Helen Manchester Gates

Helen was a translator from the Spanish.

She was the daughter of Rev. Isaac E. Gates and Ellen Maria Huntington Gates.

Her first husband was the philanthropist and hispanist Archer Milton Huntington whom she married in 1895. They may have been cousins, although the identity of Archer´s father is not clear: Archer´s mother married the railroad magnate Collis Potter Huntington (Helen´s uncle) when Archer was a child. Collis recognised Archer as his adopted son.

Helen published Folk Songs from the Spanish (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900). Archer founded the Hispanic Society of America in 1904 and presented it with a substantial collection of Spanish art.

She left her first husband for Harley Granville-Barker who had been a major figure in British theatre in the Edwardian period. They began an affair in New York, where Granville-Barker was producing a play. With her new husband, she translated the relatively new plays then attributed to Gregorio Martínez Sierra (it has since been established that much of the output of Gregorio was written by his wife Maria Lejárraga). The first play the Granville-Barkers translated was The Romantic Young Lady, a production of which Harley also directed in September 1920.

In many ways María Lejárraga was a progressive figure (she was elected to Congress as a Socialist Party representative for Granada). However, at least some "Martínez Sierra" plays reflected the values of a Catholic society, and they seem to have had a special appeal in Ireland. Two Granville-Barker translations, The Two Shepherds and The Kingdom of God, were staged at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1924. The Spanish originals had premiered in 1913 (Los pastores) and 1916 (Reino de Dios).

The Kingdom of God was successfully staged in New York in 1929.