Section 5: My Country is Kiltartan Cross

For Gregory, loss and conflict dominated the period from about 1914 through the early 1920s. World War I, the 1916 Rising in Dublin, the Irish War of Independence in 1919–21, and the ensuing Irish civil war of 1921–23 came as a series of sequential blows, along with the loss of her nephew, Hugh Lane, on the Lusitania. Worst of all, though, was the death of her only child, Robert, when his plane crashed on the Italian front in 1918. Her childhood home was burned in 1922, and death threats were made against her in the same year. Through all, Gregory sustained the Abbey Theatre, which finally gained financial support from the new Irish Free State in 1923. Her creative output slowed after 1915, with her major energies going into campaigning for the return to Ireland of Lane's collection of modern art, which was in the National Gallery of London, though there was a dispute about Lane's final wishes. She also completed a biography of Lane, her own memoirs, and several innovative late ''wonder'' plays, among other work.