I saw Mr. Yeats many times after that first visit. He told me that he
was always at home to his friends on Monday evening, and he invited
me to dine with him on the Monday immediately following the Sunday on
which I first met him. No one came on that evening. He talked about
acting and the theatre, and I said something that pleased him, and
he complimented me in his grave, courteous manner. "That was well
said," he exclaimed, and I flushed with pleasure. The praise of one
distinguished man is more than the applause of a multitude of common
men. His talk about the theatre, though interesting, was often remote
from reality. He was then interested in the more esoteric forms of
drama, and was eager to put masks on the actors' faces. He wished
to eliminate the personality of the player from the play, and had
borrowed some foolish notions from Mr. Gordon Craig about lighting and
scenery and dehumanised actors. He had a model of the Abbey Theatre
in his rooms and was fond of experimenting with it. There was some
inconsistency in his talk about acting: at one moment he was anxious
for anonymous, masked players, "freed" from personality, and at the
next moment, he was demanding that players should act with their entire
bodies, not merely with their voices and faces. Hazlitt, advocates
anonymity on the stage, and when one considers how excessive is the
regard paid to-day to the actor in comparison with that paid to the
play, one is tempted to support Hazlitt's demand; but I have never
understood why one should decline to exploit a personality that is rare.
There is a school of thinkers which holds that the best theatre is
that one in which a player may be the hero of the piece to-night and
the "voice off" to-morrow night. This is a ridiculous theory. Even
if it were practicable, which it is not, it would be a disgraceful
waste of material. The manager who consented to a proposal that Madame
Sarah Bernhardt should play the part of the servant with one line to
say would be an ass and a wastrel. It is, perhaps, unfair to treat a
man's "table-talk" as if it were a serious proposal, and I once got
into trouble with Mr. Gordon Craig for doing this; but so much of Mr.
Yeats's talk and writing is related to this matter of disembodiment and
passionless action, that it is difficult not to treat it seriously. For
my part, I have always been unable to understand how it is possible for
a human being to behave as if he were not a human being.
Most of the talking was done by Mr. Yeats, and he talked
extraordinarily well. He is one of the best talkers I have ever
listened to, in spite of the fact that his conversation tends to become
a monologue. But if you cannot talk well yourself, you are wise to
listen to a man who can. He spoke at length about the men who had
been his friends when he was a young man: of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey
Beardsley and Arthur Symons and Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson; of
Henley and Whistler and Mr. Bernard Shaw and of a host of others. He
had a puzzled, bewildered admiration for "that strange man of genius,
Bernard Shaw," but I never felt that he understood Mr. Shaw or was
happy with Mr. Shaw's mind. He could not make head or tail of "John
Bull's Other Island" when he read it in MS. Mr. Shaw, in a debate with
Mr. Belloc, which I had heard a night or two before the meeting with
Mr. Yeats, had said "I am a servant," and this statement pleased Mr.
Yeats very much. He was moved by the humility of it. Mr. Shaw, however,
hardly entered into Mr. Yeats's early life, and most of the talk that
evening was about Beardsley and Wilde and Lionel Johnson and Ernest
Dowson and the members of the Rhymers' Club. "Most of them," he said,
"died of drink or went out of their minds!"
It was late when I prepared to leave him. He had been saying that a man
should always associate with his equals and superiors and never with
his inferiors, when I recollected that the hour was late and that I
might miss the last tram from the Thames Embankment and so have to walk
several miles. I was tired, too, and a little depressed, for he seemed
to be a lonely man and an uneasy man. He had survived all his friends,
but had not succeeded in making any intimacy with their successors.
I sometimes feel about him that he is a lost man wandering around
looking for his period. When I had announced that I was going home, he
astonished me by saying that he would walk part of the way with me. He
had not had any exercise all day and felt that he needed some air and
movement. (He hates open windows and always keeps his tightly closed.)
We walked to the Embankment together, saying little, for silence had
fallen on him, and walked along it for a short while. I said some banal
thing about Waterloo Bridge, but he did not make any answer; and I did
not speak again, but contented myself with observing the difference
between his walk when he is moving slowly and his walk when he is
moving quickly. He is very dignified in his movements when he walks
slowly: he holds his head erect and carries his hands tightly clenched
behind his back; but when he begins to move quickly, the dignity
disappears and his walk becomes a tumbling shuffle. That, I suppose, is
because of his poor sight.
My tram came along, and I said "Good-night" to him, and he answered
"Good-night" in a vague fashion. I think he had completely forgotten me.
V
He had told me that he was going on the following day to Manchester to
lecture to some society there, and I was sufficiently interested in
his opinions to get a copy of the "Manchester Guardian" containing a
report of what he had said. I was amused to find that his lecture was
a repetition of all that he had said to me on the Monday before the
day on which he lectured. He had "tried it on the dog," and I was the
dog. All his speeches are carefully rehearsed before they are publicly
delivered. He told me once that Oscar Wilde rehearsed his conversation
in the morning and then, being word-perfect, went forth in the evening
to speak it. I imagine that he does that, too, on occasions. It is a
laudable thing to do in many respects, although it tends to make talk
somewhat formal and liable to be scattered by an interruption. When
Mr. Yeats rehearses a speech before making it in public, he is paying
a great tribute to his audience by declining to offer them scamped or
hastily-contrived opinions. Those who listen to him may be deceived
into believing that he is speaking spontaneously, but they may be
certain that what he says has been carefully considered, that he is
speaking of things over which he has pondered and not just "saying the
first thing that comes into his head."
Most men of letters do something of this sort. I have listened to Mr.
Moore saying things which I subsequently read in the preface to the
revised version of one of his novels; and I remember meeting "A. E." in
Nassau Street, Dublin, one evening and being told a great deal about
co-operation which I read in his paper, "The Irish Homestead" on the
following morning.
I saw Mr. Yeats many times after that. I completed the MS. of "Mixed
Marriage" and, much embarrassed, read it to him in his rooms. I read
it very badly, too, and I am sure I bored him a great deal; but he
was kind and patient and he made some useful suggestions to me which I
did not accept. I had too much conceit, as all young writers have, to
be guided by a better man than myself. I know now that I should have
done well to take his advice. He warned me against topical things and
against politics and urged me to flee journalism as I would flee the
devil; and he advised me to read Balzac. He was always advising me to
read Balzac, but I never did....