EARLY MEMORIES
SOME CHAPTERS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY JOHN BUTLER YEATS.
Why I became an artist is a question which every artist must sometimes put to himself. It was my father who made me an artist, though his intention was that I should become a barrister, and I did become a barrister, but soon left it to follow my destiny and be an artist. Had I remained a barrister, in all probability both my sons would have taken to the law and would not now be one a poet and the other a painter.
When I was a little child, like other children I took to drawing, and my father being very appreciative of his children admired what I drew. In those days there was a heavy tax on paper as a defence against cheap journalism, & the radical movements which it was bound to foster, and my mother, being, as are most mothers, careful of expenditure, and not very sympathetic toward my artistic strivings, was always reluctant to give me paper on which I could draw. However, my father was an Irish gentleman of the old school and not at all thrifty; from him I could always get as much paper as I wanted. At that time there were no illustrated magazines and only one illustrated paper which I saw very occasionally at a friend's house. The only newspaper which came into my father's house was the London 'Times' and it had a picture of a clock. It was I think a rough wood-block. There is no child who will not really subscribe to Aristotle's doctrine that art is imitation, and in this case the imitation was roughly rendered so that it might be described as imitation with selection.
I was the eldest of the family and my brothers were much younger, for which reason my childhood was without companionship. Ah, the loneliness of such a childhood and the blessedness of it! Whether inside the house or out in the grounds I was always by myself, therefore I early learned to sustain myself by revery and dream. Years afterwards I suffered a good deal from the reproofs of my elders, for my habit of absentmindedness. Of course I was absentminded and am so still. In those childhood days I discovered the world of fantasy, and I still spend all my spare moments in that land of endearing enchantment.
I think as a child I was perfectly happy; my father my friend and counsellor, my mother my conscience. My father theorized about things and explained things and that delighted me, not because I had any mental conceit but because I delighted then as I still do in reasoning. My mother never explained anything, she hadn't a theoretical faculty; but she had away of saying 'Yes darling' or 'No darling,' which, when put out, she would change into a hasty 'Yes dear' or 'No dear' that was sufficient for all purposes. There was a servant in the house whose name was Sam Matchett. As is the way in the country, he was butler and coachman, land steward and gardener. He had been in the army and he several times told me that he had been the strongest man in the regiment. I admired him more than I did anybody else, and he enjoyed my admiration as much as Achilles did that of Patroclus. I think he did very much as he liked with my father, but my mother was made of firmer material. My mother had a great belief in exercise in the open air, and when Sam wanted to do a little shooting on his own account, he would approach her artfully and say that he knew where there was a pheasant or a hare and that he thought of going to get it, and that he would like to take 'Master Johnny' with him; and off we two would go. My father, was six feet two inches in his stocking feet and well-built, famous in his college days as an athlete and racket player, and Sam Matchett to excite the admiration of the women servants would induce my father to stand on the palm of his hand, and he would raise him with arms outstretched to the level of the kitchen table. It was no wonder that I admired Sam, and it helped no doubt in my artistic education and started an appreciation, which still exists, for muscular well-made men. Of course I picked up all Sam's words and modes of expression, and my mother didn't quite like it; but as these referred to horses and cattle and fields and game, in my own mind I was convinced that Sam knew a good deal more about it than she did. I remember he used to wonder that I did not prefer my father to my mother. I think he was an exceedingly good influence upon my life. He bestowed a great deal of care on my manners, which is not surprising when one remembers that however it be with the upper classes, the Irish peasant has the instincts of a gentleman. My father was a Rector of a very large parish in County Down, Ireland, & there were no boys' schools anywhere within reach. A village school-master taught me to read, after which I read Robinson Crusoe diligently. In the evening after dinner my father would sit beside his candle reading, and my mother would sit by her candle sewing, and I would nestle beside her reading Robinson Crusoe, and I can remember that at certain critical passages in this history I would tremble with anxiety, and that I was most careful lest my elders should discover my excitement and laugh at me. These candles needed to be snuffed incessantly, and it was my ambition to be allowed to snuff them; but when I tried I snuffed the candle out, and never again got the chance, my mother was inexorable. We were a large family, boisterous, full of animal spirits & health, sometimes very friendly together while at other times we would quarrel. Yet I never remember a single instance of corporal punishment or indeed any kind of punishment but once, and then I was the victim. My mother induced my father to commence my education, and he began by something in arithmetic, and I failed miserably as I would at the present moment. Up to that moment I had been the pride of my father: not only was I his eldest son and the heir to the family property, but he was convinced I was exceedingly like his brother Tom, who in his course at Trinity College, Dublin, had never been beaten in mathematics. When therefore I failed in arithmetic the blow was too much for his fond hopes, and he gave me a box on my ear. He had no sooner done so than he shook hands with me and hoped I was not offended, and then glided out of the room. I was not offended but very much astounded. I wonder if he told my mother. At any rate, years afterwards when I was a full grown man, I heard her regretting that she could never induce my father to teach any of us. He said he had no patience.
At last I went to school. It was a boarding-school at Seaforth, Liverpool, and was kept by three maiden ladies: it was a very fashionable school. We were nice little boys with short jackets and wide white collars. Never was any boy so happy as I was in the prospect of that school. My uncle took me to Liverpool; and when he suggested that I stay with him a day longer I would not, I wanted to get into that school. I was not ten minutes inside the walls when I think I was about the most miserable boy in all England, and believed the cloud would never, never lift. I looked at all the other boys and wondered again and again how they could be so cheerful.
My father was evangelical as was then fashionable in the best intellectual circles. He must have said something about hell in my hearing, yet, I did not make any real acquaintance with that dismal and absurd doctrine till I went to Miss Davenport's school. The school was managed upon the highest principles of duty, no prizes were ever given for all must work from sake of duty, and we slept with our Bibles under our pillows with directions to read them as soon as we awoke in the morning; but hell was the driving force. Miss Emma Davenport, who was the chief of the school, often spoke of it.
In the early mornings I read my Bible with assiduity, but only the Old Testament never the New. It was the age of faith; I believed every word to be the word of God, of that mighty God of whom our school-mistress was always speaking. I had always believed also that Robinson Crusoe was an equally veracious history; and when the nurses and servants told me ghost stories and fairy tales, I accepted all they said with an unfaltering credulity. There were certain cabins in our neighbours said to be haunted one in particular covered with ivy which I never passed without a shiver of fear and curiosity. I did not tell my elders, I was too wise: instinctively I knew that they would have robbed me of my ghostly thrills. Now-a-days people are brought up in a world of reason and science: is it any wonder that intricate and delicate and difficult verse should give way to the poetry of rhetoric and a moral uplift? People used to amuse themselves by bracing or relaxing their souls in the vast and shadowy world of solitary fantasy: now we do better—at any rate it is easier—we set about reforming our neighbours. When I first arrived at that English School I was greatly surprised by English mispronunciation. Emma, the Christian name of our headmistress was invariably called 'Emmer,' just as to this day in London clergymen of all denominations pronounce the name of our late Gracious Majesty as 'Victorier,' whereas every Irishman knows that her name is 'Victoria.' Among the trio of ladies governing the school Emma was the ruling spirit, but she had a sister Betsy who if she could do nothing else could apply the cane with sharpness and decision. One day the only other Irish boy in the school and myself climbed for a few feet on one of the trees. There was a sharp tap at the schoolroom window: it was Betsy. She told us to stand in the dining-room until the boys came in for tea. We stood there and waited and would have been dull but for my friend. He produced out of the recesses of his pocket a piece of wax kept for the purpose and diligently applied it to the palm of his hand, & I followed his example. Afterwards we rubbed our hands as hard as we could along the iron top of the fire-screen. Thus we prepared for what was coming. When the boys entered for tea, Betsy came with them and sat down at the head of the table, we standing in the centre of the room. After a moment or two she arose and I still hear her voice as she said, 'Tandy, (Tandy was my friend's name) fetch me the cane.' Tandy had been longer in the school than I and knew all about that cane and found it easily. We received three strokes on each of our hands; it was very painful and I was very much astonished, and when I went home for the holidays I was glad to find that the blood blisters were still there, and I very eagerly showed them to my father who to my surprise only laughed, being neither sympathetic nor impressed. Years afterwards when I saw the portraits of Queen Elizabeth I recognized the resemblance to Betsy. She dressed elaborately with a high collar that reached over her ears and was very tall & meagre, and was, as I remember, like the Queen in that she was a faded beauty. Lonely spinsters sometime suffer from the thought that they've lived wasted lives. It must have soothed Betsy's last moments to remember how she could raise blood blisters on little boys' hands.
My conscience once played me a very nasty trick. As you may suppose the greatest crime next to setting the school on fire, or running away, or something of that sort, was to tell a lie. If a little boy told a lie he was birched for it, and possibly went to hell hereafter. Telling a lie is sometimes a little boy's greatest temptation, and the elders have decided that it is the greatest crime. I was reading a novel called 'The Children of the New Forest,' and had got far on into the second volume and was so interested that I insisted upon telling all about it to the drawing-master, and he told me novels were lies, and was so emphatic that my conscience compelled me to shut that book. I still remember that I had just reached page 224 in the second volume. Yet that master who was such a fanatic for truth always touched up our water-colour drawings, and made them look like master-pieces, for the edification of our parents and for their deception. To my non-puritan eyes man's inconsistency is always a charm and it has often been his safe-guard.
The great Queen Elizabeth used to spit and swear when the foreign ambassadors crossed her temper, yet I doubt whether she had distinguished nerves. Cecil said of her that she was sometimes greater than a man and sometimes less than a woman.