One remembers men by odd things. I remember Mr. Yeats chiefly as a dark image, obscurely seen, and Mr. Shaw as a shy, erect man with fine, shapely hands, who talks emphatically because otherwise he would not be talking at all. I remember Mr. Galsworthy as one who is biting his lips or clenching his teeth lest he should say too much, and Mr. George Moore as one who is consumed with the fear that he will not say enough. Mr. Wells comes into my mind as an eager, friendly man, whose speech, thinly uttered, suggests continual testing. But mostly I remember his fine eyes because it is in them that most of his strength is stored.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I
I have been acquainted with Mr. Yeats for a longer time than I have with any other man named in this book, but I seem to myself to know very little about him, for he is extraordinarily aloof from life. His aloofness is different from that of Mr. Galsworthy who is perturbed about mankind. Mr. Yeats is totally unconcerned about problems of any sort. He is more interested in the things men do than in men themselves. He prefers the symbol to the thing symbolized. The harshest condemnation I ever heard him utter was delivered on "A. E." of whom he said that he had ceased to be a poet in order to become a philanthropist! I met him last in Chicago, and I felt when we parted that I knew no more of him then than I knew when I first met him ten years earlier. Our meeting followed on the fact that I had sent a one-act play, entitled "The Magnanimous Lover," to him. It seems to me now to be a crudely-contrived, ill-written and violent piece, but when I sent it to Mr. Yeats I thought it was a remarkable work. It was performed after the production of Stanley Houghton's "Hindle Wakes" and Mr. Galsworthy's "The Eldest Son," which have similar themes, but was written several years before they were performed. One evening, a few weeks after I had sent the manuscript of "The Magnanimous Lover" to him, I received a letter from Mr. Yeats, written in that queer, illegible, thick style which is so difficult to read. Many of the words were incomplete: all of them were badly-formed. The contrast between the handwriting of Mr. Shaw and Mr. Yeats is remarkable. Mr. Shaw's is very clear and neat and most beautifully-shaped, as delicate as a spider's web, but Mr. Yeats's writing is obscure, untidy, sprawling and hard to decipher, looking as if it had been done with a blunt pen. Mr. Wells writes in a small, clean, but not very clear hand, a deceptive fist, for it seems easier to read than it is. There is some oddness in the fact that the handwriting of the poet should be so coarse and ungainly, while the handwriting of the dramatist, with so little of poetic emotion in him, is fine and shapely. The letter from Mr. Yeats was to say that he liked my play, but could not make a definite decision about it until he had consulted his co-director at the Abbey Theatre, Lady Gregory. It had the formal, distant tone which is characteristic of his speech and writing, but it had a postscript which gave me great pleasure. In this postscript, he said that my play was the only example of "wayward realism" that he had ever read. I did not quite understand what he meant by the phrase, but it was a compliment from a distinguished man and compliments from distinguished men had never come my way before. I have had many praising letters from him since then about my work, but none that ever raised me to such a state of dizzy delight as that first letter did. He told me, in another postscript, that he found in my "dialogue a quality of temperament, as distinguished from the usual impersonal logic. You have more than construction, and it is growing rare to have more." He thought highly of "John Ferguson"—so did Mr. Shaw and "A.E."—and when I was attacked in Dublin because of this play, I comforted myself with the thought that my betters liked what was denounced by my inferiors. Mr. Yeats wrote to me that "John Ferguson" was "a fragment of life, fully expounded and without conventionality or confusion. I think it is the best play you have done, though not likely to be the most popular." His criticism is especially valuable when it is adverse. I had written a play called "Mrs. Martin's Man" which I now know to have been a dreadful mess of motives. I sent it to Mr. Yeats in the hope that he would permit it to be done at the Abbey. He wrote lengthily to me about it, and when I had read his letter I put my play in the fire, though afterwards I used the theme, purged of the faults he had found in it, for a novel with the same title. "I believe," he wrote,
"I believe that the play is an error. I am very sorry indeed to say this, for I know what a blow it is to any dramatist to be told that about work which must have taken many weeks. Shaw has driven you off your balance, and instead of giving a vision of life, which is your gift and a most remarkable gift to have, you have begun to be topical, to play with ideas, to construct outside of life. Shaw has a very unique mind, a mind that is a part of a logical process going on all over Europe but which has found in him alone its efficient expression in English. He has no vision of life. He is a figure of international argument. There is an old saying, 'No angel can carry two messages. You have the greater gift of seeing life itself....'"
I print that extract from his letter, partly as a corrective to my own pride, but chiefly because of its commentary on Mr. Shaw. Later, in this chapter I will make specific reference to Mr. Yeats's relationship to Mr. Shaw's work, but here I may say that, in spite of his sincere regard and admiration for Mr. Shaw, Mr. Yeats seems to be totally incapable of comprehending his work. He is able to communicate with ghosts, but he cannot communicate with Mr. Shaw. He can understand astrologers and necromancers and spiritualists and thimble-riggers of all sorts and conditions, but he cannot understand Mr. Shaw. He told me on one occasion of an experience he had with a medium, a young girl who differed from all other mediums known to him in being a member of the upper class. The spirits, seemingly, prefer to communicate their messages through the lower orders. This girl's family were ashamed of her cataleptic powers and tried to conceal them from their neighbours, but they were persuaded to permit Mr. Yeats to see her in a trance. "While she was in the trance," he said to me, "her fingers closed on her palm. Then they opened again, and I saw a small green pebble in the centre of her palm!" That was all! Immortal souls had disturbed the harmony of the universe and thrown a young girl of the upper class into a trance in order that they might place a small green pebble in the centre of her palm! And Mr. Yeats saw something wonderful and significant in that performance, but is unable to see anything significant in the work of Mr. Shaw. That to me is a thing so incomprehensible that I have abandoned all attempts to understand it. But all of this is digression and anticipation. Soon after I had received the letter in which he praised my "wayward realism," I heard from Mr. Yeats again. He invited me to call on him on the following Sunday evening at his rooms in Woburn Buildings, behind the Euston Road, in London; and thither, in a state of some excitement, I repaired. I had no trouble in finding the house, for Mr. Yeats, who, in some ways, is much more precise and clear-minded than people imagine or his handwriting indicates, had given me very explicit directions how to get to it, and had even drawn a rough sketch of the neighbourhood so that I should not fail to find him. Woburn Buildings consists of a number of tall houses in a narrow passage off Southampton Row, and running parallel with the Euston Road. It is a dingy, dark place, with an air of furtive poverty about it, and on Sunday nights it is depressing enough to fill a man's mind with plots for drab dramas. I have heard that H. G. Wells thought of the plot of that clever, devilish story of his, "The Island of Dr. Moreau," in the Tottenham Court Road on a Bank Holiday when he was in a mood of discontent. I believe that the whole of the "drab drama" was first conceived on Mr. Yeats's doorstep!
Shops form the ground floor of these houses, little, huckstering shops that just contrive to support their proprietors, and Mr. Yeats's rooms were on the third and fourth floors of a house which had a cobbler's shop on the ground floor. The cobbler was a pleasant, bearded man, wearing spectacles who had some share in the management of his affairs; for when one, unable to obtain admission to the poet's rooms, required information about him, the cobbler invariably supplied it. He could tell whether Mr. Yeats had gone to Ireland or was merely taking the air, and when he was likely to return, and he would offer, with great courtesy, to take a message from you to be faithfully delivered to him on his arrival.
Mr. Yeats has poor and failing sight, and in the dusk of the Sunday evening on which I called on him, he could barely discern me. He stood in the hall, holding the door, looking very tall and dark, and said in that peculiar, tired and plaintive voice of his, "Who is it?" and I answered "St. John Ervine." There is always something conspiratorial about the manner in which he admits you to his rooms. You felt that you want to give the countersign.