehicle when it hit a manure heap, leaving
his widow and 8 children having to rely on funds raised by friends
because he had been unable to obtain insurance. Most of Colie's
siblings emigrated to Australia.

University

Averil and William were reunited as undergraduates at Trinity
College Dublin. For her, this meant being part of a very small
group of women students and subject to a set of strict rules, since
the university had only opened its doors to women in 1904 after

8 Dublin Daily Express, Thursday 14 April 1910.
102