He is a tall man, with dark hanging hair that is now turning grey, and
he has a queer way of focussing when he looks at you. I do not know
what is the defect of sight from which he suffers, but it makes his
way of regarding you somewhat disturbing. He has a poetic appearance,
entirely physical, and owing nothing to any eccentricity of dress; for,
apart from his neck-tie, there is nothing odd about his clothes. It is
not easy to talk to him in a familiar fashion, and I imagine that he
has difficulty in talking easily on common topics. I soon discovered
that he is not comfortable with individuals: he needs an audience to
which he can discourse in a pontifical manner. If he is compelled to
remain in the company of one person for any length of time, he begins
to pretend that the individual is a crowd listening to him. His talk is
seldom about common-place things: it is either in a high and brilliant
style or else it is full of reminiscences of dead friends. I do not
believe that any one in this world has ever spoken familiarly to him
or that any one has ever slapped him on the back and said "Helloa, old
chap!" His relatives and near friends call him "Willie" but it has
always seemed to me that they do so with an effort, that they feel
that they ought to call him "Mr. Yeats!" I doubt very much whether he
takes any intimate interest in any human being. It may be, of course,
that he took less interest in me than he took in any one else for I am
not a very interesting person; but I always felt that when I left his
presence, it was immaterial to him whether he ever saw me again or not.
I felt that, on my hundredth meeting with him, I should be no nearer
intimacy with him than I was on my first meeting. My vanity has since
been soothed by the knowledge that he has given a similar impression
regarding themselves to other people who know him better than I do.
I have seen him come suddenly into the presence of a man whom he had
known for many years, and greet him awkwardly as if he did not know
what to say. He never offers his hand to a friend: he will often stand
looking at one without speaking, and then bow and pass on, with perhaps
a fumbled "Good evening!" but never with a "How are you?" or "I'm glad
to see you!"
It is, I suppose, the result of some natural clumsiness of manner.
He has trained himself to an elegance of demeanour, an elaborate
courteousness, which is very pleasing to a stranger, but he has spent
so much time in achieving this elegance that he has forgotten or never
learned how to greet a friend.
He was expecting other people to come to his rooms that Sunday
evening.... I remember he mentioned that Madame Maud Gonne McBride
was expected to arrive in London from Paris on her way to Ireland,
and might call on her way to Euston Station ... but no one else came.
He talked to me about my play and told me that he liked it very much,
but that Lady Gregory did not greatly care for it. "She is a realist
herself," he said, "and all realists hate each other. Synge would have
disliked your play, and Robinson does not like it, but I do!" (Lennox
Robinson, himself a dramatist, was then manager of the Abbey Theatre.)
He asked me if I had written any other plays, and I told him that I
was half-way through a four-act play, called "Mixed Marriage," and I
described the theme of it to him. He urged me to complete this play
and bring the MS. to his rooms and read it to him. "The difficulty
about 'The Magnanimous Lover,'" he said, "is that it may provoke some
disturbance among the audience, and as our patent expires shortly we
do not wish to give the authorities any ground for refusing to renew
it. They were very angry over our production of Bernard Shaw's 'Blanco
Posnet' after the Censor refused to license it in England. We'll leave
the production of 'The Magnanimous Lover' until the patent has been
renewed. If your new play were ready, we could do it first and create a
public for you!..."
Mr. Yeats is one of the best advertising agents in the world, and I
did not doubt his ability to "create a public" for me, although I
thought that Lady Gregory would probably be more skilful even that he
could be. When one remembers that she has established a considerable
reputation as a dramatist on two continents entirely on the strength
of half-a-dozen one-act plays, it is impossible to doubt that she is
at least as skilful as he in drawing attention to herself. A great
amount of their advertising energy has, of course, been expended on
the Abbey Theatre and the Irish Literary Renaissance, and a great many
Irish writers, myself included, have derived advantage, personal and
pecuniary, from their activities. It would have been better for us,
perhaps, if Mr. Yeats had employed his critical ability more freely
than his eulogy on our work. There is an immense amount of creative
power in Ireland, but it is raw, untutored, tumid stuff, and because
the critical faculty in Ireland is almost negligible, this creative
power is wasted in violent explosive plays and books or violent,
explosive beliefs.
I have always believed in the interdependence of all men and minds. It
seems to me that an ill-conceived, foolish political scheme must in
some manner react on every other department of man's life, and that
the labourer who is doing his job badly in a remote village is in
some measure adversely affecting the welfare of his countrymen miles
away. Violent, crude plays are inevitable in a land of violent, crude
beliefs; and it is, I think, not without significance that some of
the most violent, crude plays in the Abbey repertory were written by
dramatists who professed the violent, crude beliefs of Sinn Fein. When
one thinks of the generosity and courage and nobility of many of the
Sinn Feiners, it is hard not to lose faith in human perfectibility when
one considers how foolish are the political schemes they devise. If
men so good and exalted as these men are can produce schemes so stupid
and sometimes so cruel, how can we hope for any progress in the world
when we remember how many bad men there are? And have we not seen how
men of lofty ideals can tumble into cruelty and become brutal ruffians
in the name of patriotism?