comes pleasantly. I lost my orthodoxy. I was reading Butler's Analogy,
that delectable book which, by my fathers account he, and some other man
alone understood, when I suddenly amazed myself by coming to the
conclusion that revealed religion was myth and fable. My father had
himself pushed me into the way of thinking for myself; and my Scotch
school-master, who had lived on his own resources since he was twelve
years old, acquiring thereby a bold and independent spirit, had
unconsciously assisted in the process. Thus it came about that I had the
courage to reject the Bishop's teachings, drawing an entirely different
conclusion from the premises he placed before his reader, and with it
went also my worldly-minded uncle's hope that some day I should be a
respectable, Episcopalian clergyman. Everything now was gone, my mind a
contented negation. At school my ethics had been based on fear of the
school-master and now was gone fear of God and God's justice. I went to
Church when I couldn't help it, that is once every Sunday. I do not know
how it is now-a-days, but at that time Churches were so crowded that
young men, unable to find a seat, remained the whole service through
standing in the aisle. This exactly suited my inclinations, especially
in one of the Kingstown churches down by the sea, for there I could
stand all the two hours at the front door, half within and half without,
so that while listening to the clergyman I could at the same time
comfort my eye and soothe my spirit by looking toward the sea and sky.
The Reverend Hugh Hamilton, Dean of Dromore, reckoned the most learned
man in the Diocese, had determined that my father should, on presenting
himself for ordination, be rejected because of his love for hunting,
shooting and fishing and I may add, dancing, but was so impressed by his
profound knowledge and understanding of Butler's Analogy that he became
and continued from that hour on his constant friend. Yet this book that
made my father a proudly orthodox man had shattered all my orthodoxy, so
that I preferred sea & sky and floating clouds to the finest pulpit
oratory of the Reverend Richard Brooke, father of the brilliantly
successful Stopford. Yet I dared not say so, poetic and artistic
intuitions not having reached at that time the dignity of any sort of
opinion, theory, or doctrine. The finest feelings are nothing if you
cannot bulwark them with opinions about which men wrangle and fight.
Looking back I am convinced that I might have talked with my father,
that he would have met me and come with me half way, but only half way.
On a perilous journey one is more apt to quarrel with the man who
accompanies you for part of the way and then stops, than with him who
refuses even to set out on the journey. My father, a rector of the
Episcopalian Church and at one time an eloquent preacher of the
Evangelical form of doctrine, could not have come all the way. My aunt,
dear old Mickey, would not have said a word in opposition, but would
have been greatly distressed and prayed her hardest in secret communion
with God. My uncle Robert, would have been amused and, on worldly
grounds, somewhat alarmed.
I used to know pretty well an intellectual and cultivated priest and we
had many talks together. I said to him that I liked so much. Catholic
philosophy and was so attracted by his Church's stupendous history, and
high pomp of good and evil that I would join it but for one difficulty;
and when with some eagerness he asked what that was, I answered: 'How
could I ever believe in the supernatural? Give that up,' I said, 'and I
will join you.' I was much amused to notice that he seemed to hesitate,
as if he thought there was something in what I said, and that with some
adroitness a concession might be granted. Then he threw up his arms and
shouted in his deep Kerry voice: 'No, impossible; we should collapse
altogether.'
Some weeks after this conversation I was lunching with my friend John
Dowden and told him of what I said to the priest. 'What did he reply?'
he asked looking very much alive. 'That it was impossible, for without
the supernatural you would collapse altogether.' 'Of course we would, of
course we would,' he repeated in a musing, grumbling kind of voice; & to
myself I laughed thinking many things which I did not utter aloud.
Now and again I went down to the pretty village of Monasterevan in
County Kildare, thirty miles from Dublin, to stay with my uncle John
Yeats, the County Surveyor. There was a house full of children,
blue-eyed fair-haired, all gay and all lively, like a crystal fountain
welling out of a rock, for there was little money and no pleasure and
excitement. All these little people had just to depend on themselves for
instruction and amusement and were yet happy, being like canaries in a
cage who, having been born there, know no other life; partly also
because of a certain inexhaustible vitality and its natural
accompaniment, good temper and kindness. I loved to be with these
people, little and big: merely to be in the same room with my uncle or
to be in the same field (for he was a sort of amateur farmer) was
happiness. He was very clever and, if he was ever unhappy, it was when
he remembered that no one knew how clever he was: but I knew all about
his cleverness and relished his laconic and fragmentary talk on men and
things. In his eyes to be happy was to be good, and yet he had some
reasons for being uneasy.
The County Grand Juries will not hold an honoured place in Irish
history, particularly when, as in Kildare, made up of rich men. One of
these landlords wrote to my uncle, asking him to pass the account of a
certain contractor engaged in mending the road, stating frankly that if
that account was not passed the landlord's rent would not be
forthcoming. This letter was written politely, addressed on the envelope
to 'John Yeats, Esq.' commencing with the usual 'Dear Mr. Yeats.' The
work was not well done and my uncle did not pass the account. Thereupon
my uncle received another letter addressed to 'Mr. Yeats,' the letter
itself commencing with the formal unfriendly 'Dear Sir' and containing
an angry complaint that the trees near the writer's park gate were not
kept pruned, so that his coachman's hat had been knocked off. The rich
Irish landlords were a banditti whom the laws safe-guarded, since it was
supposed that upon their allegiance depended the safety of the English
connection, and if some were good and kind from the spirit of order many
of them were like the man who wrote that impertinent note to my uncle;
some indeed were good and kind in themselves but forced to be rapacious
and cruel because of the mortgagees who had them in their grip. These
mortgagees themselves were often kind old ladies who read their
Protestant Bibles and were as gentle as their necessities and piety
would permit them to be.
Not for worlds, not for anything you could reasonably offer would I
revisit Monasterevan. The stones in the walls and the very twisting of
the roads would bring back to me all that lost happiness & my Uncle and
Aunt & all the little children so innocent and so clever. Perhaps their
cleverness was of little avail because of their innocence. To be cut off
from sin and evil is to be cut off from so much that, entering into our
intricate being, is necessary to mental power and effectiveness. These
people lived for other people. To be with them was to find yourself
among those to whom your happiness was all that mattered. And I may add
that they had great nervous energy, an incessant activity, as the law of
their existence. I remember also that they were physically intrepid. The
eldest son would ride the wildest horses over the biggest jumps, each
time taking his life in his hand, for he never learned to ride well, had
some natural incapacity for it which nothing would overcome. The four
sons are all dead and gone, happy to the last and unsuccessful. One of
the girls is now an old maid, shut away from everyone by some kind of
religion of which no one but herself can make head or tail. All these
people were merry because they asked nothing for themselves. Yet asking
nothing for themselves they got nothing, for so are things constituted.
Civilization is always putting people into positions where no one can
remain good except by becoming heroically virtuous. No one expected our
Irish landlords to be heroes. For one thing they had no country. England
disowned them and they disowned Ireland. There are so many bad angels
that one needs all the good angels to fight against them, and one of
these good angels has always been for Irishmen a love of his native
land. The Englishman is proud of his empire on which the sun never sets.
The good Irishman loves Ireland as in Shakespeare's day the Englishman
loved England, affection not vanity the essence of the relation. The
historic sense, which is so fatally lacking in America, abounds among
the Irish peasants when they gather in their cottages and talk together
and scheme, and hope intensifies this affection. The American, like the
Englishman, is very proud of his vast country, its wealth and its
millions of people. The Irishman has nothing to boast of except that his
country's history is sorrowful and lovable. In life there are a few
great rhythms; there is friendship and domestic affection, and conjugal
love and the feeling of a youth for a maiden; sovereign over all is
patriotism, compared to which internationalism is cold and abstract like
a mathematical formula, intelligible only to the ideologue, who is
himself a bloodless person, a Rousseau dropping his five children into
the foundling basket. I think the Irishman, unspoiled by too much
contact with the Englishman, has the charm of being natural. Sir Walter
Scott, after making amusing comparisons between him and the English and
the Scotch, wrote that, given his chance, the Irishman would be 'the
best of the triune.' Of course it was this naturalness, this constant
and most potent spontaneity that won the heart of the great writer. It
is our second thoughts that lead us astray; first thoughts in conduct
are right, as Blake says they are in art.
There is one idealism always present and alive in the Irish
peasant-heart, war with England. The soil is volcanic with it, so that
if you scratch the surface it is ready to blaze forth. When my
brother-in-law and I were out shooting, we met an old man, and looking
into an empty barn, my brother-in-law asked how many men it would
accommodate as sleeping quarters? He gave us a sharp look and said,
'When you bring yer men, we will find a better place than that for
them.' I think this anecdote would please Sir Walter Scott and be a mere
foolishness to George Bernard Shaw and his teacher Sam Butler. I am now
writing of the Island that used to be, when poverty, conversation, and
idleness kept company with each other around the turf fire in the
winter, or on the hillside in summer, an ancient spirituality was always
present there and a kind of humour, sometimes gentle like Goldsmith's
and often, especially in the cities, iconoclastic like Swift's, or like
Tim Healy's when he was first in Parliament. The soul of Ireland was
partly pagan and that was good for lovers and for sensuous poetry;
partly Catholic and Christian and that was good for the sorrowful and
for lovers also; and partly patriotic and that was good for the
courageous, whether young or old.
My niece writes to me of the 'appalling commonness of the Australian
mind.' The Irish peasant mind is not common, is indeed so interesting
that the peasants in the west of Ireland can enjoy themselves in
solitude, poetized, if I may use such a word, by their religion, by
their folk lore, and by their national history, and by living under a
changeable sky which, from north to south and from west to east is a
perpetual decoration like the scenery in some vast theatre. Synge,
spiritually the most fastidious man I ever knew and the proudest, who
turned away from modern French literature, told me that he preferred
their society to the comforts of the best hotel. They are so happy in
themselves and in each other's conversation that they are conservative,
as conservative as the people behind the barriers of privilege. It is,
the people with 'common minds' who quarrel with themselves and with
life, and are a homeless people and seek for change, for experiment and
for progress. It is the unhappy people who make the world go round. Yet
these happy people might also help progress if the impossible should
take place and we could teach them the technique of the arts. Perhaps
they might not think it worth the trouble? Yet it is among people of
this sort, whose imagination is vivid and whose will has been broken by
dreams & visions, that the arts have always flourished. And remember if
these peasants have not the will power which has made the dull people of
Belfast such an edifying success, all the same they have their own
intensity, and I myself and there are more like me, would rather listen
to a Mayo man whistling a tune, or telling a fairy tale or ghost story,
than to the greatest man out of Belfast or Liverpool, talking of his
commercial triumphs. Synge spoke of their poetical language, and ranked
it above any written in his plays. I heard of a servant girl who on her
master the priest's return from America told him that she was glad to
see him back for there had been the 'colour of loneliness' in the air. I
fancy that in Shakespeare's age I can find three things: conversation,
freedom of thought and idleness, and there was a fourth--the soul of
romance and of laughter. In my youth, Ireland possessed all of these
except freedom of thought. The last she now has; may she be allowed to
keep it. The others are under sentence to quit, if they are not already
gone, the passion for material success, and the remorseless logic it
inculcates, will have none of them. It is as if a flower garden, enjoyed
by women and children and simple souls had been turned into a cabbage
patch. I suppose the change is pleasing to G. B. Shaw and to reformers
generally. Reformers must work with public opinion and public opinion
has gross appetites.
Let me now tell a story of the city and therefore unlovely. Before the
police came, Dublin and towns generally were in the guardianship of
watchmen nicknamed 'Charlies', and a state of war existed between them
and the young men. My uncle, Arthur Corbet, has told me some of the
tricks he and his friends used to play on these old rascals, such as
bundling one of them into a cab and carrying him off into the country
and leaving him there to find his way back, and to explain to his
superior why he was absent from his post. But the old rascals could
sometimes retaliate. One morning before dawn my uncle was walking with
dog and gun through the quiet streets toward the open country for a
day's shooting. As my uncle hurried through the dark, noiseless morning
mist, he was confronted by a 'Charlie,' and the 'Charlie' flung himself
down on the pavement & sprung his rattle & roared for help. My uncle was
well aware of the diabolical nature of the 'Charlie' mind; he himself
and others had done the best to make it so, therefore he did not delay,
but without a word ran with his dog by another street, parallel to the
one where he was stopped, until he got away a good distance and then in
the foggy misty light cautiously crossed the street. At its far end he
could see the 'Charlie' standing among a crowd of other 'Charlies.' My
uncle indulged in many such escapades in his youth. It was considered
good style and was no doubt a tradition; but I think these things
afterwards burthened my uncle's memory when he was old and was trying to
comfort his chilly and solitary bachelor existence with Bible
Christianity. He was a disappointed man. He stammered in his speech. All
his brothers became officers in the Army. For him this was impossible
because of his stammer. He became a clerk in the Bank of Ireland, yet
could not be promoted because of his stammer. Luck in every way was
against him. He had great gifts as a caricaturist, and would sometimes
compliment his friends by doing pictures of them which turned them into
enemies. I think he disapproved of me, yet on fishing or shooting
expeditions he was the pleasantest of companions. He was both
affectionate and cranky, but in the open country, the day fine and the
fishing good, he was companionable and affectionate and no longer
cranky.
In my post graduate year I won the prize in Political Economy. It was
ten pounds and my first earnings, and with that money in my pocket I
visited Sligo and stayed with my old school friend, George Pollexfen. At
that time you reached Sligo by taking the train to Enniskillen and then
by public car to Sligo. To catch that train I had to rise early, and on
such occasions the family trusted in my father, he was our alarm clock,
which never failed. I remember that on that morning he said to me 'I see
you are very sleepy, I will return a little later,' and his tall, white
figure flitted from the room. When dressed and ready I sat for some time
at his bedroom door, and as he lay in bed he talked of Sligo, which he
had not seen since his father died in 1846, and of how he would like to
go there, and take a car early some morning, and visit all the places
that he had known and then get away before any one was awake. Only thus
would he visit a place where he had been so happy and young, his heart
of course too full for company.
I have never forgotten the first evening of my arrival in Sligo. Five
miles from the town, at the mouth of the river, is a village called
Rosses Point, and the Pollexfens were staying there for the summer.
George and I walked on the sand hills which were high above the sea. The
sign of happiness in the Pollexfens has always been a great
talkativeness,--I suppose birds sing and children chatter for a similar
reason. George talked endlessly--what about I forget, excepting that he
several times sang one of Moore's melodies, which he had lately heard at
a concert. Indeed, I think the talk was mostly about that concert. The
place was strange to me and very beautiful in the deepening twilight. A
little way from us, and far down from where we talked, the Atlantic kept
up its ceaseless tumult, foaming around the rocks called Dead Man's
Point. Dublin and my uneasy life there & Trinity College, though but a
short day's journey, were obliterated, and I was again with my school
friend, the man self-centered and tranquil and on that evening so
companionable. I had been extraordinarily fond of him at school where I
was passive in his hands. I have sometimes an amused curiosity in
thinking whether he cared for me at all, or how much he cared, but it
has been only curiosity. I was always quite content with my own liking
for him.
In my family, and in the society which I frequented in Dublin, the
master desire was for enjoyment. Yet do not mistake me; it was not
pleasure, which is animalism efflorescent. By enjoyment I mean the
gratification of the affections and the sympathies and of the spirit of
hopefulness. We lived in the sunlight and did our very best to keep
there. It was demoralizing but all the same delightful, and from a moral
point of view it had its good side. We solved all our doubts in matters
of conduct by thinking well of our fellow creatures, which is exactly
the opposite of what the puritans do, and we prided ourselves upon it;
we considered it a gentlemanly trait. Our censorious neighbours, who
thought badly of each other, we dismissed from our minds as vulgar
people. Or rather we considered that the puritan conception of human
nature was admirably adapted to the kind of people who believed in it,
but was never intended for us or for our friends. It was a shock to pass
from a society, where people enjoy themselves and laugh gaily, not being
at all concerned about moral issues, to a society where no one thought
of enjoyment, and if they laughed did so with a grim humour that was not
always good-natured, where the air itself was heavy with moral
disapprobation of the world generally and of themselves in particular.
Yet in my bones I felt it to be something salutary. At home and among my
friends everyone did as they liked, provided that they were tactful and
sympathetic with each other. We were a city without rules, and might
verge at times into being a city of misrule. Here on the contrary was
rule and strictest order.
A man, suddenly come amongst my wife's relations, would think that they
were a people of strong primitive instinct, and great natural
kindliness, all smothered in business. I very quickly came to a
different conclusion for I had known intimately my old friend George.
The master principle in that family was what I may describe as
self-loyalty, each member of that family a concrete embodiment of
Shakespearean teaching:
'To thine own self be true;
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'
In my society we were loyal to the social principle. We lived for
society and worshipped its pleasant needs, and for reward we had our
social conceit. This conceit was a feather in our caps, which we wore
gallantly and lightly, not at all flauntingly. In this, and in all
matters, we escaped the vice of pretension. Our wit and humour for
instance, and that of Dublin society generally, was wit for wit's sake;
and with delighted superiority we thought of the English, who would
incorporate their dull morality into the most trivial actions and words.
We ridiculed and criticised each other with great freedom, and with
French malice, but since we had no mission to reform anybody we would
keep the joke to ourselves, the victim knowing nothing of it. Thus we
spared his feelings and the joke was all the better. It was, perhaps,
demoralizing, because in our pursuit of enjoyment we put aside what did
not quite suit us; we never, for one thing, looked into the lower
abysses of human nature. We did not absolutely deny that there were such
things as hatred and rage and unbridled appetite and lust, but we forgot
all about them. Indeed, it was not good form to mention such things.
Thus we lived pleasantly, but falsely, and yet we did believe in human
nature, at least in _our_ human nature, in parental affection & in
conjugal faith and loyalty between friends. On this matter we had a
trustfulness that was at once romantic and robust. Parents and children
and husbands and Wives and friends and comrades, at least in our
circles, would have stood by each other to the death. As regards Ireland
our feelings were curious, and though exceedingly selfish not altogether
so. We intended as good Protestants and Loyalists to keep the papists
under our feet. We impoverished them, though we loved them, and their
religion by its doctrine of submission and obedience unintentionally
helped us, yet we were convinced that an Irishman, whether a Protestant
or Catholic, was superior to every Englishman, that he was a better
comrade and physically stronger and of greater courage. My mother's
family had been for generations officers in the English army and I fancy
drew that strong faith from their experience in many military campaigns.
I might in my youthful impudence have sneered at many things and nobody
would have taken the trouble to contradict me, but I did not venture to
doubt the superiority of Irishmen to everybody in England.
At Sligo, I was the social man where it was individual man that counted.
It is a curious fact that entering this sombre house of stern
preoccupation with business I for the first time in my life felt my self
to be a free man, and that I was invited by the example of everyone
around me to be my very self, thereby receiving the most important
lesson in my life. The malady of puritanism is self-exaggeration,
'self-saturation' is the medical term. Even Shakespeare had experience
of it, if we interpret as personal and literal the first line in one of
his sonnets: 'Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye.'