Early memories; some chapters of autobiography

by John Butler Yeats

Archer Butler, in his day a famous Platonist, once said in my father's hearing, 'Butt, I leave you to the God who made you.' And so said all men, the reason being, I think, that in Butt himself was such a fountain of naturalness and humanity that people said 'This is the thing itself, compared to which our moral codes are only the scaffolding.'

Archer Butler had just been appointed, by the Board of Trinity College, Professor of Moral Philosophy. Butt knew that he had written an erotic poem, very mild for these days but very terrible in those Victorian days, and he went to congratulate him, bringing a copy of the Dublin University Review with this identical poem inserted. Butt said to him 'Why on earth did you do such a thing as publish this poem?' Butler was in consternation and believed himself lost. At this time the magazine was very famous and widely read, publishing, as it did, the stories of Lever and Carleton. It was of course a joke, for the copy showed to Butler was the only one that contained the poem, and all contrived by Butt who at that time was editor of the magazine. When Butt was Member for Harwich, and the hope of the Tories, being as yet untouched by any Irish heresies, Mrs. Butt, my father and mother, uncle Robert Corbet, a cousin and I, all went in a body to visit Madame Tussaud's Wax-work Exhibition. As we passed along among these figures, ghastly by an imitation of life which seemed to be its sad mockery, Butt constituted himself our guide, telling strange histories, partly true but mostly imaginary. At all times Butt shone in this kind of inventions. A crowd of strangers drew near, among them a little Clergyman particularly active and vociferous in his applause and encouragement, and Butt was in his element. Mrs. Butt at this time was young, as were all the party, and the situation amused her so much that she sat down on a chair, the better to enjoy her laughter. Seeing this Butt made pointed and appealing allusions, and the crowd gave her black looks, which only increased her merriment. My matter of fact cousin did not know that a joke was in progress, and when the little Clergyman approached him and said 'What a remarkable guide they keep in this establishment' he was shocked and said 'He's not a guide, he is the member for Harwich.' The crowd melted away, and Butt was indignant. 'Why' he said 'I meant to have got sixpence apiece all round.'

The Irish spurn convention and are called cynical, and the English make of it a religion and for their pains are called hypocrites. The fact being that, while the English like the beaten way, we prefer the untrodden way that leads to the surprising.

Trinity College Dublin did very little for me, which is entirely my own fault, neither did Trinity College Dublin inspire me with affection, and that was the fault of Trinity College Dublin. One night, in the College park, walking under the stars with that brilliant scientist George Fitzgerald, I saw him look round at some new buildings just erected and with a snap of satisfaction he said, 'No ornament, that is one good thing.' I made the obvious retort 'How is Trinity College Dublin to inspire affection, if it is not made beautiful in its buildings, its quadrangle, its trees and its park.' He gave a grunting assent. Had he not been in a controversial mood, and ascetic for severe science, he would have responded generously; for he was a true scientist, that is, a poet as well. Trinity College inspires no love; outside what it has done for learning and mathematics and things purely intellectual it has a lean history. Still youth is youth, and the time of youth is pleasant to look back upon. Fitzgerald, I have said, had a poetical mind, and that means among other things that he took humanity in the lump. Indeed I never knew any of that distinguished family that did not love the sinner as much as they deplored the sin, & in this surely they showed themselves to be Irish of the Irish. I leave it to others to explain, for it is a quality which is not English or Scotch. Think of it, to love the sinner! What a reach of mind it demands and what patience and long practice in the right kind of sensibilities; remember Thomas Carlyle and how he hated the sinner, being a sort of Public Executioner everywhere and anywhere. I recall that when he died in the fullness of his glory and success, and we all praised him, it was old Baron Fitzgerald, the uncle of George Fitzgerald, who shocked us by calling out at his dinner-table. 'The great Sham is dead, what is to be done with the great Sham?' Yet Carlyle's hatred for the sinner was not sham but an active quality of fierce anger for the encouragement of which and its sustenance he had ransacked history and philosophy. I once saw him in the flesh in London, in the Chelsea district, an old man, tottering along very rapidly, wearing a blue frock coat with a large red rose in his buttonhole. Instantly I saw who it was and stopped and turned round to watch him as he receded, and he also turned round and looked at me, and I saw his face, his ruddy cheeks and blue eyes, charged I thought with a smouldering irascibility, and yet I could see the benevolence that, had it not been Scotch and further infected by Prussian rigours, would have brought pity and tenderness to drown that wrath. Yet it was wrath, and bore no resemblance to the cold and treacherous cruelty of Froude, in whose long horse-face was neither irascibility nor pity. While I stood there watching the old sage, a British workman passed, his bag of tools over his shoulder, and said in an aside—'A rare old file that!'

There was a man named Thomas Allingham, a brother to the poet who mentions him somewhere, as a man who had won a great reputation in Trinity College Dublin but who was without any creative ability. If he could not create he could write imitations of his brother's poems and publish them with the poet's initials in the country newspaper of Ballyshannon where these brothers were born. The poet was extraordinary fastidious and exacting in all matters of style, never satisfied with anything he wrote, and he was much the elder brother, claiming all the rights of an elder brother who is fastidious about style. I knew Thomas and was often in his rooms and very soon became aware of the spirit of mischief that dwelt behind his gray eyes and half-closed heavy eyelids. A Ballyshannon paper was declining, and its editor was a friend of Allingham's. Allingham returning to College sought out a congenial spirit named Green, and together they started to revive the paper by an acrimonious controversy over the words 'telegram' and 'telegraph.' One wrote a letter to that paper saying it should be 'telegraph' & the other that it should be 'telegram.' I've seen them sitting together over Allingham's fire, concocting lying paragraphs and offensive epithets to be used against each other. Returning to Ballyshannon for his vacation Allingham sowed in the general ear whispers and rumours as to impending law suits. His next transformation was to become evangelical and pious. He was a man of extraordinary mental power and this was all that he made of it. Perhaps too much education is as bad as none at all. The poet probably had none but what he picked up for himself. A well-stored memory is something like too much orthodoxy. It captures the whole man and arrests the dreaming faculty and inhibits initiative.

There is yet another memory which comes to me from Trinity College and 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.