Early memories; some chapters of autobiography

by John Butler Yeats

Perhaps in the councils of the Eternal, or whatever you call the Providence who shapes our ends, no time is lost and nothing whatever wasted. Looking back on my uncle's long and pleasant life, ending in a close so sombre, I will pass no judgement on the ways of Providence, beyond saying that he was by nature a good man and deserved to be happy to the end. He was fond of his friends, and wished to be only good to them, and with his money he benefited hundreds. There are people who if they do anything for you do thereby fix a hook in your jaws which you can never get rid of. I think when he did you a kindness he forgot about it and wished you to forget it. Of course his sympathies were extremely narrow and did not extend beyond his relations and friends. Humanitarism, which I had learned from Mill's philosophy, I would not have dared speak of in his presence. Theory was my uncle's aversion; an old Tory, he regarded theory as the Enemy. He was extraordinarily fond of children. When we lived in the North of Ireland, his advent among us was a radiant event. I can remember that one late winter's evening, when with my mother and father he had just left for the mail coach that was to take him to Dublin, out of pure affection and loneliness I went over to the table and drank out of his tea-cup.

Having now spoken of the master of Sandymount Castle, let me now speak of one whom my eldest sister called the Deputy Master, old Michael, who for more than forty years was my uncle's butler. It was my mother who hired him when he was a young man with black hair and blue eyes. Some weeks afterwards he was found drunk. He at once, at my uncle's demand, took the pledge, and never after broke it, even though we youngsters, out of pure mischief, often tried to tempt him. I remember him as a man of white hair with an amusing resemblance to John Stuart Mill—I say amusing because Michael was short in stature and sturdily built, whereas we all know J. S. M. was tall and slender. Before coming to my uncle he had been butler to an English general whom he left because 'the Mistress had insulted his religion,' which so distressed the general that he had insisted on Michael driving from the house in the family carriage. Michael himself told me this, and that when he had got to some distance from the house, he transferred himself to a Dublin jaunting-car. He was a perfect servant, yet I never knew a man of greater self-respect. The Irish make good servants and their gentry make good masters, because both are still mediævalists, and belong to an age when it was accepted by everybody from the king to the peasant that to serve is honourable. My uncle's manner with all his servants was brief and authoritative, as though he could still send them to the guardroom, and these relations with Michael never relaxed during all the forty years. All the same Michael was Deputy Master. Sometimes when we were at dinner and Michael attending us, he would say 'Mr. So-and-So called to day' & my uncle would invariably reply 'Did you ask him to dinner?' 'Yes Sir'. My Uncle came to see me in London, a few years before his death, and after he had left Sandymount, and said 'When I told Michael of my intention, I declare to God I don't know which of us should have been most pitied.' When last I saw Michael he was ill and visibly failing. He came from his bed-room with a blanket around his shoulders but his bright blue eyes were the same as ever and he told me one of the old stories.

'Did I ever tell you, Mr. Johnnie, the story of Mr. O'Connell and the officer?'

I had heard it at least fifty times, but I said it was new to me. The officer was a witness called in some law case in which O'Connell was employed.

'Mr. Soldier' said O'Connell, 'what do you know of this matter?'

'I am not a soldier, I am an officer' said the witness. 'Then' said Mr. O'Connell 'Mr. Officer and no soldier, what do you know of this matter?'

Shortly before I left Ireland and law, to go to London and study art, and while my uncle was still at Sandymount, Michael told me a conversation he had with Butt. He said he was standing at the side door when he saw Butt at a distance, and that Butt came over to him and shook hands with him, and that he brought Butt into the oak room, and gave him luncheon and wine, and that Butt talked to him of many things and that finally Michael had said 'Now Sir, Mr. Johnnie is a Barrister, and you ought to do something for him,' and Butt answered 'Michael, I will.' And he did, in a way that, because of my resolution to go to England, was vain, but it would have been a substantial help to me.

At that time my uncle and Butt had not been on speaking terms for some years. In Butt's magnanimous mind and imagination were tides of feeling and of old memory connected with Sandymount and with those that had been its inmates that no quarrel could stand against. That was Butt all over. In the old days he and his family constantly came to Sandymount, and while his wife & children would scatter over the gardens and ground, he would stay inside talking to the old ladies. They liked especially playing backgammon with him. His reckless way of leaving blots stimulated their imagination and made them feel that he really was a man of genius. At this time he was the opponent of O'Connell and the hope of the Tories, and Disraeli had walked in the lobby of the House of Commons with his arm through his and said, 'Butt we must get you into the Cabinet.' Afterwards, when Butt had gone over to the Nationalists, my grandmother would say, 'I have a sneaking regard for Isaac Butt,' and her sister would say, 'Indeed I know you have.'

There was a something in Butt, was it poetical genius or intellectual power, was it the head or the heart, or was it merely primeval goodness, that no one could resist. It followed him everywhere, and it followed him into Court. I have seen a jury listening in constrained attitude of painful attention, with the air of men resolved to do their duty at any cost. Then the other Lawyer would cease to speak, and Butt would rise, and every man of them would smile, like watchers by a sick bed who at last saw arrive a great doctor who could work miracles, and Butt would explain things in a language so simple that the dullest brain among them would understand. It was part of his genius that he understood simple people. It was well-known among solicitors that in a case in which his feelings were not concerned he was no better than any other barrister, but that where they were concerned he was irresistible. My father was present at a dinner where there were assembled all the magnates of the Irish Bar, and one and all declared that they never knew how a case would go until they had heard Butt's speech, and, if I remember rightly. Butt at this time was not over thirty years of age. There had been a murder in County Donegal of which Butt was a native, and the family did not wish him to take a part in the defence. Friends of the accused called on him and, to put them off, he asked what he thought was an impossible fee. They went away disappointed. Butt's imagination caught fire from what they told him, and all night he walked his library thinking about it, and when, contrary to his expectations, the men called in the morning with the money, he had convinced himself and undertook the defence, and so moving was his speech, that the jury, all of them Presbyterians, when they left the Court and entered the Jury Room, fell on their knees and prayed for guidance and help. The man was acquitted. A friend of mine living in London, who had been a Dublin solicitor in large practice, told me the following story. The Dublin Corporation at the time he spoke of was composed of Protestants, and in a very important case, for which my friend was solicitor, wanted to employ Butt. He and his clients sought him everywhere and could not find him. There was Sir This and Sir That—men whose names he spoke with a kind of awe, yet neither he nor they could find Butt. Then, receiving certain hints and rumours, they took cars and cabs and drove many miles out of Dublin into the country & did at last find Butt, down on his hands and knees in a field, studying a water-course, all on the behalf of the poor ragged man who was standing beside him—a case, said my friend, for which he wouldn't get five pounds, and at this time Butt was a Tory politician, pledged to the service of the rich and powerful. My friend was a big, heavily-built man, with a wheezy voice and irritable eyes, punctiliously honest and truthful. He hated Home Rule and he loathed the Catholic Church, a bitter Protestant of the Cromwellian type, yet he liked to talk about Butt, and would rail against the people who deserted him. I have often heard him say 'Of all the men I've ever known. Butt had the best qualities.' The relation between these two men was like that between Timon of Athens and his steward. With Flavius my friend might have said:

'O Monument
And wonder of good deeds evilly bestowed'