The chicks

Unknown photographer

Anne Gregory, Catherine Gregory, and Richard Gregory at Coole

ca. 1920

Courtesy of Colin Smythe

Gregory's beloved grandchildren Anne (left), born in 1911, Catherine (center), born in 1913, and Richard, born in 1909, are shown here in front of one of the fireplaces at Coole. On the mantel are some of Gregory's massive collection of Staffordshire figurines, mainly of prominent political, literary, and historical individuals. For many years she took principal responsibility for looking after and teaching the "chicks," as she called them. Several of her later "wonder" plays were written with them and other children as their intended principal audience. Anne Gregory's memoir Me and Nu; Childhood at Coole gives an affectionate, revealing, and skillfully crafted child's-eye account of growing up there under their grandmother's care.