Some Impressions of My Elders

by St. John G. Ervine

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....

VI

My memories of those days when I first knew him begin to be disconnected, and I find myself putting down things which happened after other things which I have still to relate; but I have never found a consecutive narrative very interesting, which, perhaps, is why I cannot read Pepys' Diary or Evelyn's Diary. I like to take things out of their turn, to go forward to one thing and then back to an earlier thing. I can only connect one incident or memory with another by taking them out of their order and doing violence to the natural sequence of things. Life is not so interesting when all the factors between 1 and 100 are in sequence as it is when 26 and 60 are taken out of their place and put into coherence, temporary or permanent, with each other.

He said to me one evening that a man does not make firm friendships after the age of twenty-five. There is a good deal of truth in that statement, but I doubt whether it is generally true. It is true of him, for his mind turns back continually to the men who were his contemporaries twenty-five years ago, but it was not true of Dr. Johnson, who shed his friends as he grew in stature of mind. And perhaps what Dr. Johnson said to Sir Joshua Reynolds is more generally true than what Mr. Yeats said to me. "If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair." I do not think that anything is so remarkable about Mr. Yeats as his aloofness from the life of these times. He has very little knowledge of contemporary writing. I doubt whether he has read much or even anything by Mr. H. G. Wells or Mr. Arnold Bennett or Mr. John Galsworthy or Mr. Joseph Conrad. He said to me one night that after thirty a man ought to read only a few books and read them continually. Some one had said this to him—I have forgotten who said it—and he passed on the advice to me; but he added, after a while, that "perhaps the age of thirty is too young," and suggested that the age should be raised to forty. It seemed very wrong advice to me.

An active mind will surely keep itself acquainted with new books and familiar with old books. I have heard many men, particularly schoolmasters and classical scholars, say with pride that they never read modern books. Such people boast that when a new book is published, they read an old one. They are, in my experience, dull people, sluggardly in mind, and pompous and set in manner. In many cases, particularly if they are schoolmasters, they neither read new books nor old ones. Dr. Johnson and his friends, however, appear to have been familiar with all the current literature of their time: history, fiction, poetry, drama, philosophy and theology; as well as with the ancient writings. They would not have boasted of their ignorance of the work of their contemporaries. In Mr. Yeats's case, however, this unfamiliarity with the work of men writing to-day is explainable when one remembers that he cannot read easily because of his sight. When I first knew him, a friend came several times a week to read to him out of a copy of the Kelmscott Press edition to William Morris's "Earthly Paradise."

He had, like most young men of his time, been much influenced by William Morris, the only man for whom I ever heard him profess anything like affection, but I remember hearing him say once that he no longer got pleasure from reading or listening to Morris's poetry.