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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/33348-8.txt b/33348-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..529c8d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/33348-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3073 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Reveries over Childhood and Youth, by +William Butler Yeats + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Reveries over Childhood and Youth + +Author: William Butler Yeats + +Release Date: August 4, 2010 [EBook #33348] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + +REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH + + + + + THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS + ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO + + MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED + LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA + MELBOURNE + + THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. + TORONTO + + + + + REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH + + BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS + + THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + NEW YORK MCMXVI + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1916, + BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. + + Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1916. + + Norwood Press + J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. + Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. + + + + +To those few people mainly personal friends who have read all that I have +written. + +W. B. Y. + + + + +Preface + + +Sometimes when I remember a relative that I have been fond of, or a +strange incident of the past, I wander here and there till I have somebody +to talk to. Presently I notice that my listener is bored; but now that I +have written it out, I may even begin to forget it all. In any case, +because one can always close a book, my friend need not be bored. + +I have changed nothing to my knowledge, and yet it must be that I have +changed many things without my knowledge, for I am writing after so many +years, and have consulted neither friend nor letter nor old newspaper and +describe what comes oftenest into my memory. + +I say this fearing that some surviving friend of my youth may remember +something in a different shape and be offended with my book. + +Christmas Day, 1914. + + + + +REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH + + +My first memories are fragmentary and isolated and contemporaneous, as +though one remembered vaguely some early day of the Seven Days. It seems +as if time had not yet been created, for all are connected with emotion +and place and without sequence. + +I remember sitting upon somebody's knee, looking out of a window at a wall +covered with cracked and falling plaster, but what wall I do not remember, +and being told that some relation once lived there. I am looking out of +another window in London. It is at Fitzroy Road. Some boys are playing in +the road and among them a boy in uniform, a telegraph boy perhaps. When I +ask who the boy is, a servant tells me that he is going to blow the town +up, and I go to sleep in terror. + +After that come memories of Sligo, where I live with my grandparents. I am +sitting on the ground looking at a mastless toy boat, with the paint +rubbed and scratched, and I say to myself in great melancholy, "it is +further away than it used to be," and while I am saying it I am looking at +a long scratch in the stern, for it is especially the scratch which is +further away. Then one day at dinner my great-uncle William Middleton +says, "we should not make light of the troubles of children. They are +worse than ours, because we can see the end of our trouble and they can +never see any end," and I feel grateful for I know that I am very unhappy +and have often said to myself, "when you grow up, never talk as grown-up +people do of the happiness of childhood." I may have already had the night +of misery when, having prayed for several days that I might die, I had +begun to be afraid that I was dying and prayed that I might live. There +was no reason for my unhappiness. Nobody was unkind, and my grandmother +has still after so many years my gratitude and my reverence. The house was +so big that there was always a room to hide in, and I had a red pony and a +garden where I could wander, and there were two dogs to follow at my +heels, one white with some black spots on his head and the other with long +black hair all over him. I used to think about God and fancy that I was +very wicked, and one day when I threw a stone and hit a duck in the yard +by mischance and broke its wing, I was full of wonder when I was told that +the duck would be cooked for dinner and that I should not be punished. + +Some of my misery was loneliness and some of it fear of old William +Pollexfen my grandfather. He was never unkind, and I cannot remember that +he ever spoke harshly to me, but it was the custom to fear and admire him. +He had won the freedom of some Spanish city for saving life, but was so +silent that his wife never knew it till he was near eighty, and then from +the chance visit of some old sailor. She asked him if it was true and he +said it was true, but she knew him too well to question and his old +shipmate had left the town. She too had the habit of fear. We knew that he +had been in many parts of the world, for there was a great scar on his +hand made by a whaling-hook, and in the dining-room was a cabinet with +bits of coral in it and a jar of water from the Jordan for the baptising +of his children and Chinese pictures upon rice-paper and an ivory +walking-stick from India that came to me after his death. He had great +physical strength and had the reputation of never ordering a man to do +anything he would not do himself. He owned many sailing ships and once, +when a captain just come to anchor at Rosses Point reported something +wrong with the rudder, had sent a messenger to say "send a man down to +find out what's wrong." "The crew all refuse" was the answer. "Go down +yourself" was my grandfather's order, and when that was not obeyed, he +dived from the main deck, all the neighbourhood lined along the pebbles +of the shore. He came up with his skin torn but well informed about the +rudder. He had a violent temper and kept a hatchet at his bedside for +burglars and would knock a man down instead of going to law, and I once +saw him hunt a group of men with a horsewhip. He had no relation for he +was an only child, and being solitary and silent, he had few friends. He +corresponded with Campbell of Islay who had befriended him and his crew +after a shipwreck, and Captain Webb, the first man who had swum the +Channel and who was drowned swimming the Niagara Rapids, had been a mate +in his employ and became a close friend. That is all the friends I can +remember and yet he was so looked up to and admired that when he returned +from taking the waters at Bath his men would light bonfires along the +railway line for miles, while his partner William Middleton whose father +after the great famine had attended the sick for weeks, and taken cholera +from a man he carried in his arms into his own house and died of it, and +was himself civil to everybody and a cleverer man than my grandfather, +came and went without notice. I think I confused my grandfather with God, +for I remember in one of my attacks of melancholy praying that he might +punish me for my sins, and I was shocked and astonished when a daring +little girl--a cousin I think--having waited under a group of trees in the +avenue, where she knew he would pass near four o'clock on the way to his +dinner, said to him, "if I were you and you were a little girl, I would +give you a doll." + +Yet for all my admiration and alarm, neither I nor anyone else thought it +wrong to outwit his violence or his rigour; and his lack of suspicion and +a certain helplessness made that easy while it stirred our affection. When +I must have been still a very little boy, seven or eight years old +perhaps, an uncle called me out of bed one night, to ride the five or six +miles to Rosses Point to borrow a railway-pass from a cousin. My +grandfather had one, but thought it dishonest to let another use it, but +the cousin was not so particular. I was let out through a gate that opened +upon a little lane beside the garden away from ear-shot of the house, and +rode delighted through the moonlight, and awoke my cousin in the small +hours by tapping on his window with a whip. I was home again by two or +three in the morning and found the coachman waiting in the little lane. My +grandfather would not have thought such an adventure possible, for every +night at eight he believed that the stable-yard was locked, and he knew +that he was brought the key. Some servant had once got into trouble at +night and so he had arranged that they should all be locked in. He never +knew, what everybody else in the house knew, that for all the ceremonious +bringing of the key the gate was never locked. + +Even to-day when I read "King Lear" his image is always before me and I +often wonder if the delight in passionate men in my plays and in my poetry +is more than his memory. He must have been ignorant, though I could not +judge him in my childhood, for he had run away to sea when a boy, "gone to +sea through the hawse-hole" as he phrased it, and I can but remember him +with two books--his Bible and Falconer's "Shipwreck," a little +green-covered book that lay always upon his table; he belonged to some +younger branch of an old Cornish family. His father had been in the Army, +had retired to become an owner of sailing ships, and an engraving of some +old family place my grandfather thought should have been his hung next a +painted coat of arms in the little back parlour. His mother had been a +Wexford woman, and there was a tradition that his family had been linked +with Ireland for generations and once had their share in the old Spanish +trade with Galway. He had a good deal of pride and disliked his +neighbours, whereas his wife, a Middleton, was gentle and patient and did +many charities in the little back parlour among frieze coats and shawled +heads, and every night when she saw him asleep went the round of the house +alone with a candle to make certain there was no burglar in danger of the +hatchet. She was a true lover of her garden and before the care of her +house had grown upon her, would choose some favourite among her flowers +and copy it upon rice-paper. I saw some of her handiwork the other day and +I wondered at the delicacy of form and colour and at a handling that may +have needed a magnifying glass it was so minute. I can remember no other +pictures but the Chinese paintings, and some coloured prints of battles in +the Crimea upon the wall of a passage, and the painting of a ship at the +passage end darkened by time. + +My grown-up uncles and aunts, my grandfather's many sons and daughters, +came and went, and almost all they said or did has faded from my memory, +except a few harsh words that convince me by a vividness out of proportion +to their harshness that all were habitually kind and considerate. The +youngest of my uncles was stout and humorous and had a tongue of leather +over the keyhole of his door to keep the draught out, and another whose +bedroom was at the end of a long stone passage had a model turret ship in +a glass case. He was a clever man and had designed the Sligo quays, but +was now going mad and inventing a vessel of war that could not be sunk, +his pamphlet explained, because of a hull of solid wood. Only six months +ago my sister awoke dreaming that she held a wingless sea-bird in her arms +and presently she heard that he had died in his mad-house, for a sea-bird +is the omen that announces the death or danger of a Pollexfen. An uncle, +George Pollexfen, afterwards astrologer and mystic, and my dear friend, +came but seldom from Ballina, once to a race meeting with two postillions +dressed in green; and there was that younger uncle who had sent me for the +railway-pass. He was my grandmother's favourite, and had, the servants +told me, been sent away from school for taking a crowbar to a bully. + +I can only remember my grandmother punishing me once. I was playing in the +kitchen and a servant in horseplay pulled my shirt out of my trousers in +front just as my grandmother came in and I, accused of I knew not what +childish indecency, was given my dinner in a room by myself. But I was +always afraid of my uncles and aunts, and once the uncle who had taken the +crowbar to the bully found me eating lunch which my grandmother had given +me and reproved me for it and made me ashamed. We breakfasted at nine and +dined at four and it was considered self-indulgent to eat anything +between meals; and once an aunt told me that I had reined in my pony and +struck it at the same moment that I might show it off as I rode through +the town, and I, because I had been accused of what I thought a very dark +crime, had a night of misery. Indeed I remember little of childhood but +its pain. I have grown happier with every year of life as though gradually +conquering something in myself, for certainly my miseries were not made by +others but were a part of my own mind. + + +II + +One day someone spoke to me of the voice of the conscience, and as I +brooded over the phrase I came to think that my soul, because I did not +hear an articulate voice, was lost. I had some wretched days until being +alone with one of my aunts I heard a whisper in my ear, "what a tease you +are!" At first I thought my aunt must have spoken, but when I found she +had not, I concluded it was the voice of my conscience and was happy +again. From that day the voice has come to me at moments of crisis, but +now it is a voice in my head that is sudden and startling. It does not +tell me what to do, but often reproves me. It will say perhaps, "that is +unjust" of some thought; and once when I complained that a prayer had not +been heard, it said, "you have been helped." I had a little flagstaff in +front of the house and a red flag with the Union Jack in the corner. Every +night I pulled my flag down and folded it up and laid it on a shelf in my +bedroom, and one morning before breakfast I found it, though I knew I had +folded it up the night before, knotted round the bottom of the flagstaff +so that it was touching the grass. I must have heard the servants talking +of the faeries for I concluded at once that a faery had tied those four +knots and from that on believed that one had whispered in my ear. I have +been told, though I do not remember it myself, that I saw, whether once or +many times I do not know, a supernatural bird in the corner of the room. +Once too I was driving with my grandmother a little after dark close to +the Channel that runs for some five miles from Sligo to the sea, and my +grandmother showed me the red light of an outward-bound steamer and told +me that my grandfather was on board, and that night in my sleep I screamed +out and described the steamer's wreck. The next morning my grandfather +arrived on a blind horse found for him by grateful passengers. He had, as +I remember the story, been asleep when the captain aroused him to say they +were going on the rocks. He said, "have you tried sail on her?" and +judging from some answer that the captain was demoralised took over the +command and, when the ship could not be saved, got the crew and passengers +into the boats. His own boat was upset and he saved himself and some +others by swimming; some women had drifted ashore, buoyed up by their +crinolines. "I was not so much afraid of the sea as of that terrible man +with his oar," was the comment of a schoolmaster who was among the +survivors. Eight men were, however, drowned and my grandfather suffered +from that memory at intervals all his life, and if asked to read family +prayers never read anything but the shipwreck of St. Paul. + +I remember the dogs more clearly than anyone except my grandfather and +grandmother. The black hairy one had no tail because it had been sliced +off, if I was told the truth, by a railway train. I think I followed at +their heels more than they did at mine, and that their journeys ended at a +rabbit-warren behind the garden; and sometimes they had savage fights, the +black hairy dog, being well protected by its hair, suffering least. I can +remember one so savage that the white dog would not take his teeth out of +the black dog's hair till the coachman hung them over the side of a +water-butt, one outside and one in the water. My grandmother once told the +coachman to cut the hair like a lion's hair and, after a long consultation +with the stable-boy, he cut it all over the head and shoulders and left +it on the lower part of the body. The dog disappeared for a few days and I +did not doubt that its heart was broken. There was a large garden behind +the house full of apple-trees with flower-beds and grass-plots in the +centre and two figure-heads of ships, one among the strawberry plants +under a wall covered with fruit trees and one among the flowers. The one +among the flowers was a white lady in flowing robes, while the other, a +stalwart man in uniform, had been taken from a three-masted ship of my +grandfather's called "The Russia," and there was a belief among the +servants that the stalwart man represented the Tsar and had been presented +by the Tsar himself. The avenue, or as they say in England the drive, that +went from the hall door through a clump of big trees to an insignificant +gate and a road bordered by broken and dirty cottages, was but two or +three hundred yards, and I often thought it should have been made to wind +more, for I judged people's social importance mainly by the length of +their avenues. This idea may have come from the stable-boy, for he was my +principal friend. He had a book of Orange rhymes, and the days when we +read them together in the hay-loft gave me the pleasure of rhyme for the +first time. Later on I can remember being told, when there was a rumour +of a Fenian rising, that rifles had been served out to the Orangemen and +presently, when I had begun to dream of my future life, I thought I would +like to die fighting the Fenians. I was to build a very fast and beautiful +ship and to have under my command a company of young men who were always +to be in training like athletes and so become as brave and handsome as the +young men in the story-books, and there was to be a big battle on the +sea-shore near Rosses and I was to be killed. I collected little pieces of +wood and piled them up in a corner of the yard, and there was an old +rotten log in a distant field I often went to look at because I thought it +would go a long way in the making of the ship. All my dreams were of +ships; and one day a sea captain who had come to dine with my grandfather +put a hand on each side of my head and lifted me up to show me Africa, and +another day a sea captain pointed to the smoke from the Pern mill on the +quays rising up beyond the trees of the lawn, as though it came from the +mountain, and asked me if Ben Bulben was a burning mountain. + +Once every few months I used to go to Rosses Point or Ballisodare to see +another little boy, who had a piebald pony that had once been in a circus +and sometimes forgot where it was and went round and round. He was George +Middleton, son of my great-uncle William Middleton. Old Middleton had +bought land, then believed a safe investment, at Ballisodare and at +Rosses, and spent the winter at Ballisodare and the summer at Rosses. The +Middleton and Pollexfen flour mills were at Ballisodare, and a great +salmon weir, rapids and a waterfall, but it was more often at Rosses that +I saw my cousin. We rowed in the river mouth or were taken sailing in a +heavy slow schooner yacht or in a big ship's boat that had been rigged and +decked. There were great cellars under the house, for it had been a +smuggler's house a hundred years before, and sometimes three loud raps +would come upon the drawing room window at sun-down, setting all the dogs +barking, some dead smuggler giving his accustomed signal. One night I +heard them very distinctly and my cousins often heard them, and later on +my sister. A pilot had told me that, after dreaming three times of a +treasure buried in my uncle's garden, he had climbed the wall in the +middle of the night and begun to dig but grew disheartened "because there +was so much earth." I told somebody what he had said and was told that it +was well he did not find it for it was guarded by a spirit that looked +like a flat iron. At Ballisodare there was a cleft among the rocks that I +passed with terror because I believed that a murderous monster lived +there that made a buzzing sound like a bee. + +It was through the Middletons perhaps that I got my interest in country +stories and certainly the first faery stories that I heard were in the +cottages about their houses. The Middletons took the nearest for friends +and were always in and out of the cottages of pilots and of tenants. They +were practical, always doing something with their hands, making boats, +feeding chickens, and without ambition. One of them had designed a steamer +many years before my birth and long after I had grown to manhood one could +hear it--it had some sort of obsolete engine--many miles off wheezing in +the Channel like an asthmatic person. It had been built on the lake and +dragged through the town by many horses, stopping before the windows where +my mother was learning her lessons, and plunging the whole school into +candle-light for five days, and was still patched and repatched mainly +because it was believed to be a bringer of good luck. It had been called +after the betrothed of its builder "Janet," long corrupted into the more +familiar "Jennet," and the betrothed died in my youth having passed her +eightieth year and been her husband's plague because of the violence of +her temper. Another who was but a year or two older than myself used to +shock me by running after hens to know by their feel if they were on the +point of dropping an egg. They let their houses decay and the glass fall +from the windows of their greenhouses, but one among them at any rate had +the second sight. They were liked but had not the pride and reserve, the +sense of decorum and order, the instinctive playing before themselves that +belongs to those who strike the popular imagination. + +Sometimes my grandmother would bring me to see some old Sligo gentlewoman +whose garden ran down to the river, ending there in a low wall full of +wallflowers, and I would sit up upon my chair, very bored, while my elders +ate their seed-cake and drank their sherry. My walks with the servants +were more interesting; sometimes we would pass a little fat girl and a +servant persuaded me to write her a love-letter, and the next time she +passed she put her tongue out. But it was the servant's stories that +interested me. At such and such a corner a man had got a shilling from a +drill sergeant by standing in a barrel and had then rolled out of it and +shown his crippled legs. And in such and such a house an old woman had hid +herself under the bed of her guests, an officer and his wife, and on +hearing them abuse her, beaten them with a broomstick. All the well-known +families had their grotesque or tragic or romantic legends, and I often +said to myself how terrible it would be to go away and die where nobody +would know my story. Years afterwards, when I was ten or twelve years old +and in London, I would remember Sligo with tears, and when I began to +write, it was there I hoped to find my audience. Next to Merville where I +lived, was another tree-surrounded house where I sometimes went to see a +little boy who stayed there occasionally with his grandmother, whose name +I forget and who seemed to me kind and friendly, though when I went to see +her in my thirteenth or fourteenth year I discovered that she only cared +for very little boys. When the visitors called I hid in the hay-loft and +lay hidden behind the great heap of hay while a servant was calling my +name in the yard. + +I do not know how old I was (for all these events seem at the same +distance) when I was made drunk. I had been out yachting with an uncle and +my cousins and it had come on very rough. I had lain on deck between the +mast and the bowsprit and a wave had burst over me and I had seen green +water over my head. I was very proud and very wet. When we got into Rosses +again, I was dressed up in an older boy's clothes so that the trousers +came down below my boots and a pilot gave me a little raw whiskey. I drove +home with the uncle on an outside car and was so pleased with the strange +state in which I found myself that for all my uncle could do, I cried to +every passer-by that I was drunk, and went on crying it through the town +and everywhere until I was put to bed by my grandmother and given +something to drink that tasted of black currants and so fell asleep. + + +III + +Some six miles off towards Ben Bulben and beyond the Channel, as we call +the tidal river between Sligo and the Rosses, and on top of a hill there +was a little square two-storeyed house covered with creepers and looking +out upon a garden where the box borders were larger than any I had ever +seen, and where I saw for the first time the crimson streak of the +gladiolus and awaited its blossom with excitement. Under one gable a dark +thicket of small trees made a shut-in mysterious place, where one played +and believed that something was going to happen. My great-aunt Micky lived +there. Micky was not her right name for she was Mary Yeats and her father +had been my great-grandfather, John Yeats, who had been Rector of +Drumcliffe, a few miles further off, and died in 1847. She was a spare, +high-coloured, elderly woman and had the oldest looking cat I had ever +seen, for its hair had grown into matted locks of yellowy white. She +farmed and had one old man-servant, but could not have farmed at all, had +not neighbouring farmers helped to gather in the crops, in return for the +loan of her farm implements and "out of respect for the family," for as +Johnny MacGurk, the Sligo barber said to me, "the Yeats's were always very +respectable." She was full of family history; all her dinner knives were +pointed like daggers through much cleaning, and there was a little James +the First cream-jug with the Yeats motto and crest, and on her dining-room +mantle-piece a beautiful silver cup that had belonged to my +great-great-grandfather, who had married a certain Mary Butler. It had +upon it the Butler crest and had been already old at the date 1534, when +the initials of some bride and bridegroom were engraved under the lip. All +its history for generations was rolled up inside it upon a piece of paper +yellow with age, until some caller took the paper to light his pipe. +Another family of Yeats, a widow and her two children on whom I called +sometimes with my grandmother, lived near in a long low cottage, and owned +a very fierce turkeycock that did battle with their visitors; and some +miles away lived the secretary to the Grand Jury and Land Agent, my +great-uncle Mat Yeats and his big family of boys and girls; but I think +it was only in later years that I came to know them well. I do not think +any of these liked the Pollexfens, who were well off and seemed to them +purse-proud, whereas they themselves had come down in the world. I +remember them as very well-bred and very religious in the Evangelical way +and thinking a good deal of Aunt Micky's old histories. There had been +among our ancestors a Kings County soldier, one of Marlborough's generals, +and when his nephew came to dine he gave him boiled pork, and when the +nephew said he disliked boiled pork he had asked him to dine again and +promised him something he would like better. However, he gave him boiled +pork again and the nephew took the hint in silence. The other day as I was +coming home from America, I met one of his descendants whose family has +not another discoverable link with ours, and he too knew the boiled pork +story and nothing else. We have the General's portrait, and he looks very +fine in his armour and his long curly wig, and underneath it, after his +name, are many honours that have left no tradition among us. Were we +country people, we could have summarised his life in a legend. + +Another ancestor or great-uncle had chased the United Irishmen for a +fortnight, fallen into their hands and been hanged, and the notorious +Major Sirr who betrayed the brothers Shears, taking their children upon +his knees to question them, if the tale does not lie, had been god-father +to several of my great-great-grandfather's children; while to make a +balance, my great-grandfather had been Robert Emmett's friend and been +suspected and imprisoned though but for a few hours. A great-uncle had +been Governor of Penang, and led the forlorn hope at the taking of +Rangoon, and an uncle of a still older generation had fallen at New +Orleans in 1813, and even in the last generation there had been lives of +some power and pleasure. An old man who had entertained many famous +people, in his 18th century house, where battlement and tower showed the +influence of Horace Walpole, had but lately, after losing all his money, +drowned himself, first taking off his rings and chain and watch as became +a collector of many beautiful things; and once to remind us of more +passionate life, a gun-boat put into Rosses, commanded by the illegitimate +son of some great-uncle or other. Now that I can look at their miniatures, +turning them over to find the name of soldier, or lawyer, or Castle +official, and wondering if they cared for good books or good music, I am +delighted with all that joins my life to those who had power in Ireland or +with those anywhere that were good servants and poor bargainers, but I +cared nothing as a child for Micky's tales. I could see my grandfather's +ships come up the bay or the river, and his sailors treated me with +deference, and a ship's carpenter made and mended my toy boats and I +thought that nobody could be so important as my grandfather. Perhaps, too, +it is only now that I can value those more gentle natures so unlike his +passion and violence. An old Sligo priest has told me how my +great-grandfather John Yeats always went into his kitchen rattling the +keys, so much did he fear finding some one doing wrong, and how when the +agent of the great landowner of his parish brought him from cottage to +cottage to bid the women send their children to the Protestant school and +all had promised till they came to one who cried, "child of mine will +never darken your door," he had said "thank you, my woman, you are the +first honest woman I have met to-day." My uncle, Mat Yeats, the Land +Agent, had once waited up every night for a week to catch some boys who +stole his apples and when he caught them had given them sixpence and told +them not to do it again. Perhaps it is only fancy or the softening touch +of the miniaturist that makes me discover in their faces some courtesy and +much gentleness. Two 18th century faces interest me the most, one that of +a great-great-grandfather, for both have under their powdered curling wigs +a half-feminine charm, and as I look at them I discover a something clumsy +and heavy in myself. Yet it was a Yeats who spoke the only eulogy that +turns my head. "We have ideas and no passions, but by marriage with a +Pollexfen we have given a tongue to the sea cliffs." + +Among the miniatures there is a larger picture, an admirable drawing by I +know not what master, that is too harsh and merry for its company. He was +a connection and close friend of my great-grandmother Corbet, and though +we spoke of him as "Uncle Beattie" in our childhood, no blood relation. My +great-grandmother who died at ninety-three had many memories of him. He +was the friend of Goldsmith & was accustomed to boast, clergyman though he +was, that he belonged to a hunt-club of which every member but himself had +been hanged or transported for treason, and that it was not possible to +ask him a question he could not reply to with a perfectly appropriate +blasphemy or indecency. + + +IV + +Because I had found it hard to attend to anything less interesting than my +thoughts, I was difficult to teach. Several of my uncles and aunts had +tried to teach me to read, and because they could not, and because I was +much older than children who read easily, had come to think, as I have +learnt since, that I had not all my faculties. But for an accident they +might have thought it for a long time. My father was staying in the house +and never went to church, and that gave me the courage to refuse to set +out one Sunday morning. I was often devout, my eyes filling with tears at +the thought of God and of my own sins, but I hated church. My grandmother +tried to teach me to put my toes first to the ground because I suppose I +stumped on my heels and that took my pleasure out of the way there. Later +on when I had learnt to read I took pleasure in the words of the hymn, but +never understood why the choir took three times as long as I did in +getting to the end; and the part of the service I liked, the sermon and +passages of the Apocalypse and Ecclesiastes, were no compensation for all +the repetitions and for the fatigue of so much standing. My father said if +I would not go to church he would teach me to read. I think now that he +wanted to make me go for my grandmother's sake and could think of no other +way. He was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at +my head, and next Sunday I decided to go to church. My father had, +however, got interested in teaching me, and only shifted the lesson to a +week-day till he had conquered my wandering mind. My first clear image of +him was fixed on my imagination, I believe, but a few days before the +first lesson. He had just arrived from London and was walking up and down +the nursery floor. He had a very black beard and hair, and one cheek +bulged out with a fig that was there to draw the pain out of a bad tooth. +One of the nurses (a nurse had come from London with my brothers and +sisters) said to the other that a live frog, she had heard, was best of +all. Then I was sent to a dame school kept by an old woman who stood us in +rows and had a long stick like a billiard cue to get at the back rows. My +father was still at Sligo when I came back from my first lesson and asked +me what I had been taught. I said I had been taught to sing, and he said, +"sing then" and I sang + + "Little drops of water, + Little grains of sand, + Make the mighty ocean, + And the pleasant land" + +high up in my head. So my father wrote to the old woman that I was never +to be taught to sing again, and afterwards other teachers were told the +same thing. Presently my eldest sister came on a long visit and she and I +went to a little two-storeyed house in a poor street where an old +gentlewoman taught us spelling and grammar. When we had learned our lesson +well, we were allowed to look at a sword presented to her father who had +led troops in India or China and to spell out a long complimentary +inscription on the silver scabbard. As we walked to her house or home +again we held a large umbrella before us, both gripping the handle and +guiding ourselves by looking out of a round hole gnawed in the cover by a +mouse. When I had got beyond books of one syllable, I began to spend my +time in a room called the Library, though there were no books in it that I +can remember except some old novels I never opened and a many volumed +encyclopaedia published towards the end of the 18th century. I read this +encyclopaedia a great deal and can remember a long passage considering +whether fossil wood despite its appearance might not be only a curiously +shaped stone. + +My father's unbelief had set me thinking about the evidences of religion +and I weighed the matter perpetually with great anxiety, for I did not +think I could live without religion. All my religious emotions were, I +think, connected with clouds and cloudy glimpses of luminous sky, perhaps +because of some bible picture of God's speaking to Abraham or the like. +At least I can remember the sight moving me to tears. One day I got a +decisive argument for belief. A cow was about to calve, and I went to the +field where the cow was with some farm-hands who carried a lantern, and +next day I heard that the cow had calved in the early morning. I asked +everybody how calves were born, and because nobody would tell me, made up +my mind that nobody knew. They were the gift of God, that much was +certain, but it was plain that nobody had ever dared to see them come, and +children must come in the same way. I made up my mind that when I was a +man I would wait up till calf or child had come. I was certain there would +be a cloud and a burst of light and God would bring the calf in the cloud +out of the light. That thought made me content until a boy of twelve or +thirteen, who had come on a visit for the day, sat beside me in a hay-loft +and explained all the mechanism of sex. He had learnt all about it from an +elder boy whose pathic he was (to use a term he would not have understood) +and his description, given, as I can see now, as if he were telling of any +other fact of physical life, made me miserable for weeks. After the first +impression wore off, I began to doubt if he had spoken truth, but one day +I discovered a passage in the encyclopaedia, though I only partly +understood its long words, that confirmed what he had said. I did not know +enough to be shocked at his relation to the elder boy, but it was the +first breaking of the dream of childhood. + +My realization of death came when my father and mother and my two brothers +and my two sisters were on a visit. I was in the Library when I heard feet +running past and heard somebody say in the passage that my younger +brother, Robert, had died. He had been ill for some days. A little later +my sister and I sat at the table, very happy, drawing ships with their +flags half-mast high. We must have heard or seen that the ships in the +harbour had their flags at half-mast. Next day at breakfast I heard people +telling how my mother and the servant had heard the banshee crying the +night before he died. It must have been after this that I told my +grandmother I did not want to go with her when she went to see old +bed-ridden people because they would soon die. + + +V + +At length when I was eight or nine an aunt said to me, "you are going to +London. Here you are somebody. There you will be nobody at all." I knew at +the time that her words were a blow at my father, not at me, but it was +some years before I knew her reason. She thought so able a man as my +father could have found out some way of painting more popular pictures if +he had set his mind to it and that it was wrong of him "to spend every +evening at his club." She had mistaken, for what she would have considered +a place of wantonness, Heatherley's Art School. + +My mother and brother and sister were at Sligo perhaps when I was sent to +England, for my father and I and a group of landscape painters lodged at +Burnham Beeches with an old Mr. and Mrs. Earle. My father was painting the +first big pond you come to if you have driven from Slough through Farnham +Royal. He began it in spring and painted all through the year, the picture +changing with the seasons, and gave it up unfinished when he had painted +the snow upon the heath-covered banks. He is never satisfied and can never +make himself say that any picture is finished. In the evening he heard me +my lessons or read me some novel of Fenimore Cooper's. I found delightful +adventures in the woods--one day a blind worm and an adder fighting in a +green hollow, and sometimes Mrs. Earle would be afraid to tidy the room +because I had put a bottle full of newts on the mantle-piece. Now and then +a boy from a farm on the other side of the road threw a pebble at my +window at daybreak, and he and I went fishing in the big second pond. Now +and then another farmer's boy and I shot sparrows with an old pepper box +revolver and the boy would roast them on a string. There was an old horse +one of the painters called the scaffolding, and sometimes a son of old +Earle's drove with me to Slough and once to Windsor, and at Windsor we +made our lunch of cold sausages bought from a public house. I did not know +what it was to be alone, for I could wander in pleasant alarm through the +enclosed parts, then very large, or round some pond imagining ships going +in and out among the reeds and thinking of Sligo or of strange seafaring +adventures in the fine ship I should launch when I grew up. I had always a +lesson to learn before night and that was a continual misery, for I could +very rarely, with so much to remember, set my thoughts upon it and then +only in fear. One day my father told me that a painter had said I was very +thick-skinned and did not mind what was said to me, and I could not +understand how anybody could be so unjust. It made me wretched to be idle +but one could not help it. I was once surprised and shocked. All but my +father and myself had been to London, and Kennedy and Farrar and Page, I +remember the names vaguely, arrived laughing and talking. One of them had +carried off a card of texts from the waiting room of the station and hung +it up on the wall. I thought "he has stolen it," but my father and all +made it a theme of merry conversation. + +Then I returned to Sligo for a few weeks as I was to do once or twice in +every year for years, and after that we settled in London. Perhaps my +mother and the other children had been there all the time, for I remember +my father now and again going to London. The first house we lived in was +close to Burne Jones's house at North End, but we moved after a year or +two to Bedford Park. At North End we had a pear tree in the garden and +plenty of pears, but the pears used to be full of maggots, and almost +opposite lived a school-master called O'Neill, and when a little boy told +me that the school-master's great-grandfather had been a king I did not +doubt it. I was sitting against the hedge and iron railing of some +villa-garden there, when I heard one boy say to another it was something +wrong with my liver that gave me such a dark complexion and that I could +not live more than a year. I said to myself a year is a very long time, +one can do such a lot of things in a year, and put it out of my head. When +my father gave me a holiday and later when I had a holiday from school I +took my schooner boat to the round pond, sailing it very commonly against +the two cutter yachts of an old naval officer. He would sometimes look at +the ducks and say, "I would like to take that fellow home for my dinner," +and he sang me a sailor's song about a coffin ship which left Sligo after +the great famine, that made me feel very important. The servants at Sligo +had told me the story. When she was moved from the berth she had lain in, +an unknown dead man's body had floated up, a very evil omen; and my +grandfather, who was Lloyds' agent, had condemned her, but she slipped out +in the night. The pond had its own legends; and a boy who had seen a +certain model steamer "burned to the water's edge" was greatly valued as a +friend. There was a little boy I was kind to because I knew his father had +done something disgraceful, though I did not know what. It was years +before I discovered that his father was but the maker of certain popular +statues, many of which are now in public places. I had heard my father's +friends speak of him. Sometimes my sister came with me, and we would look +into all the sweet shops & toy shops on our way home, especially into one +opposite Holland House because there was a cutter yacht made of sugar in +the window, and we drank at all the fountains. Once a stranger spoke to us +and bought us sweets and came with us almost to our door. We asked him to +come in and told him our father's name. He would not come in, but laughed +and said, "Oh, that is the painter who scrapes out every day what he +painted the day before." A poignant memory came upon me the other day +while I was passing the drinking-fountain near Holland Park, for there I +and my sister had spoken together of our longing for Sligo and our hatred +of London. I know we were both very close to tears and remember with +wonder, for I had never known anyone that cared for such momentoes, that I +longed for a sod of earth from some field I knew, something of Sligo to +hold in my hand. It was some old race instinct like that of a savage, for +we had been brought up to laugh at all display of emotion. Yet it was our +mother, who would have thought its display a vulgarity, who kept alive +that love. She would spend hours listening to stories or telling stories +of the pilots and fishing people of Rosses Point, or of her own Sligo +girlhood, and it was always assumed between her and us that Sligo was more +beautiful than other places. I can see now that she had great depth of +feeling, that she was her father's daughter. My memory of what she was +like in those days has grown very dim, but I think her sense of +personality, her desire of any life of her own, had disappeared in her +care for us and in much anxiety about money. I always see her sewing or +knitting in spectacles and wearing some plain dress. Yet ten years ago +when I was in San Francisco, an old cripple came to see me who had left +Sligo before her marriage; he came to tell me, he said, that my mother +"had been the most beautiful girl in Sligo." + + +[Illustration: _Mrs. Yeats from a drawing by J. B. Yeats made in 1867_] + + +The only lessons I had ever learned were those my father taught me, for he +terrified me by descriptions of my moral degradation and he humiliated me +by my likeness to disagreeable people; but presently I was sent to school +at Hammersmith. It was a Gothic building of yellow brick: a large hall +full of desks, some small class-rooms and a separate house for boarders, +all built perhaps in 1840 or 1850. I thought it an ancient building and +that it had belonged to the founder of the school, Lord Godolphin, who was +romantic to me because there was a novel about him. I never read the +novel, but I thought only romantic people were put in books. On one side, +there was a piano factory of yellow brick, upon two sides half finished +rows of little shops and villas all yellow brick, and on the fourth side, +outside the wall of our playing field, a brickfield of cinders and piles +of half-burned yellow bricks. All the names and faces of my school-fellows +have faded from me except one name without a face and the face and name of +one friend, mainly no doubt because it was all so long ago, but partly +because I only seem to remember things that have mixed themselves up with +scenes that have some quality to bring them again and again before the +memory. For some days, as I walked homeward along the Hammersmith Road, I +told myself that whatever I most cared for had been taken away. I had +found a small, green-covered book given to my father by a Dublin man of +science; it gave an account of the strange sea creatures the man of +science had discovered among the rocks at Howth or dredged out of Dublin +Bay. It had long been my favourite book; and when I read it I believed +that I was growing very wise, but now I should have no time for it nor for +my own thoughts. Every moment would be taken up learning or saying lessons +or walking between school and home four times a day, for I came home in +the middle of the day for dinner. But presently I forgot my trouble, +absorbed in two things I had never known, companionship and enmity. After +my first day's lesson, a circle of boys had got around me in a playing +field and asked me questions, "who's your father?" "what does he do?" "how +much money has he?" Presently a boy said something insulting. I had never +struck anybody or been struck, and now all in a minute, without any +intention upon my side, but as if I had been a doll moved by a string, I +was hitting at the boys within reach and being hit. After that I was +called names for being Irish, and had many fights and never, for years, +got the better of any one of them; for I was delicate and had no muscles. +Sometimes, however, I found means of retaliation, even of aggression. +There was a boy with a big stride, much feared by little boys, and finding +him alone in the playing field, I went up to him and said, "rise upon +Sugaun and sink upon Gad." "What does that mean?" he said. "Rise upon +hay-leg and sink upon straw," I answered and told him that in Ireland the +sergeant tied straw and hay to the ankles of a stupid recruit to show him +the difference between his legs. My ears were boxed, and when I complained +to my friends, they said I had brought it upon myself; and that I deserved +all I got. I probably dared myself to other feats of a like sort, for I +did not think English people intelligent or well-behaved unless they were +artists. Everyone I knew well in Sligo despised Nationalists and +Catholics, but all disliked England with a prejudice that had come down +perhaps from the days of the Irish Parliament. I knew stories to the +discredit of England, and took them all seriously. My mother had met some +English woman who did not like Dublin because the legs of the men were too +straight, and at Sligo, as everybody knew, an Englishman had once said to +a car-driver, "if you people were not so lazy, you would pull down the +mountain and spread it out over the sand and that would give you acres of +good fields." At Sligo there is a wide river mouth and at ebb tide most of +it is dry sand, but all Sligo knew that in some way I cannot remember it +was the spreading of the tide over the sand that left the narrow channel +fit for shipping. At any rate the carman had gone chuckling all over Sligo +with his tale. People would tell it to prove that Englishmen were always +grumbling. "They grumble about their dinners and everything--there was an +Englishman who wanted to pull down Knock-na-Rea" and so on. My mother had +shown them to me kissing at railway stations, and taught me to feel +disgust at their lack of reserve, and my father told how my grandfather, +William Yeats, who had died before I was born, when he came home to his +Rectory in County Down from an English visit, spoke of some man he had met +on a coach road who "Englishman-like" told him all his affairs. My father +explained that an Englishman generally believed that his private affairs +did him credit, while an Irishman, being poor and probably in debt, had no +such confidence. I, however, did not believe in this explanation. My Sligo +nurses, who had in all likelihood the Irish Catholic political hatred, had +never spoken well of any Englishman. + +Once when walking in the town of Sligo I had turned to look after an +English man and woman whose clothes attracted me. The man I remember had +gray clothes and knee-breeches and the woman a gray dress, and my nurse +had said contemptuously, "towrows." Perhaps before my time, there had been +some English song with the burden "tow row row," and everybody had told me +that English people ate skates and even dog-fish, and I myself had only +just arrived in England when I saw an old man put marmalade in his +porridge. I was divided from all those boys, not merely by the anecdotes +that are everywhere perhaps a chief expression of the distrust of races, +but because our mental images were different. I read their boys' books and +they excited me, but if I read of some English victory, I did not believe +that I read of my own people. They thought of Cressy and Agincourt and the +Union Jack and were all very patriotic, and I, without those memories of +Limerick and the Yellow Ford that would have strengthened an Irish +Catholic, thought of mountain and lake, of my grandfather and of ships. +Anti-Irish feeling was running high, for the Land League had been founded +and landlords had been shot, and I, who had no politics, was yet full of +pride, for it is romantic to live in a dangerous country. + +I daresay I thought the rough manners of a cheap school, as my grandfather +Yeats had those of a chance companion, typical of all England. At any rate +I had a harassed life & got many a black eye and had many outbursts of +grief and rage. Once a boy, the son of a great Bohemian glass-maker, and +who was older than the rest of us, and had been sent out of his country +because of a love affair, beat a boy for me because we were "both +foreigners." And a boy, who grew to be the school athlete and my chief +friend, beat a great many. His are the face and name that I remember--his +name was of Huguenot origin and his face like his gaunt and lithe body had +something of the American Indian in colour and lineament. + +I was very much afraid of the other boys, and that made me doubt myself +for the first time. When I had gathered pieces of wood in the corner for +my great ship, I was confident that I could keep calm among the storms and +die fighting when the great battle came. But now I was ashamed of my lack +of courage; for I wanted to be like my grandfather who thought so little +of danger that he had jumped overboard in the Bay of Biscay after an old +hat. I was very much afraid of physical pain, and one day when I had made +some noise in class, my friend the athlete was accused and I allowed him +to get two strokes of the cane before I gave myself up. He had held out +his hands without flinching and had not rubbed them on his sides +afterwards. I was not caned, but was made to stand up for the rest of the +lesson. I suffered very much afterwards when the thought came to me, but +he did not reproach me. + +I had been some years at school before I had my last fight. My friend, the +athlete, had given me many months of peace, but at last refused to beat +any more and said I must learn to box, and not go near the other boys till +I knew how. I went home with him every day and boxed in his room, and the +bouts had always the same ending. My excitability gave me an advantage at +first and I would drive him across the room, and then he would drive me +across and it would end very commonly with my nose bleeding. One day his +father, an elderly banker, brought us out into the garden and tried to +make us box in a cold-blooded, courteous way, but it was no use. At last +he said I might go near the boys again and I was no sooner inside the gate +of the playing field than a boy flung a handful of mud and cried out "mad +Irishman." I hit him several times on the face without being hit, till the +boys round said we should make friends. I held out my hand in fear; for I +knew if we went on I should be beaten, and he took it sullenly. I had so +poor a reputation as a fighter that it was a great disgrace to him, and +even the masters made fun of his swollen face; and though some little boys +came in a deputation to ask me to lick a boy they named, I had never +another fight with a school-fellow. We had a great many fights with the +street boys and the boys of a neighbouring charity school. We had always +the better because we were not allowed to fling stones, and that compelled +us to close or do our best to close. The monitors had been told to report +any boy who fought in the street, but they only reported those who flung +stones. I always ran at the athlete's heels, but I never hit anyone. My +father considered these fights absurd, and even that they were an English +absurdity, and so I could not get angry enough to like hitting and being +hit; and then too my friend drove the enemy before him. He had no doubts +or speculations to lighten his fist upon an enemy, that, being of low +behaviour, should be beaten as often as possible, and there were real +wrongs to avenge: one of our boys had been killed by the blow of a stone +hid in a snowball. Sometimes we on our side got into trouble with the +parents of boys. There was a quarrel between the athlete and an old German +who had a barber's shop we passed every day on our way home, and one day +he spat through the window and hit the German on his bald head--the +monitors had not forbidden spitting. The German ran after us, but when the +athlete squared up he went away. Now, though I knew it was not right to +spit at people, my admiration for my friend arose to a great height. I +spread his fame over the school, and next day there was a fine stir when +somebody saw the old German going up the gravel walk to the head-master's +room. Presently there was such a noise in the passage that even the master +had to listen. It was the head-master's red-haired brother turning the old +German out and shouting to the man-servant "see that he doesn't steal the +top-coats." We heard afterwards that he had asked the names of the two +boys who passed his window every day and been told the names of the two +head boys who passed also but were notoriously gentlemanly in their +manners. Yet my friend was timid also and that restored my confidence in +myself. He would often ask me to buy the sweets or the ginger-beer because +he was afraid sometimes when speaking to a stranger. + +I had one reputation that I valued. At first when I went to the +Hammersmith swimming-baths with the other boys, I was afraid to plunge in +until I had gone so far down the ladder that the water came up to my +thighs; but one day when I was alone I fell from the spring-board which +was five or six feet above the water. After that I would dive from a +greater height than the others and I practised swimming under water and +pretending not to be out of breath when I came up. And then if I ran a +race, I took care not to pant or show any sign of strain. And in this I +had an advantage even over the athlete; for though he could run faster and +was harder to tire than anybody else, he grew very pale and I was often +paid compliments. I used to run with my friend when he was training to +keep him in company. He would give me a long start and soon overtake me. + +I followed the career of a certain professional runner for months, buying +papers that would tell me if he had won or lost. I had seen him described +as "the bright particular star of American athletics," and the wonderful +phrase had thrown enchantment over him. Had he been called the particular +bright star, I should have cared nothing for him. I did not understand the +symptom for years after. I was nursing my own dream, my form of the common +school-boy dream, though I was no longer gathering the little pieces of +broken and rotting wood. Often, instead of learning my lesson, I covered +the white squares of the chessboard on my little table with pen and ink +pictures of myself, doing all kinds of courageous things. One day my +father said "there was a man in Nelson's ship at the battle of Trafalgar, +a ship's purser, whose hair turned white; what a sensitive temperament; +that man should have achieved something!" I was vexed and bewildered, and +am still bewildered and still vexed, finding it a poor and crazy thing +that we who have imagined so many noble persons cannot bring our flesh to +heel. + + +VI + +The head-master was a clergyman, a good-humoured, easy-going man, as +temperate, one had no doubt, in his religious life as in all else, and if +he ever lost sleep on our account, it was from a very proper anxiety as to +our gentility. I was in disgrace once because I went to school in some +brilliant blue homespun serge my mother had bought in Devonshire, and I +was told I must never wear it again. He had tried several times, though he +must have known it was hopeless, to persuade our parents to put us into +Eton clothes, and on certain days we were compelled to wear gloves. After +my first year, we were forbidden to play marbles because it was a form of +gambling and was played by nasty little boys, and a few months later told +not to cross our legs in class. It was a school for the sons of +professional men who had failed or were at the outset of their career, and +the boys held an indignation meeting when they discovered that a new boy +was an apothecary's son (I think at first I was his only friend,) and we +all pretended that our parents were richer than they were. I told a little +boy who had often seen my mother knitting or mending my clothes that she +only mended or knitted because she liked it, though I knew it was +necessity. + +It was like, I suppose, most schools of its type, an obscene, bullying +place, where a big boy would hit a small boy in the wind to see him double +up, and where certain boys, too young for any emotion of sex, would sing +the dirty songs of the street, but I daresay it suited me better than a +better school. I have heard the head-master say, "how has so-and-so done +in his Greek?" and the class-master reply, "very badly, but he is doing +well in his cricket," and the head-master has gone away saying "Oh, leave +him alone." I was unfitted for school work, and though I would often work +well for weeks together, I had to give the whole evening to one lesson if +I was to know it. My thoughts were a great excitement, but when I tried to +do anything with them, it was like trying to pack a balloon into a shed in +a high wind. I was always near the bottom of my class, and always making +excuses that but added to my timidity; but no master was rough with me. I +was known to collect moths and butterflies and to get into no worse +mischief than hiding now and again an old tailless white rat in my +coat-pocket or my desk. There was but one interruption of our quiet +habits, the brief engagement of an Irish master, a fine Greek scholar and +vehement teacher, but of fantastic speech. He would open the class by +saying, "there he goes, there he goes," or some like words as the +head-master passed by at the end of the hall. "Of course this school is no +good. How could it be with a clergyman for head-master?" And then perhaps +his eye would light on me, and he would make me stand up and tell me it +was a scandal I was so idle when all the world knew that any Irish boy was +cleverer than a whole class-room of English boys, a description I had to +pay for afterwards. Sometimes he would call up a little boy who had a +girl's face and kiss him upon both cheeks and talk of taking him to Greece +in the holidays, and presently we heard he had written to the boy's +parents about it, but long before the holidays he was dismissed. + + +VII + +Two pictures come into my memory. I have climbed to the top of a tree by +the edge of the playing field, and am looking at my school-fellows and am +as proud of myself as a March cock when it crows to its first sunrise. I +am saying to myself, "if when I grow up I am as clever among grown-up men +as I am among these boys, I shall be a famous man." I remind myself how +they think all the same things and cover the school walls at election +times with the opinions their fathers find in the newspapers. I remind +myself that I am an artist's son and must take some work as the whole end +of life and not think as the others do of becoming well off and living +pleasantly. The other picture is of a hotel sitting-room in the Strand, +where a man is hunched up over the fire. He is a cousin who has speculated +with another cousin's money and has fled from Ireland in danger of arrest. +My father has brought us to spend the evening with him, to distract him +from the remorse my father knows that he must be suffering. + + +VIII + +For years Bedford Park was a romantic excitement. At North End my father +had announced at breakfast that our glass chandelier was absurd and was to +be taken down, and a little later he described the village Norman Shaw was +building. I had thought he said, "there is to be a wall round and no +newspapers to be allowed in." And when I had told him how put out I was at +finding neither wall nor gate, he explained that he had merely described +what ought to be. We were to see De Morgan tiles, peacock-blue doors and +the pomegranate pattern and the tulip pattern of Morris, and to discover +that we had always hated doors painted with imitation grain and the roses +of mid-Victoria, and tiles covered with geometrical patterns that seemed +to have been shaken out of a muddy kaleidoscope. We went to live in a +house like those we had seen in pictures and even met people dressed like +people in the storybooks. The streets were not straight and dull as at +North End, but wound about where there was a big tree or for the mere +pleasure of winding, and there were wood palings instead of iron railings. +The newness of everything, the empty houses where we played at +hide-and-seek, and the strangeness of it all, made us feel that we were +living among toys. We could imagine people living happy lives as we +thought people did long ago when the poor were picturesque and the master +of a house would tell of strange adventures over the sea. Only the better +houses had been built. The commercial builder had not begun to copy and to +cheapen, and besides we only knew the most beautiful houses, the houses of +artists. My two sisters and my brother and myself had dancing lessons in a +low, red-brick and tiled house that drove away dreams, long cherished, of +some day living in a house made exactly like a ship's cabin. The +dining-room table, where Sinbad the sailor might have sat, was painted +peacock-blue, and the woodwork was all peacock-blue and upstairs there was +a window niche so big and high up, there was a flight of steps to go up +and down by and a table in the niche. The two sisters of the master of the +house, a well-known pre-Raphaelite painter, were our teachers, and they +and their old mother were dressed in peacock-blue and in dresses so simply +cut that they seemed a part of every story. Once when I had been looking +with delight at the old woman, my father who had begun to be influenced by +French art, muttered, "imagine dressing up your old mother like that." + + +[Illustration: _John Butler Yeats from a watercolour drawing by himself_] + + +My father's friends were painters who had been influenced by the +pre-Raphaelite movement but had lost their confidence. Wilson, Page, +Nettleship, Potter are the names I remember, and at North End, I remember +them most clearly. I often heard one and another say that Rossetti had +never mastered his materials, and though Nettleship had already turned +lion-painter, my father talked constantly of the designs of his youth, +especially of "God creating Evil," which Browning praised in a letter my +father had seen "as the most sublime conception in ancient or modern +Art." In those early days, that he might not be tempted from his work by +society, he had made a rent in the tail of his coat; and I have heard my +mother tell how she had once sewn it up, but before he came again he had +pulled out all the stitches. Potter's exquisite "Dormouse," now in the +Tate Gallery, hung in our house for years. His dearest friend was a pretty +model who was, when my memory begins, working for some position in a +board-school. I can remember her sitting at the side of the throne in the +North End Studio, a book in her hand and my father hearing her say a Latin +lesson. Her face was the typical mild, oval face of the painting of that +time, and may indeed have helped in the moulding of an ideal of beauty. I +found it the other day drawn in pencil on a blank leaf of a volume of the +"Earthly Paradise." It was at Bedford Park that I had heard Farrar, whom I +had first known at Burnham Beeches, tell of Potter's death and burial. +Potter had been very poor and had died from the effects of +semi-starvation. He had lived so long on bread and tea that his stomach +withered--I am sure that was the word used, and when his relations found +out and gave him good food, it was too late. Farrar had been at the +funeral and had stood behind some well-to-do people who were close about +the grave and saw one point to the model, who had followed the hearse on +foot and was now crying at a distance, and say, "that is the woman who had +all his money." She had often begged him to allow her to pay his debts, +but he would not have it. Probably his rich friends blamed his poor +friends, and they the rich, and I daresay, nobody had known enough to help +him. Besides, he had a strange form of dissipation, I had heard someone +say; he was devoted to children, and would become interested in some +child--his "Dormouse" is a portrait of a child--and spend his money on its +education. My sister remembers seeing him paint with a dark glove on his +right hand, and his saying that he had used so much varnish the reflection +of the hand would have teased him but for the glove. "I will soon have to +paint my face some dark colour," he added. I have no memory, however, but +of noticing that he sat at the easel, whereas my father always stands and +walks up and down, and that there was dark blue, a colour that always +affects me, in the background of his picture. There is a public gallery of +Wilson's work in his native Aberdeen and my sisters have a number of his +landscapes--wood-scenes for the most part--painted with phlegm and +melancholy, the romantic movement drawing to its latest phase. + + +IX + +My father read out to me, for the first time, when I was eight or nine +years old. Between Sligo and Rosses Point, there is a tongue of land +covered with coarse grass that runs out into the sea or the mud according +to the state of the tide. It is the place where dead horses are buried. +Sitting there, my father read me "The Lays of Ancient Rome." It was the +first poetry that had moved me after the stable-boy's "Orange Rhymes." +Later on he read me "Ivanhoe" and "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," and they +are still vivid in the memory. I re-read "Ivanhoe" the other day, but it +has all vanished except Gurth, the swineherd, at the outset and Friar Tuck +and his venison pasty, the two scenes that laid hold of me in childhood. +"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" gave me a wish to turn magician that +competed for years with the dream of being killed upon the sea-shore. When +I first went to school, he tried to keep me from reading boys' papers, +because a paper, by its very nature, as he explained to me, had to be made +for the average boy or man and so could not but thwart one's growth. He +took away my paper and I had not courage to say that I was but reading and +delighting in a prose re-telling of the Iliad. But after a few months, my +father said he had been too anxious and became less urgent about my +lessons and less violent if I had learnt them badly, and he ceased to +notice what I read. From that on I shared the excitement which ran through +all my fellows on Wednesday afternoons when the boys' papers were +published, and I read endless stories I have forgotten as completely as +Grimm's Fairy Tales that I read at Sligo, and all of Hans Andersen except +the Ugly Duckling which my mother had read to me and to my sisters. I +remember vaguely that I liked Hans Andersen better than Grimm because he +was less homely, but even he never gave me the knights and dragons and +beautiful ladies that I longed for. I have remembered nothing that I read, +but only those things that I heard or saw. When I was ten or twelve my +father took me to see Irving play Hamlet, and did not understand why I +preferred Irving to Ellen Terry, who was, I can now see, the idol of +himself and his friends. I could not think of her, as I could of Irving's +Hamlet, as but myself, and I was not old enough to care for feminine charm +and beauty. For many years Hamlet was an image of heroic self-possession +for the poses of youth and childhood to copy, a combatant of the battle +within myself. My father had read me the story of the little boy murdered +by the Jews in Chaucer and the tale of Sir Topaz, explaining the hard +words, and though both excited me, I had liked Sir Topaz best and been +disappointed that it left off in the middle. As I grew older, he would +tell me plots of Balzac's novels, using incident or character as an +illustration for some profound criticism of life. Now that I have read all +the Comédie Humaine, certain pages have an unnatural emphasis, straining +and overbalancing the outline, and I remember how in some suburban street, +he told me of Lucien de Rubempré, or of the duel after the betrayal of his +master, and how the wounded Lucien had muttered "so much the worse" when +he heard someone say that he was not dead. + +I now can but share with a friend my thoughts and my emotions, and there +is a continual discovery of difference, but in those days, before I had +found myself, we could share adventures. When friends plan and do +together, their minds become one mind and the last secret disappears. I +was useless at games. I cannot remember that I ever kicked a goal or made +a run, but I was a mine of knowledge when I and the athlete and those two +notoriously gentlemanly boys--theirs was the name that I remember without +a face--set out for Richmond Park, for Coomb Wood or Twyford Abbey to look +for butterflies and moths and beetles. Sometimes to-day I meet people at +lunch or dinner whose address will sound familiar and I remember of a +sudden how a game-keeper chased me from the plantation behind their house, +and how I have turned over the cow-dung in their paddock in the search for +some rare beetle believed to haunt the spot. The athlete was our watchman +and our safety. He would suggest, should we meet a carriage on the drive, +that we take off our hats and walk on as though about to pay a call. And +once when we were sighted by a game-keeper at Coomb Wood, he persuaded the +eldest of the brothers to pretend to be a school-master taking his boys +for a walk, and the keeper, instead of swearing and threatening the law, +was sad and argumentative. No matter how charming the place, (and there is +a little stream in a hollow where Wimbledon Common flows into Coomb Wood +that is pleasant in the memory,) I knew that those other boys saw +something I did not see. I was a stranger there. There was something in +their way of saying the names of places that made me feel this. + + +X + +When I arrived at the Clarence Basin, Liverpool, (the dock Clarence Mangan +had his first name from) on my way to Sligo for my holidays I was among +Sligo people. When I was a little boy, an old woman who had come to +Liverpool with crates of fowl, made me miserable by throwing her arms +around me the moment I had alighted from my cab and telling the sailor who +carried my luggage that she had held me in her arms when I was a baby. The +sailor may have known me almost as well, for I was often at Sligo quay to +sail my boat; and I came and went once or twice in every year upon the ss. +_Sligo_ or the ss. _Liverpool_ which belonged to a company that had for +directors my grandfather and his partner William Middleton. I was always +pleased if it was the _Liverpool_, for she had been built to run the +blockade during the war of North and South. + +I waited for this voyage always with excitement and boasted to other boys +about it, and when I was a little boy had walked with my feet apart as I +had seen sailors walk. I used to be sea-sick, but I must have hidden this +from the other boys and partly even from myself; for, as I look back, I +remember very little about it, while I remember stories I was told by the +captain or by his first mate, and the look of the great cliffs of Donegal +& Tory Island men coming alongside with lobsters, talking Irish and, if it +was night, blowing on a burning sod to draw our attention. The captain, an +old man with square shoulders and a fringe of grey hair round his face, +would tell his first mate, a very admiring man, of fights he had had on +shore at Liverpool; and perhaps it was of him I was thinking when I was +very small and asked my grandmother if God was as strong as sailors. Once, +at any rate, he had been nearly wrecked; the _Liverpool_ had been all but +blown upon the Mull of Galloway with her shaft broken, and the captain had +said to his mate, "mind and jump when she strikes, for we don't want to be +killed by the falling spars;" and when the mate answered, "my God, I +cannot swim," he had said, "who could keep afloat for five minutes in a +sea like that?" He would often say his mate was the most timid of men and +that "a girl along the quays could laugh him out of anything." My +grandfather had more than once given the mate a ship of his own, but he +had always thrown up his berth to sail with his old captain where he felt +safe. Once he had been put in charge of a ship in a dry dock in Liverpool, +but a boy was drowned in Sligo, and before the news could reach him he +wired to his wife, "ghost, come at once, or I will throw up berth." He had +been wrecked a number of times and maybe that had broken his nerve or +maybe he had a sensitiveness that would in another class have given him +taste & culture. I once forgot a copy of "Count Robert of Paris" on a +deck-seat, and when I found it again, it was all covered with the prints +of his dirty thumb. He had once seen the coach-a-baur or death coach. It +came along the road, he said, till it was hidden by a cottage and it never +came out on the other side of the cottage. Once I smelled new-mown hay +when we were quite a long way from land, and once when I was watching the +sea-parrots (as the sailors call the puffin) I noticed they had different +ways of tucking their heads under their wings, or I fancied it and said to +the captain "they have different characters." Sometimes my father came +too, and the sailors when they saw him coming would say "there is John +Yeats and we shall have a storm," for he was considered unlucky. + +I no longer cared for little shut-in-places, for a coppice against the +stable-yard at Merville where my grandfather lived or against the gable at +Seaview where Aunt Micky lived, and I began to climb the mountains, +sometimes with the stable-boy for companion, and to look up their stories +in the county history. I fished for trout with a worm in the mountain +streams and went out herring-fishing at night: and because my grandfather +had said the English were in the right to eat skates, I carried a large +skate all the six miles or so from Rosses Point, but my grandfather did +not eat it. + +One night just as the equinoctial gales were coming when I was sailing +home in the coastguard's boat a boy told me a beetle of solid gold, +strayed maybe from Poe's "gold bug," had been seen by somebody in Scotland +and I do not think that either of us doubted his news. Indeed, so many +stories did I hear from sailors along the wharf, or round the fo'castle +fire of the little steamer that ran between Sligo and Rosses, or from boys +out fishing that the world was full of monsters and marvels. The foreign +sailors wearing ear-rings did not tell me stories, but like the fishing +boys, I gazed at them in wonder and admiration. When I look at my +brother's picture, "Memory Harbour," houses and anchored ship and distant +lighthouse all set close together as in some old map, I recognize in the +blue-coated man with the mass of white shirt the pilot I went fishing +with, and I am full of disquiet and of excitement, and I am melancholy +because I have not made more and better verses. I have walked on Sinbad's +yellow shore and never shall another hit my fancy. + +I had still my red pony, and once my father came with me riding too, and +was very exacting. He was indignant and threatening because he did not +think I rode well. "You must do everything well," he said, "that the +Pollexfens respect, though you must do other things also." He used to say +the same about my lessons, and tell me to be good at mathematics. I can +see now that he had a sense of inferiority among those energetic, +successful people. He himself, some Pollexfen told me, though he rode very +badly, would go hunting upon anything and take any ditch. His father, the +County Down Rector, though a courtly man and a scholar, had been so +dandified a horseman that I had heard of his splitting three riding +breeches before he had settled into his saddle for a day's hunting, and of +his first rector exclaiming, "I had hoped for a curate but they have sent +me a jockey." + +Left to myself, I rode without ambition though getting many falls, and +more often to Rathbroughan where my great-uncle Mat lived, than to any +place else. His children and I used to sail our toy-boats in the river +before his house, arming them with toy-cannon, touch-paper at all the +touch-holes, always hoping but always in vain that they would not twist +about in the eddies but fire their cannon at one another. I must have gone +to Sligo sometimes in the Christmas holidays, for I can remember riding my +red pony to a hunt. He balked at the first jump, to my relief, and when a +crowd of boys began to beat him, I would not allow it. They all jeered at +me for being afraid. I found a gap and when I was alone in a field tried +another ditch, but the pony would not jump that either; so I tied him to a +tree and lay down among the ferns and looked up into the sky. On my way +home I met the hunt again and noticed that everybody avoided the dogs, and +because I wanted to find out why they did so I rode to where the dogs had +gathered in the middle of the lane and stood my pony amongst them, and +everybody began to shout at me. + +Sometimes I would ride to Castle Dargan, where lived a brawling squireen, +married to one of my Middleton cousins, and once I went thither on a visit +with my cousin George Middleton. It was, I dare say, the last household +where I could have found the reckless Ireland of a hundred years ago in +final degradation. But I liked the place for the romance of its two ruined +castles facing one another across a little lake, Castle Dargan and Castle +Fury. The squireen lived in a small house whither his family had moved +from their castle some time in the 18th century, and two old Miss Furys, +who let lodgings in Sligo, were the last remnants of the breed of the +other ruin. Once in every year he drove to Sligo for the two old women, +that they might look upon the ancestral stones and remember their +gentility, and he would put his wildest horses into the shafts to enjoy +their terror. + +He himself, with a reeling imagination, knew not what he could be at to +find a spur for the heavy hours. The first day I came there, he gave my +cousin a revolver, (we were upon the high road,) and to show it off, or +his own shooting, he shot a passing chicken; and half an hour later, when +he had brought us to the lake's edge under his castle, now but the broken +corner of a tower with a winding stair, he fired at or over an old +countryman who was walking on the far edge of the lake. The next day I +heard him settling the matter with the old countryman over a bottle of +whiskey, and both were in good humour. Once he had asked a timid aunt of +mine if she would like to see his last new pet, and thereupon had marched +a race-horse in through the hall door and round the dining-room table. And +once she came down to a bare table because he had thought it a good joke +to open the window and let his harriers eat the breakfast. There was a +current story, too, of his shooting, in the pride of his marksmanship, at +his own door with a Martini-Henry rifle till he had shot the knocker off. +At last he quarrelled with my great-uncle William Middleton, and to avenge +himself gathered a rabble of wild country-lads and mounted them and +himself upon the most broken-down rascally horses he could lay hands on +and marched them through Sligo under a land-league banner. After that, +having neither friends nor money, he made off to Australia or to Canada. +I fished for pike at Castle Dargan and shot at birds with a muzzle-loading +pistol until somebody shot a rabbit and I heard it squeal. From that on I +would kill nothing but the dumb fish. + + +XI + +We left Bedford Park for a long thatched house at Howth, Co. Dublin. The +land war was now at its height and our Kildare land, that had been in the +family for many generations, was slipping from us. Rents had fallen more +and more, we had to sell to pay some charge or mortgage, but my father and +his tenants parted without ill-will. During the worst times an old tenant +had under his roof my father's shooting-dog and gave it better care than +the annual payment earned. He had set apart for its comfort the best place +at the fire; and if some man were in the place when the dog walked into +the house, the man must needs make room for the dog. And a good while +after the sale, I can remember my father being called upon to settle some +dispute between this old man and his sons. + +I was now fifteen; and as he did not want to leave his painting my father +told me to go to Harcourt Street and put myself to school. I found a bleak +18th century house and a small playing-field full of mud and pebbles, +fenced by an iron railing from a wide 18th century street, but opposite a +long hoarding and a squalid, ornamental railway station. Here, as I soon +found, nobody gave a thought to decorum. We worked in a din of voices. We +began the morning with prayers, but when class began the head-master, if +he was in the humour, would laugh at Church and Clergy. "Let them say what +they like," he would say, "but the earth does go round the sun." On the +other hand there was no bullying and I had not thought it possible that +boys could work so hard. Cricket and football, the collection of moths and +butterflies, though not forbidden, were discouraged. They were for idle +boys. I did not know, as I used to, the mass of my school-fellows; for we +had little life in common outside the class-rooms. I had begun to think of +my school-work as an interruption of my natural history studies, but even +had I never opened a book not in the school course, I could not have +learned a quarter of my night's work. I had always done Euclid easily, +making the problems out while the other boys were blundering at the +blackboard, and it had often carried me from the bottom to the top of my +class; but these boys had the same natural gift and instead of being in +the fourth or fifth book were in the modern books at the end of the +primer; and in place of a dozen lines of Virgil with a dictionary, I was +expected to learn with the help of a crib a hundred and fifty lines. The +other boys were able to learn the translation off, and to remember what +words of Latin and English corresponded with one another, but I, who it +may be had tried to find out what happened in the parts we had not read, +made ridiculous mistakes; and what could I, who never worked when I was +not interested, do with a history lesson that was but a column of seventy +dates? I was worst of all at literature, for we read Shakespeare for his +grammar exclusively. + +One day I had a lucky thought. A great many lessons were run through in +the last hour of the day, things we had learnt or should have learnt by +heart over night, and after not having known one of them for weeks, I cut +off that hour without anybody's leave. I asked the mathematical master to +give me a sum to work and nobody said a word. My father often interfered, +and always with disaster, to teach me my Latin lesson. "But I have also my +geography," I would say. "Geography," he would reply, "should never be +taught. It is not a training for the mind. You will pick up all that you +need, in your general reading." And if it was a history lesson, he would +say just the same, and "Euclid," he would say, "is too easy. It comes +naturally to the literary imagination. The old idea, that it is a good +training for the mind, was long ago refuted." I would know my Latin lesson +so that it was a nine days' wonder, and for weeks after would be told it +was scandalous to be so clever and so idle. No one knew that I had learnt +it in the terror that alone could check my wandering mind. I must have +told on him at some time or other for I remember the head-master saying, +"I am going to give you an imposition because I cannot get at your father +to give him one." Sometimes we had essays to write; & though I never got a +prize, for the essays were judged by hand-writing and spelling I caused a +measure of scandal. I would be called up before some master and asked if I +really believed such things, and that would make me angry for I had +written what I had believed all my life, what my father had told me, or a +memory of the conversation of his friends. There were other beliefs, but +they were held by people one did not know, people who were vulgar or +stupid. I was asked to write an essay on "men may rise on stepping-stones +of their dead selves to higher things." My father read the subject to my +mother, who had no interest in such matters. "That is the way," he said, +"boys are made insincere and false to themselves. Ideals make the blood +thin, and take the human nature out of people." He walked up and down the +room in eloquent indignation, and told me not to write on such a subject +at all, but upon Shakespeare's lines "to thine own self be true, and it +must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man." +At another time, he would denounce the idea of duty, and "imagine," he +would say, "how the right sort of woman would despise a dutiful husband;" +and he would tell us how much my mother would scorn such a thing. Maybe +there were people among whom such ideas were natural, but they were the +people with whom one does not dine. All he said was, I now believe right, +but he should have taken me away from school. He would have taught me +nothing but Greek and Latin, and I would now be a properly educated man, +and would not have to look in useless longing at books that have been, +through the poor mechanism of translation, the builders of my soul, nor +faced authority with the timidity born of excuse and evasion. Evasion and +excuse were in the event as wise as the house-building instinct of the +beaver. + + +XII + +My London schoolfellow, the athlete, spent a summer with us, but the +friendship of boyhood, founded upon action and adventure, was drawing to +an end. He was still my superior in all physical activity and climbed to +places among the rocks that even now are uncomfortable memories, but I had +begun to criticize him. One morning I proposed a journey to Lambay Island, +and was contemptuous because he said we should miss our mid-day meal. We +hoisted a sail on our small boat and ran quickly over the nine miles and +saw on the shore a tame sea-gull, while a couple of boys, the sons of a +coastguard, ran into the water in their clothes to pull us to land, as we +had read of savage people doing. We spent an hour upon the sunny shore and +I said, "I would like to live here always, and perhaps some day I will." I +was always discovering places where I would like to spend my whole life. +We started to row home, and when dinner-time had passed for about an hour, +the athlete lay down on the bottom of the boat doubled up with the gripes. +I mocked at him and at his fellow-countrymen whose stomachs struck the +hour as if they were clocks. + +Our natural history, too, began to pull us apart. I planned some day to +write a book about the changes through a twelve-month among the creatures +of some hole in the rock, and had some theory of my own, which I cannot +remember, as to the colour of sea-anemones: and after much hesitation, +trouble and bewilderment, was hot for argument in refutation of Adam and +Noah and the Seven Days. I had read Darwin and Wallace, Huxley and +Haeckel, and would spend hours on a holiday plaguing a pious geologist, +who, when not at some job in Guinness's brewery, came with a hammer to +look for fossils in the Howth Cliffs. "You know," I would say, "that such +and such human remains cannot be less, because of the strata they were +found in, than fifty thousand years old." "Oh!" he would answer, "they are +an isolated instance." And once when I pressed hard my case against +Ussher's chronology, he begged me not to speak of the subject again. "If I +believed what you do," he said, "I could not live a moral life." But I +could not even argue with the athlete who still collected his butterflies +for the adventure's sake, and with no curiosity but for their names. I +began to judge his intelligence, and to tell him that his natural history +had as little to do with science as his collection of postage stamps. Even +during my school days in London, influenced perhaps by my father, I had +looked down upon the postage stamps. + + +XIII + +Our house for the first year or so was on the top of a cliff, so that in +stormy weather the spray would sometimes soak my bed at night, for I had +taken the glass out of the window, sash and all. A literary passion for +the open air was to last me for a few years. Then for another year or two, +we had a house overlooking the harbour where the one great sight was the +going and coming of the fishing fleet. We had one regular servant, a +fisherman's wife, and the occasional help of a big, red-faced girl who ate +a whole pot of jam while my mother was at church and accused me of it. +Some such arrangement lasted until long after the time I write of, and +until my father going into the kitchen by chance found a girl, who had +been engaged during a passing need, in tears at the thought of leaving our +other servant, and promised that they should never be parted. I have no +doubt that we lived at the harbour for my mother's sake. She had, when we +were children, refused to take us to a seaside place because she heard it +possessed a bathing box, but she loved the activities of a fishing +village. When I think of her, I almost always see her talking over a cup +of tea in the kitchen with our servant, the fisherman's wife, on the only +themes outside our house that seemed of interest--the fishing people of +Howth, or the pilots and fishing people of Rosses Point. She read no +books, but she and the fisherman's wife would tell each other stories that +Homer might have told, pleased with any moment of sudden intensity and +laughing together over any point of satire. There is an essay called +"Village Ghosts" in my "Celtic Twilight" which is but a record of one such +afternoon, and many a fine tale has been lost because it had not occurred +to me soon enough to keep notes. My father was always praising her to my +sisters and to me, because she pretended to nothing she did not feel. She +would write him letters telling of her delight in the tumbling clouds, but +she did not care for pictures, and never went to an exhibition even to see +a picture of his, nor to his studio to see the day's work, neither now nor +when they were first married. I remember all this very clearly and little +after until her mind had gone in a stroke of paralysis and she had found, +liberated at last from financial worry, perfect happiness feeding the +birds at a London window. She had always, my father would say, intensity, +and that was his chief word of praise; and once he added to the praise "no +spendthrift ever had a poet for a son, though a miser might." + + +XIV + +The great event of a boy's life is the awakening of sex. He will bathe +many times a day, or get up at dawn and having stripped leap to and fro +over a stick laid upon two chairs and hardly know, and never admit, that +he had begun to take pleasure in his own nakedness, nor will he +understand the change until some dream discovers it. He may never +understand at all the greater change in his mind. + +It all came upon me when I was close upon seventeen like the bursting of a +shell. Somnambulistic country-girls, when it is upon them, throw plates +about or pull them with long hairs in simulation of the polter-geist, or +become mediums for some genuine spirit-mischief, surrendering to their +desire of the marvellous. As I look backward, I seem to discover that my +passions, my loves and my despairs, instead of being my enemies, a +disturbance and an attack, became so beautiful that I must be constantly +alone to give them my whole attention. I notice that, for the first time +as I run through my memory, what I saw when alone is more vivid than what +I did or saw in company. + +A herd had shown me a cave some hundred and fifty feet below the cliff +path and a couple of hundred above the sea, and told me how an evicted +tenant called Macrom, dead some fifteen years, had lived there many years, +and shown me a rusty nail in the rock which had served perhaps to hold up +some wooden protection from wind and weather. Here I stored a tin of cocoa +and some biscuits, and instead of going to my bed, would slip out on warm +nights and sleep in the cave on the excuse of catching moths. One had to +pass over a rocky ledge, safe enough for anyone with a fair head, yet +seeming, if looked at from above, narrow and sloping; and a remonstrance +from a stranger who had seen me climbing along it doubled my delight in +the adventure. When however, upon a bank holiday, I found lovers in my +cave, I was not content with it again till I heard of alarm among the +fishing boats, because the ghost of Macrom had been seen a little before +the dawn, stooping over his fire in the cave-mouth. I had been trying to +cook eggs, as I had read in some book, by burying them in the earth under +a fire of sticks. + +At other times, I would sleep among the rhododendrons and rocks in the +wilder part of the grounds of Howth Castle. After a while my father said I +must stay in-doors half the night, meaning that I should get some sleep in +my bed; but I, knowing that I would be too sleepy and comfortable to get +up again, used to sit over the kitchen fire till half the night was gone. +Exaggerated accounts spread through the school, and sometimes when I did +not know a lesson some master would banter me. My interest in science +began to fade away, and presently I said to myself, "it has all been a +misunderstanding." I remembered how soon I tired of my specimens, and how +little I knew after all my years of collecting, and I came to believe that +I had gone through so much labour because of a text, heard for the first +time in St. John's Church in Sligo. I wanted to be certain of my own +wisdom by copying Solomon, who had knowledge of hyssop and of tree. I +still carried my green net but I began to play at being a sage, a magician +or a poet. I had many idols, and now as I climbed along the narrow ledge I +was Manfred on his glacier, and now I thought of Prince Athanase and his +solitary lamp, but I soon chose Alastor for my chief of men and longed to +share his melancholy, and maybe at last to disappear from everybody's +sight as he disappeared drifting in a boat along some slow-moving river +between great trees. When I thought of women they were modelled on those +in my favourite poets and loved in brief tragedy, or, like the girl in +"The Revolt of Islam," accompanied their lovers through all manner of wild +places, lawless women without homes and without children. + + +XV + +My father's influence upon my thoughts was at its height. We went to +Dublin by train every morning, breakfasting in his studio. He had taken a +large room with a beautiful 18th century mantle-piece in a York Street +tenement house, and at breakfast he read passages from the poets, and +always from the play or poem at its most passionate moment. He never read +me a passage because of its speculative interest, and indeed did not care +at all for poetry where there was generalisation or abstraction however +impassioned. He would read out the first speeches of the Prometheus +Unbound, but never the ecstatic lyricism of that famous fourth act; and +another day the scene where Coriolanus comes to the house of Aufidius and +tells the impudent servants that his home is under the canopy. I have seen +Coriolanus played a number of times since then, and read it more than +once, but that scene is more vivid than the rest, and it is my father's +voice that I hear and not Irving's or Benson's. He did not care even for a +fine lyric passage unless one felt some actual man behind its elaboration +of beauty, and he was always looking for the lineaments of some desirable, +familiar life. When the spirits sang their scorn of Manfred I was to judge +by Manfred's answer "O sweet and melancholy voices" that they could not, +even in anger, put off their spiritual sweetness. He thought Keats a +greater poet than Shelley, because less abstract, but did not read him, +caring little, I think, for any of that most beautiful poetry which has +come in modern times from the influence of painting. All must be an +idealisation of speech, and at some moment of passionate action or +somnambulistic reverie. I remember his saying that all contemplative men +were in a conspiracy to overrate their state of life, and that all writers +were of them, excepting the great poets. Looking backwards, it seems to me +that I saw his mind in fragments, which had always hidden connections I +only now begin to discover. He disliked the Victorian poetry of ideas, and +Wordsworth but for certain passages or whole poems. He described one +morning over his breakfast how in the shape of the head of a Wordsworthian +scholar, an old and greatly respected clergyman whose portrait he was +painting, he had discovered all the animal instincts of a prizefighter. He +despised the formal beauty of Raphael, that calm which is not an ordered +passion but an hypocrisy, and attacked Raphael's life for its love of +pleasure and its self-indulgence. In literature he was always +pre-Raphaelite, and carried into literature principles that, while the +Academy was still unbroken, had made the first attack upon academic form. +He no longer read me anything for its story, and all our discussion was of +style. + + +XVI + +I began to make blunders when I paid calls or visits, and a woman I had +known and liked as a child told me I had changed for the worse. I had +wanted to be wise and eloquent, an essay on the younger Ampère had helped +me to this ambition, and when I was alone I exaggerated my blunders and +was miserable. I had begun to write poetry in imitation of Shelley and of +Edmund Spenser, play after play--for my father exalted dramatic poetry +above all other kinds--and I invented fantastic and incoherent plots. My +lines but seldom scanned, for I could not understand the prosody in the +books, although there were many lines that taken by themselves had music. +I spoke them slowly as I wrote and only discovered when I read them to +somebody else that there was no common music, no prosody. There were, +however, moments of observation; for, even when I caught moths no longer, +I still noticed all that passed; how the little moths came out at sunset, +and how after that there were only a few big moths till dawn brought +little moths again; and what birds cried out at night as if in their +sleep. + + +XVII + +At Sligo, where I still went for my holidays, I stayed with my uncle, +George Pollexfen, who had come from Ballina to fill the place of my +grandfather, who had retired. My grandfather had no longer his big house, +his partner William Middleton was dead, and there had been legal trouble. +He was no longer the rich man he had been, and his sons and daughters were +married and scattered. He had a tall, bare house overlooking the harbour, +and had nothing to do but work himself into a rage if he saw a mudlighter +mismanaged or judged from the smoke of a steamer that she was burning +cheap coal, and to superintend the making of his tomb. There was a +Middleton tomb and a long list of Middletons on the wall, and an almost +empty place for Pollexfen names, but he had said, because there was a +Middleton there he did not like, "I am not going to lie with those old +bones;" and already one saw his name in large gilt letters on the stone +fence of the new tomb. He ended his walk at St. John's churchyard almost +daily, for he liked everything neat and compendious as upon shipboard, and +if he had not looked after the tomb himself the builder might have added +some useless ornament. He had, however, all his old skill and nerve. I was +going to Rosses Point on the little trading steamer and saw him take the +wheel from the helmsman and steer her through a gap in the channel wall, +and across the sand, an unheard-of-course, and at the journey's end bring +her alongside her wharf at Rosses without the accustomed zigzagging or +pulling on a rope but in a single movement. He took snuff when he had a +cold, but had never smoked or taken alcohol; and when in his eightieth +year his doctor advised a stimulant, he replied, "no, no, I am not going +to form a bad habit." + +My brother had partly taken my place in my grandmother's affections. He +had lived permanently in her house for some years now, and went to a Sligo +school where he was always bottom of his class. My grandmother did not +mind that, for she said, "he is too kind-hearted to pass the other boys." +He spent his free hours going here and there with crowds of little boys, +sons of pilots and sailors, as their well-liked leader, arranging donkey +races or driving donkeys tandem, an occupation which requires all one's +intellect because of their obstinacy. Besides he had begun to amuse +everybody with his drawings; and in half the pictures he paints to-day I +recognise faces that I have met at Rosses or the Sligo quays. It is long +since he has lived there, but his memory seems as accurate as the sight of +the eye. + +George Pollexfen was as patient as his father was impetuous, and did all +by habit. A well-to-do, elderly man, he lived with no more comfort than +when he had set out as a young man. He had a little house and one old +general servant and a man to look after his horse, and every year he gave +up some activity and found that there was one more food that disagreed +with him. A hypochondriac, he passed from winter to summer through a +series of woollens that had always to be weighed; for in April or May or +whatever the date was he had to be sure he carried the exact number of +ounces he had carried upon that date since boyhood. He lived in +despondency, finding in the most cheerful news reasons of discouragement, +and sighing every twenty-second of June over the shortening of the days. +Once in later years, when I met him in Dublin sweating in a midsummer +noon, I brought him into the hall of the Kildare Street Library, a cool +and shady place, without lightening his spirits; for he but said in a +melancholy voice, "how very cold this place must be in winter time." +Sometimes when I had pitted my cheerfulness against his gloom over the +breakfast table, maintaining that neither his talent nor his memory nor +his health were running to the dregs, he would rout me with the sentence, +"how very old I shall be in twenty years." Yet this inactive man, in whom +the sap of life seemed to be dried away, had a mind full of pictures. +Nothing had ever happened to him except a love affair, not I think very +passionate, that had gone wrong, and a voyage when a young man. My +grandfather had sent him in a schooner to a port in Spain where the +shipping agents were two Spaniards called O'Neill, descendants of Hugh +O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who had fled from Ireland in the reign of James +I; and their Irish trade was a last remnant of the Spanish trade that had +once made Galway wealthy. For some years he and they had corresponded, for +they cherished the memory of their origin. In some Connaught burying +ground, he had chanced upon the funeral of a child with but one mourner, a +distinguished foreign-looking man. It was an Austrian count burying the +last of an Irish family, long nobles of Austria, who were always carried +to that half-ruined burying ground. + +My uncle had almost given up hunting and was soon to give it up +altogether, and he had once ridden steeple-chases and been, his +horse-trainer said, the best rider in Connaught. He had certainly great +knowledge of horses, for I have been told, several counties away, that at +Ballina he cured horses by conjuring. He had, however, merely great skill +in diagnosis, for the day was still far off when he was to give his nights +to astrology and ceremonial magic. His servant, Mary Battle, who had been +with him since he was a young man, had the second sight and that, maybe, +inclined him to strange studies. He would tell how more than once when he +had brought home a guest without giving her notice he had found the +dinner-table set for two, and one morning she was about to bring him a +clean shirt, but stopped saying there was blood on the shirt-front and +that she must bring him another. On his way to his office he fell, +crossing over a little wall, and cut himself and bled on to the linen +where she had seen the blood. In the evening, she told how surprised she +had been to find when she looked again that the shirt she had thought +bloody was quite clean. She could neither read nor write and her mind, +which answered his gloom with its merriment, was rammed with every sort of +old history and strange belief. Much of my "Celtic Twilight" is but her +daily speech. + +My uncle had the respect of the common people as few Sligo men have had +it; he would have thought a stronger emotion an intrusion on his privacy. +He gave to all men the respect due to their station or their worth with an +added measure of ceremony, and kept among his workmen a discipline that +had about it something of a regiment or a ship, knowing nothing of any but +personal authority. If a carter, let us say, was in fault, he would not +dismiss him, but send for him and take his whip away and hang it upon the +wall; and having reduced the offender, as it were, to the ranks for +certain months, would restore him to his post and his whip. This man of +diligence and of method, who had no enterprise but in contemplation, and +claimed that his wealth, considerable for Ireland, came from a brother's +or partner's talent, was the confidant of my boyish freaks and reveries. +When I said to him, echoing some book I had read, that one never knew a +countryside till one knew it at night, (though nothing would have kept him +from his bed a moment beyond the hour) he was pleased; for he loved +natural things and had learnt two cries of the lapwing, one that drew them +to where he stood and one that made them fly away. And he approved, and +arranged my meals conveniently, when I told him I was going to walk round +Lough Gill and sleep in a wood. I did not tell him all my object, for I +was nursing a new ambition. My father had read to me some passage out of +"Walden," and I planned to live some day in a cottage on a little island +called Innisfree, and Innisfree was opposite Slish Wood where I meant to +sleep. + +I thought that having conquered bodily desire and the inclination of my +mind towards women and love, I should live, as Thoreau lived, seeking +wisdom. There was a story in the county history of a tree that had once +grown upon that island guarded by some terrible monster and borne the food +of the gods. A young girl pined for the fruit and told her lover to kill +the monster and carry the fruit away. He did as he had been told, but +tasted the fruit; and when he reached the mainland where she had waited +for him, was dying of its powerful virtue. And from sorrow and from +remorse she too ate of it and died. I do not remember whether I chose the +island because of its beauty or for the story's sake, but I was twenty-two +or three before I gave up the dream. + +I set out from Sligo about six in the evening, walking slowly, for it was +an evening of great beauty; but though I was well into Slish Wood by +bed-time, I could not sleep, not from the discomfort of the dry rock I had +chosen for my bed, but from my fear of the wood-ranger. Somebody had told +me, though I do not think it could have been true, that he went his round +at some unknown hour. I kept going over what I should say if I was found +and could not think of anything he would believe. However, I could watch +my island in the early dawn and notice the order of the cries of the +birds. + +I came home next day unimaginably tired & sleepy, having walked some +thirty miles partly over rough and boggy ground. For months afterwards, +if I alluded to my walk, my uncle's general servant (not Mary Battle, who +was slowly recovering from an illness and would not have taken the +liberty) would go into fits of laughter. She believed I had spend the +night in a different fashion and had invented the excuse to deceive my +uncle, and would say to my great embarrassment, for I was as prudish as an +old maid, "and you had good right to be fatigued." + +Once when staying with my uncle at Rosses Point where he went for certain +months of the year, I called upon a cousin towards midnight and asked him +to get his yacht out, for I wanted to find what sea birds began to stir +before dawn. He was indignant and refused; but his elder sister had +overheard me and came to the head of the stairs and forbade him to stir, +and that so vexed him that he shouted to the kitchen for his sea-boots. He +came with me in great gloom for he had people's respect, he declared, and +nobody so far had said that he was mad as they said I was, and we got a +very sleepy boy out of his bed in the village and set up sail. We put a +trawl out, as he thought it would restore his character if he caught some +fish, but the wind fell and we were becalmed. I rolled myself in the +main-sail and went to sleep for I could sleep anywhere in those days. I +was awakened towards dawn to see my cousin and the boy turning out their +pockets for money and to rummage in my own pockets. A boat was rowing in +from Roughley with fish and they wanted to buy some and would pretend they +had caught it, but all our pockets were empty. It was for the poem that +became fifteen years afterwards "The Shadowy Waters" that I had wanted the +birds' cries, and it had been full of observation had I been able to write +it when I first planned it. I had found again the windy light that moved +me when a child. I persuaded myself that I had a passion for the dawn, and +this passion, though mainly histrionic like a child's play, an ambitious +game, had moments of sincerity. Years afterwards when I had finished "The +Wanderings of Oisin," dissatisfied with its yellow and its dull green, +with all that overcharged colour inherited from the romantic movement, I +deliberately reshaped my style, deliberately sought out an impression as +of cold light and tumbling clouds. I cast off traditional metaphors and +loosened my rhythm, and recognizing that all the criticism of life known +to me was alien and English, became as emotional as possible but with an +emotion which I described to myself as cold. It is a natural conviction +for a painter's son to believe that there may be a landscape symbolical +of some spiritual condition that awakens a hunger such as cats feel for +valerian. + + +XVIII + +I was writing a long play on a fable suggested by one of my father's early +designs. A king's daughter loves a god seen in the luminous sky above her +garden in childhood, and to be worthy of him and put away mortality, +becomes without pity & commits crimes, and at last, having made her way to +the throne by murder, awaits the hour among her courtiers. One by one they +become chilly and drop dead, for, unseen by all but her, her god is +walking through the hall. At last he is at her throne's foot and she, her +mind in the garden once again, dies babbling like a child. + + +XIX + +Once when I was sailing with my cousin, the boy who was our crew talked of +a music-hall at a neighbouring seaport, and how the girls there gave +themselves to men, and his language was as extravagant as though he +praised that courtezan after whom they named a city or the queen of Sheba +herself. Another day he wanted my cousin to sail some fifty miles along +the coast and put in near some cottages where he had heard there were +girls "and we would have a great welcome before us." He pleaded with +excitement (I imagine that his eyes shone) but hardly hoped to persuade +us, and perhaps but played with fabulous images of life and of sex. A +young jockey and horse-trainer, who had trained some horses for my uncle, +once talked to me of wicked England while we cooked a turkey for our +Christmas dinner making it twist about on a string in front of his +harness-room fire. He had met two lords in England where he had gone +racing, who "always exchanged wives when they went to the Continent for a +holiday." He himself had once been led into temptation and was going home +with a woman, but having touched his scapular by chance, saw in a moment +an angel waving white wings in the air. Presently I was to meet him no +more and my uncle said he had done something disgraceful about a horse. + + +XX + +I was climbing up a hill at Howth when I heard wheels behind me and a +pony-carriage drew up beside me. A pretty girl was driving alone and +without a hat. She told me her name and said we had friends in common and +asked me to ride beside her. After that I saw a great deal of her and was +soon in love. I did not tell her I was in love, however, because she was +engaged. She had chosen me for her confidant and I learned all about her +quarrels with her lover. Several times he broke the engagement off, and +she would fall ill, and friends would make peace. Sometimes she would +write to him three times a day, but she could not do without a confidant. +She was a wild creature, a fine mimic and given to bursts of religion. I +have known her to weep at a sermon, call herself a sinful woman, and mimic +it after. I wrote her some bad poems and had more than one sleepless night +through anger with her betrothed. + + +XXI + +At Ballisodare an event happened that brought me back to the superstitions +of my childhood. I do not know when it was, for the events of this period +have as little sequence as those of childhood. I was staying with cousins +at Avena house, a young man a few years older and a girl of my own age and +perhaps her sister who was a good deal older. My girl cousin had often +told me of strange sights she had seen at Ballisodare or Rosses. An old +woman three or four feet in height and leaning on a stick had once come to +the window and looked in at her, and sometimes she would meet people on +the road who would say "how is so-and-so," naming some member of her +family, and she would know, though she could not explain how, that they +were not people of this world. Once she had lost her way in a familiar +field, and when she found it again the silver mounting on a walking-stick +belonging to her brother which she carried had vanished. An old woman in +the village said afterwards "you have good friends amongst them, and the +silver was taken instead of you." + +Though it was all years ago, what I am going to tell now must be accurate, +for no great while ago she wrote out her unprompted memory of it all and +it was the same as mine. She was sitting under an old-fashioned mirror +reading and I was reading in another part of the room. Suddenly I heard a +sound as if somebody was throwing a shower of peas at the mirror. I got +her to go into the next room and rap with her knuckles on the other side +of the wall to see if the sound could come from there, and while I was +alone a great thump came close to my head upon the wainscot and on a +different wall of the room. Later in the day a servant heard a heavy +footstep going through the empty house, and that night, when I and my two +cousins went for a walk, she saw the ground under some trees all in a +blaze of light. I saw nothing, but presently we crossed the river and went +along its edge where, they say, there was a village destroyed, I think in +the wars of the 17th century, and near an old grave-yard. Suddenly we all +saw light moving over the river where there is a great rush of waters. It +was like a very brilliant torch. A moment later the girl saw a man coming +towards us who disappeared in the water. I kept asking myself if I could +be deceived. Perhaps after all, though it seemed impossible, somebody was +walking in the water with a torch. But we could see a small light low down +on Knock-na-rea seven miles off, and it began to move upward over the +mountain slope. I timed it on my watch and in five minutes it reached the +summit, and I, who had often climbed the mountain, knew that no human +footstep was so speedy. + +From that on I wandered about raths and faery hills and questioned old +women and old men and, when I was tired out or unhappy, began to long for +some such end as True Thomas found. I did not believe with my intellect +that you could be carried away body and soul, but I believed with my +emotions and the belief of the country people made that easy. Once when I +had crawled into the stone passage in some rath of the third Rosses, the +pilot who had come with me called down the passage: "are you all right, +sir?" + +And one night as I came near the village of Rosses on the road from Sligo, +a fire blazed up on a green bank at my right side seven or eight feet +above me, and another fire suddenly answered from Knock-na-rea. I hurried +on doubting, and yet hardly doubting in my heart that I saw again the +fires that I had seen by the river at Ballisodare. I began occasionally +telling people that one should believe whatever had been believed in all +countries and periods, and only reject any part of it after much evidence, +instead of starting all over afresh and only believing what one could +prove. But I was always ready to deny or turn into a joke what was for all +that my secret fanaticism. When I had read Darwin and Huxley and believed +as they did, I had wanted, because an established authority was upon my +side, to argue with everybody. + + +XXII + +I no longer went to the Harcourt Street school and we had moved from Howth +to Rathgar. I was at the Arts schools in Kildare Street, but my father, +who came to the school now and then, was my teacher. The masters left me +alone, for they liked a very smooth surface and a very neat outline, and +indeed understood nothing but neatness and smoothness. A drawing of the +Discobolus, after my father had touched it, making the shoulder stand out +with swift and broken lines, had no meaning for them; and for the most +part I exaggerated all that my father did. Sometimes indeed, out of +rivalry to some student near, I too would try to be smooth and neat. One +day I helped the student next me, who certainly had no artistic gifts, to +make a drawing of some plaster fruit. In his gratitude he told me his +history. "I don't care for art," he said. "I am a good billiard player, +one of the best in Dublin; but my guardian said I must take a profession, +so I asked my friends to tell me where I would not have to pass an +examination, and here I am." It may be that I myself was there for no +better reason. My father had wanted me to go to Trinity College and, when +I would not, had said, "my father and grandfather and great-grandfather +have been there." I did not tell him my reason was that I did not believe +my classics or my mathematics good enough for any examination. + +I had for fellow-student an unhappy "village genius" sent to Dublin by +some charitable Connaught landlord. He painted religious pictures upon +sheets nailed to the wall of his bedroom, a "Last Judgment" among the +rest. Then there was a wild young man who would come to school of a +morning with a daisy-chain hung round his neck; and George Russel, "Æ," +the poet, and mystic. He did not paint the model as we tried to, for some +other image rose always before his eyes (a St. John in the Desert I +remember,) and already he spoke to us of his visions. His conversation, so +lucid and vehement to-day, was all but incomprehensible, though now and +again some phrase would be understood and repeated. One day he announced +that he was leaving the Art schools because his will was weak and the arts +or any other emotional pursuit could but weaken it further. + +Presently I went to the modelling class to be with certain elder students +who had authority among us. Among these were John Hughes and Oliver +Sheppard, well-known now as Irish sculptors. The day I first went into the +studio where they worked, I stood still upon the threshold in amazement. A +pretty gentle-looking girl was modelling in the middle of the room, and +all the men were swearing at her for getting in their light with the most +violent and fantastic oaths, and calling her every sort of name, and +through it all she worked in undisturbed diligence. Presently the man +nearest me saw my face and called out, "she is stone deaf, so we always +swear at her and call her names when she gets in our light." In reality I +soon found that everyone was kind to her, carrying her drawing-boards and +the like, and putting her into the tram at the day's end. We had no +scholarship, no critical knowledge of the history of painting, and no +settled standards. A student would show his fellows some French +illustrated paper that we might all admire, now some statue by Rodin or +Dalou and now some declamatory Parisian monument, and if I did not happen +to have discussed the matter with my father I would admire with no more +discrimination than the rest. That pretentious monument to Gambetta made a +great stir among us. No influence touched us but that of France, where one +or two of the older students had been already and all hoped to go. Of +England I alone knew anything. Our ablest student had learnt Italian to +read Dante, but had never heard of Tennyson or Browning, and it was I who +carried into the school some knowledge of English poetry, especially of +Browning who had begun to move me by his air of wisdom. I do not believe +that I worked well, for I wrote a great deal and that tired me, and the +work I was set to bored me. When alone and uninfluenced, I longed for +pattern, for pre-Raphaelitism, for an art allied to poetry, and returned +again and again to our National Gallery to gaze at Turner's Golden Bough. +Yet I was too timid, had I known how, to break away from my father's style +and the style of those about me. I was always hoping that my father would +return to the style of his youth, and make pictures out of certain +designs now lost, that one could still find in his portfolios. There was +one of an old hunchback in vague medieval dress, going through some +underground place where there are beds with people in the beds; a girl +half rising from one has seized his hand and is kissing it. I have +forgotten its story, but the strange old man and the intensity in the +girl's figure are vivid as in my childhood. There is some passage, I +believe in the Bible, about a man who saved a city and went away and was +never heard of again and here he was in another design, an old ragged +beggar in the market-place laughing at his own statue. But my father would +say: "I must paint what I see in front of me. Of course I shall really +paint something different because my nature will come in unconsciously." +Sometimes I would try to argue with him, for I had come to think the +philosophy of his fellow-artists and himself a misunderstanding created by +Victorian science, and science I had grown to hate with a monkish hate; +but no good came of it, and in a moment I would unsay what I had said and +pretend that I did not really believe it. My father was painting many fine +portraits, Dublin leaders of the bar, college notabilities, or chance +comers whom he would paint for nothing if he liked their heads; but all +displeased me. In my heart I thought that only beautiful things should be +painted, and that only ancient things and the stuff of dreams were +beautiful. And I almost quarrelled with my father when he made a large +water-colour, one of his finest pictures and now lost, of a consumptive +beggar girl. And a picture at the Hibernian Academy of cocottes with +yellow faces sitting before a café by some follower of Manet's made me +miserable for days, but I was happy when partly through my father's +planning some Whistlers were brought over and exhibited, and did not agree +when my father said: "imagine making your old mother an arrangement in +gray!" I did not care for mere reality and believed that creation should +be conscious, and yet I could only imitate my father. I could not compose +anything but a portrait and even to-day I constantly see people as a +portrait painter, posing them in the mind's eye before such and such a +background. Meanwhile I was still very much of a child, sometimes drawing +with an elaborate frenzy, simulating what I believed of inspiration and +sometimes walking with an artificial stride in memory of Hamlet and +stopping at shop windows to look at my tie gathered into a loose +sailor-knot and to regret that it could not be always blown out by the +wind like Byron's tie in the picture. I had as many ideas as I have now, +only I did not know how to choose from among them those that belonged to +my life. + + +XXIII + +We lived in a villa where the red bricks were made pretentious and vulgar +with streaks of slate colour, and there seemed to be enemies everywhere. +At one side indeed there was a friendly architect, but on the other some +stupid stout woman and her family. I had a study with a window opposite +some window of hers, & one night when I was writing I heard voices full of +derision and saw the stout woman and her family standing in the window. I +have a way of acting what I write and speaking it aloud without knowing +what I am doing. Perhaps I was on my hands and knees, or looking down over +the back of a chair talking into what I imagined an abyss. Another day a +woman asked me to direct her on her way and while I was hesitating, being +so suddenly called out of my thought, a woman from some neighbouring house +came by. She said I was a poet and my questioner turned away +contemptuously. Upon the other hand, the policeman and tramway conductor +thought my absence of mind sufficiently explained when our servant told +them I was a poet. "Oh well," said the policeman, who had been asking why +I went indifferently through clean and muddy places, "if it is only the +poetry that is working in his head!" I imagine I looked gaunt and +emaciated, for the little boys at the neighbouring cross-road used to say +when I passed by: "Oh, here is King Death again." One morning when my +father was on the way to his studio, he met his landlord who had a big +grocer's shop and they had this conversation: "will you tell me, sir, if +you think Tennyson should have been given that peerage?" "one's only doubt +is if he should have accepted it: it was a finer thing to be Alfred +Tennyson." There was a silence, and then: "well, all the people I know +think he should not have got it." Then, spitefully: "what's the good of +poetry?" "Oh, it gives our minds a great deal of pleasure." "But wouldn't +it have given your mind more pleasure if he had written an improving +book?" "Oh, in that case I should not have read it." My father returned in +the evening delighted with his story, but I could not understand how he +could take such opinions lightly and not have seriously argued with the +man. None of these people had ever seen any poet but an old white-haired +man who had written volumes of easy, too-honied verse, and run through his +money and gone clean out of his mind. He was a common figure in the +streets and lived in some shabby neighbourhood of tenement houses where +there were hens and chickens among the cobble stones. Every morning he +carried home a loaf and gave half of it to the hens and chickens, the +birds, or to some dog or starving cat. He was known to live in one room +with a nail in the middle of the ceiling from which innumerable cords were +stretched to other nails in the walls. In this way he kept up the illusion +that he was living under canvas in some Arabian desert. I could not escape +like this old man from house and neighbourhood, but hated both, hearing +every whisper, noticing every passing glance. When my grandfather came for +a few days to see a doctor, I was shocked to see him in our house. My +father read out to him in the evening Clark Russell's "Wreck of the +Grosvenor;" but the doctor forbade it, for my grandfather got up in the +middle of the night and acted through the mutiny, as I acted my verse, +saying the while, "yes, yes, that is the way it would all happen." + + +XXIV + +From our first arrival in Dublin, my father had brought me from time to +time to see Edward Dowden. He and my father had been college friends and +were trying, perhaps, to take up again their old friendship. Sometimes we +were asked to breakfast, and afterwards my father would tell me to read +out one of my poems. Dowden was wise in his encouragement, never +overpraising and never unsympathetic, and he would sometimes lend me +books. The orderly, prosperous house where all was in good taste, where +poetry was rightly valued, made Dublin tolerable for a while, and for +perhaps a couple of years he was an image of romance. My father would not +share my enthusiasm and soon, I noticed, grew impatient at these meetings. +He would sometimes say that he had wanted Dowden when they were young to +give himself to creative art, and would talk of what he considered +Dowden's failure in life. I know now that he was finding in his friend +what he himself had been saved from by the conversation of the +pre-Raphaelites. "He will not trust his nature," he would say, or "he is +too much influenced by his inferiors," or he would praise "Renunciants," +one of Dowden's poems, to prove what Dowden might have written. I was not +influenced for I had imagined a past worthy of that dark, romantic face. I +took literally his verses, touched here and there with Swinburnian +rhetoric, and believed that he had loved, unhappily and illicitly; and +when through the practice of my art I discovered that certain images about +the love of woman were the properties of a school, I but changed my fancy +and thought of him as very wise. + +I was constantly troubled about philosophic questions. I would say to my +fellow students at the Art school, "poetry and sculpture exist to keep our +passions alive;" and somebody would say, "we would be much better without +our passions." Or I would have a week's anxiety over the problem: do the +arts make us happier, or more sensitive and therefore more unhappy. And I +would say to Hughes or Sheppard, "if I cannot be certain they make us +happier I will never write again." If I spoke of these things to Dowden he +would put the question away with good-humoured irony: he seemed to +condescend to everybody and everything and was now my sage. I was about to +learn that if a man is to write lyric poetry he must be shaped by nature +and art to some one out of half-a-dozen traditional poses, and be lover or +saint, sage or sensualist, or mere mocker of all life; and that none but +that stroke of luckless luck can open before him the accumulated +expression of the world. And this thought before it could be knowledge was +an instinct. + +I was vexed when my father called Dowden's irony timidity, but after many +years his impression has not changed for he wrote to me but a few months +ago, "it was like talking to a priest. One had to be careful not to remind +him of his sacrifice." Once after breakfast Dowden read us some chapters +of the unpublished "Life of Shelley," and I who had made the "Prometheus +Unbound" my sacred book was delighted with all he read. I was chilled, +however, when he explained that he had lost his liking for Shelley and +would not have written it but for an old promise to the Shelley family. +When it was published, Matthew Arnold made sport of certain +conventionalities and extravagances that were, my father and I had come to +see, the violence or clumsiness of a conscientious man hiding from himself +a lack of sympathy. He had abandoned too, or was about to abandon, what +was to have been his master-work, "The Life of Goethe," though in his +youth a lecture course at Alexandra College that spoke too openly of +Goethe's loves had brought upon him the displeasure of our Protestant +Archbishop of Dublin. Only Wordsworth, he said, kept, more than all, his +early love. + +Though my faith was shaken, it was only when he urged me to read George +Eliot that I became angry and disillusioned & worked myself into a quarrel +or half-quarrel. I had read all Victor Hugo's romances and a couple of +Balzac's and was in no mind to like her. She seemed to have a distrust or +a distaste for all in life that gives one a springing foot. Then too she +knew so well how to enforce her distaste by the authority of her +mid-Victorian science or by some habit of mind of its breeding, that I, +who had not escaped the fascination of what I loathed, doubted while the +book lay open whatsoever my instinct knew of splendour. She disturbed me +and alarmed me, but when I spoke of her to my father, he threw her aside +with a phrase, "Oh, she was an ugly woman who hated handsome men and +handsome women;" and he began to praise "Wuthering Heights." + +Only the other day, when I got Dowden's letters, did I discover for how +many years the friendship between Dowden and my father had been an +antagonism. My father had written from Fitzroy Road in the sixties that +the brotherhood, by which he meant the poet Edwin Ellis, Nettleship and +himself, "abhorred Wordsworth;" and Dowden, not remembering that another +week would bring a different mood and abhorrence, had written a pained and +solemn letter. My father had answered that Dowden believed too much in the +intellect and that all valuable education was but a stirring up of the +emotions and had added that this did not mean excitability. "In the +completely emotional man," he wrote, "the least awakening of feeling is a +harmony in which every chord of every feeling vibrates. Excitement is the +feature of an insufficiently emotional nature, the harsh vibrating +discourse of but one or two chords." Living in a free world accustomed to +the gay exaggeration of the talk of equals, of men who talk and write to +discover truth and not for popular instruction, he had already, when both +men were in their twenties, decided it is plain that Dowden was a +Provincial. + + +XXV + +It was only when I began to study psychical research and mystical +philosophy that I broke away from my father's influence. He had been a +follower of John Stuart Mill and had grown to manhood with the scientific +movement. In this he had never been of Rossetti's party who said that it +mattered to nobody whether the sun went round the earth or the earth round +the sun. But through this new research, this reaction from popular +science, I had begun to feel that I had allies for my secret thought. Once +when I was in Dowden's drawing-room a servant announced my late +head-master. I must have got pale or red, for Dowden, with some ironical, +friendly remark, brought me into another room and there I stayed until the +visitor was gone. A few months later, when I met the head-master again I +had more courage. We chanced upon one another in the street and he said, +"I want you to use your influence with so-and-so, for he is giving all his +time to some sort of mysticism and he will fail in his examination." I +was in great alarm, but I managed to say something about the children of +this world being wiser than the children of light. He went off with a +brusque "good morning." I do not think that even at that age I would have +been so grandiloquent but for my alarm. He had, however, aroused all my +indignation. + +My new allies and my old had alike sustained me. "Intermediate +examinations," which I had always refused, meant money for pupil and for +teacher, and that alone. My father had brought me up never when at school +to think of the future or of any practical result. I have even known him +to say, "when I was young, the definition of a gentleman was a man not +wholly occupied in getting on." And yet this master wanted to withdraw my +friend from the pursuit of the most important of all the truths. My +friend, now in his last year at school, was a show boy, and had beaten all +Ireland again and again, but now he and I were reading Baron Reichenbach +on Odic Force and manuals published by the Theosophical Society. We spent +a good deal of time in the Kildare Street Museum passing our hands over +the glass cases, feeling or believing we felt the Odic Force flowing from +the big crystals. We also found pins blindfolded and read papers on our +discoveries to the Hermetic Society that met near the roof in York +Street. I had, when we first made our society, proposed for our +consideration that whatever the great poets had affirmed in their finest +moments was the nearest we could come to an authoritative religion, and +that their mythology, their spirits of water and wind were but literal +truth. I had read "Prometheus Unbound" with this thought in mind and +wanted help to carry my study through all literature. I was soon to vex my +father by defining truth as "the dramatically appropriate utterance of the +highest man." And if I had been asked to define the "highest" man, I would +have said perhaps, "we can but find him as Homer found Odysseus when he +was looking for a theme." + +My friend had written to some missionary society to send him to the South +Seas, when I offered him Renan's "Life of Christ" and a copy of "Esoteric +Buddhism." He refused both, but a few days later while reading for an +examination in Kildare Street Library, he asked in an idle moment for +"Esoteric Buddhism" and came out an esoteric Buddhist. He wrote to the +missionaries withdrawing his letter and offered himself to the +Theosophical Society as a _chela_. He was vexed now at my lack of zeal, +for I had stayed somewhere between the books, held there perhaps by my +father's scepticism. I said, and he thought it was a great joke though I +was serious, that even if I were certain in my own mind, I did not know "a +single person with a talent for conviction." For a time he made me ashamed +of my world and its lack of zeal, and I wondered if his world (his father +was a notorious Orange leader) where everything was a matter of belief was +not better than mine. He himself proposed the immediate conversion of the +other show boy, a clever little fellow, now a Dublin mathematician and +still under five feet. I found him a day later in much depression. I said, +"did he refuse to listen to you?" "Not at all," was the answer, "for I had +only been talking for a quarter of an hour when he said he believed." +Certainly those minds, parched by many examinations, were thirsty. + +Sometimes a professor of Oriental Languages at Trinity College, a Persian, +came to our Society and talked of the magicians of the East. When he was a +little boy, he had seen a vision in a pool of ink, a multitude of spirits +singing in Arabic, "woe unto those that do not believe in us." And we +persuaded a Brahmin philosopher to come from London and stay for a few +days with the only one among us who had rooms of his own. It was my first +meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed +at once logical and boundless. Consciousness, he taught, does not merely +spread out its surface but has, in vision and in contemplation, another +motion and can change in height and in depth. A handsome young man with +the typical face of Christ, he chaffed me good-humouredly because he said +I came at breakfast and began some question that was interrupted by the +first caller, waited in silence till ten or eleven at night when the last +caller had gone, and finished my question. + + +XXVI + +I thought a great deal about the system of education from which I had +suffered, and believing that everybody had a philosophical defence for all +they did, I desired greatly to meet some school-master that I might +question him. For a moment it seemed as if I should have my desire. I had +been invited to read out a poem called "The Island of Statues," an +arcadian play in imitation of Edmund Spenser, to a gathering of critics +who were to decide whether it was worthy of publication in the College +magazine. The magazine had already published a lyric of mine, the first +ever printed, and people began to know my name. We met in the rooms of Mr. +C. H. Oldham, now professor of Political Economy at our new University; +and though Professor Bury, then a very young man, was to be the deciding +voice, Mr. Oldham had asked quite a large audience. When the reading was +over and the poem had been approved I was left alone, why I cannot +remember, with a young man who was, I had been told, a school-master. I +was silent, gathering my courage, and he also was silent; and presently I +said without anything to lead up to it, "I know you will defend the +ordinary system of education by saying that it strengthens the will, but I +am convinced that it only seems to do so because it weakens the impulses." +Then I stopped, overtaken by shyness. He made no answer but smiled and +looked surprised as though I had said, "you will say they are Persian +attire; but let them be changed." + + +XXVII + +I had begun to frequent a club founded by Mr. Oldham, and not from natural +liking, but from a secret ambition. I wished to become self-possessed, to +be able to play with hostile minds as Hamlet played, to look in the lion's +face, as it were, with unquivering eyelash. In Ireland harsh argument +which had gone out of fashion in England was still the manner of our +conversation, and at this club Unionist and Nationalist could interrupt +one another and insult one another without the formal and traditional +restraint of public speech. Sometimes they would change the subject & +discuss Socialism, or a philosophical question, merely to discover their +old passions under a new shape. I spoke easily and I thought well till +some one was rude and then I would become silent or exaggerate my opinion +to absurdity, or hesitate and grow confused, or be carried away myself by +some party passion. I would spend hours afterwards going over my words and +putting the wrong ones right. Discovering that I was only self-possessed +with people I knew intimately, I would often go to a strange house where I +knew I would spend a wretched hour for schooling sake. I did not discover +that Hamlet had his self-possession from no schooling but from +indifference and passion conquering sweetness, and that less heroic minds +can but hope it from old age. + + +XXVIII + +I had very little money and one day the toll-taker at the metal bridge +over the Liffey and a gossip of his laughed when I refused the halfpenny +and said "no, I will go round by O'Connell Bridge." When I called for the +first time at a house in Leinster Road several middle-aged women were +playing cards and suggested my taking a hand and gave me a glass of +sherry. The sherry went to my head and I was impoverished for days by the +loss of sixpence. My hostess was Ellen O'Leary, who kept house for her +brother John O'Leary the Fenian, the handsomest old man I had ever seen. +He had been condemned to twenty years penal servitude but had been set +free after five on condition that he did not return to Ireland for fifteen +years. He had said to the government, "I will not return if Germany makes +war on you, but I will return if France does." He and his old sister lived +exactly opposite the Orange leader for whom he had a great respect. His +sister stirred my affection at first for no better reason than her +likeness of face and figure to the matron of my London school, a friendly +person, but when I came to know her I found sister and brother alike were +of Plutarch's people. She told me of her brother's life, how in his youth +as now in his age, he would spend his afternoons searching for rare books +among second-hand book-shops, how the Fenian organizer James Stephens had +found him there and asked for his help. "I do not think you have any +chance of success," he had said, "but if you never ask me to enroll +anybody else I will join, it will be very good for the morals of the +country." She told me how it grew to be a formidable movement, and of the +arrests that followed (I believe that her own sweetheart had somehow +fallen among the wreckage,) of sentences of death pronounced upon false +evidence amid a public panic, and told it all without bitterness. No +fanaticism could thrive amid such gentleness. She never found it hard to +believe that an opponent had as high a motive as her own and needed upon +her difficult road no spur of hate. + +Her brother seemed very unlike on a first hearing for he had some violent +oaths, "Good God in Heaven" being one of them; and if he disliked anything +one said or did, he spoke all his thought, but in a little one heard his +justice match her charity. "Never has there been a cause so bad," he would +say, "that it has not been defended by good men for good reasons." Nor +would he overvalue any man because they shared opinions; and when he lent +me the poems of Davis and the Young Irelanders, of whom I had known +nothing, he did not, although the poems of Davis had made him a patriot, +claim that they were very good poetry. + +His room was full of books, always second-hand copies that had often been +ugly and badly printed when new and had not grown to my unhistoric mind +more pleasing from the dirt of some old Dublin book-shop. Great numbers +were Irish, and for the first time I began to read histories and verses +that a Catholic Irishman knows from boyhood. He seemed to consider +politics almost wholly as a moral discipline, and seldom said of any +proposed course of action that it was practical or otherwise. When he +spoke to me of his prison life he spoke of all with seeming freedom, but +presently one noticed that he never spoke of hardship and if one asked him +why, he would say, "I was in the hands of my enemies, why should I +complain?" I have heard since that the governor of his jail found out that +he had endured some unnecessary discomfort for months and had asked why he +did not speak of it. "I did not come here to complain," was the answer. He +had the moral genius that moves all young people and moves them the more +if they are repelled by those who have strict opinions and yet have lived +commonplace lives. I had begun, as would any other of my training, to say +violent and paradoxical things to shock provincial sobriety, and Dowden's +ironical calm had come to seem but a professional pose. But here was +something as spontaneous as the life of an artist. Sometimes he would say +things that would have sounded well in some heroic Elizabethan play. It +became my delight to rouse him to these outbursts for I was the poet in +the presence of his theme. Once when I was defending an Irish politician +who had made a great outcry because he was treated as a common felon, by +showing that he did it for the cause's sake, he said, "there are things +that a man must not do even to save a nation." He would speak a sentence +like that in ignorance of its passionate value, and would forget it the +moment after. + +I met at his house friends of later life, Katharine Tynan who still lived +upon her father's farm, and Dr. Hyde, still a college student who took +snuff like those Mayo county people, whose stories and songs he was +writing down. "Davitt wants followers by the thousand," O'Leary would say, +"I only want half-a-dozen." One constant caller looked at me with much +hostility, John F. Taylor, an obscure great orator. The other day in +Dublin I overheard a man murmuring to another one of his speeches as I +might some Elizabethan lyric that is in my very bones. It was delivered at +some Dublin debate, some College society perhaps. The Lord Chancellor had +spoken with balanced unemotional sentences now self-complacent, now in +derision. Taylor began hesitating and stopping for words, but after +speaking very badly for a little, straightened his figure and spoke as out +of a dream: "I am carried to another age, a nobler court, and another Lord +Chancellor is speaking. I am at the court of the first Pharaoh." Thereupon +he put into the mouth of that Egyptian all his audience had listened to, +but now it was spoken to the children of Israel. "If you have any +spirituality as you boast, why not use our great empire to spread it +through the world, why still cling to that beggarly nationality of yours? +what are its history and its works weighed with those of Egypt." Then his +voice changed and sank: "I see a man at the edge of the crowd; he is +standing listening there, but he will not obey;" and then with his voice +rising to a cry, "had he obeyed he would never have come down the mountain +carrying in his arms the tables of the Law in the language of the outlaw." + +He had been in a linen-draper's shop for a while, had educated himself and +put himself to college, and was now, as a lawyer, famous for hopeless +cases where unsure judgment could not make things worse, and eloquence, +power of cross-examination and learning might amend all. Conversation with +him was always argument, and for an obstinate opponent he had such phrases +as, "have you your head in a bag, sir?" and I seemed his particular +aversion. As with many of the self-made men of that generation, Carlyle +was his chief literary enthusiasm, supporting him, as he believed, in his +contempt for the complexities and refinements he had not found in his hard +life, and I belonged to a generation that had begun to call Carlyle +rhetorician and demagogue. I had once seen what I had believed to be an +enraged bull in a field and had walked up to it as a test of courage to +discover, just as panic fell upon me, that it was merely an irritable cow. +I braved Taylor again and again, but always found him worse than my +expectation. I would say, quoting Mill, "oratory is heard, poetry is +overheard." And he would answer, his voice full of contempt, that there +was always an audience; and yet, in his moments of lofty speech, he +himself was alone no matter what the crowd. + +At other times his science or his Catholic orthodoxy, I never could +discover which, would become enraged with my supernaturalism. I can but +once remember escaping him unabashed and unconquered. I said with +deliberate exaggeration at some evening party at O'Leary's "five out of +every six people have seen a ghost;" and Taylor fell into my net with +"well, I will ask everybody here." I managed that the first answer should +come from a man who had heard a voice he believed to be that of his dead +brother, and the second from a doctor's wife who had lived in a haunted +house and met a man with his throat cut, whose throat as he drifted along +the garden-walk "had opened and closed like the mouth of a fish." Taylor +threw up his head like an angry horse, but asked no further question, and +did not return to the subject that evening. If he had gone on he would +have heard from everybody some like story though not all at first hand, +and Miss O'Leary would have told him what happened at the death of one of +the MacManus brothers, well known in the politics of Young Ireland. One +brother was watching by the bed where the other lay dying and saw a +strange hawk-like bird fly through the open window and alight upon the +breast of the dying man. He did not dare to drive it away and it remained +there, as it seemed, looking into his brother's eyes until death came, and +then it flew out of the window. I think, though I am not sure, that she +had the story from the watcher himself. + +It was understood that Taylor's temper kept him from public life, though +he may have been the greatest orator of his time, partly because no leader +would accept him, and still more because, in the words of one of his +Dublin enemies, "he had never joined any party and as soon as one joined +him he seceded." With O'Leary he was always, even when they differed, as +they often did, gentle and deferential, but once only, and that was years +afterwards, did I think that he was about to include me among his friends. +We met by chance in a London street and he stopped me with an abrupt +movement: "Yeats," he said, "I have been thinking. If you and ... (naming +another aversion,) were born in a small Italian principality in the Middle +Ages, he would have friends at court and you would be in exile with a +price on your head." He went off without another word, and the next time +we met he was no less offensive than before. He, imprisoned in himself, +and not the always unperturbed O'Leary, comes before me as the tragic +figure of my youth. The same passion for all moral and physical splendour +that drew him to O'Leary would make him beg leave to wear, for some few +days, a friend's ring or pin, and gave him a heart that every pretty woman +set on fire. I doubt if he was happy in his loves; for those his powerful +intellect had fascinated were, I believe, repelled by his coarse red hair, +his gaunt ungainly body, his stiff movements as of a Dutch doll, his badly +rolled, shabby umbrella. And yet with women, as with O'Leary, he was +gentle, deferential, almost diffident. + +A Young Ireland Society met in the lecture hall of a workman's club in +York Street with O'Leary for president, and there four or five university +students and myself and occasionally Taylor spoke on Irish history or +literature. When Taylor spoke, it was a great event, and his delivery in +the course of a speech or lecture of some political verse by Thomas Davis +gave me a conviction of how great might be the effect of verse spoken by +a man almost rhythm-drunk at some moment of intensity, the apex of long +mounting thought. Verses that seemed when one saw them upon the page flat +and empty caught from that voice, whose beauty was half in its harsh +strangeness, nobility and style. My father had always read verse with an +equal intensity and a greater subtlety, but this art was public and his +private, and it is Taylor's voice that rings in my ears and awakens my +longing when I have heard some player speak lines, "so naturally," as a +famous player said to me, "that nobody can find out that it is verse at +all." I made a good many speeches, more I believe as a training for +self-possession than from desire of speech. + +Once our debates roused a passion that came to the newspapers and the +streets. There was an excitable man who had fought for the Pope against +the Italian patriots and who always rode a white horse in our Nationalist +processions. He got on badly with O'Leary who had told him that +"attempting to oppress others was a poor preparation for liberating your +own country." O'Leary had written some letter to the press condemning the +"Irish-American Dynamite Party" as it was called, and defining the limits +of "honourable warfare." At the next meeting, the papal soldier rose in +the middle of the discussion on some other matter and moved a vote of +censure on O'Leary. "I myself" he said "do not approve of bombs, but I do +not think that any Irishman should be discouraged." O'Leary ruled him out +of order. He refused to obey and remained standing. Those round him began +to threaten. He swung the chair he had been sitting on round his head and +defied everybody. However he was seized from all sides and thrown out, and +a special meeting called to expel him. He wrote letters to the papers and +addressed a crowd somewhere. "No Young Ireland Society," he protested, +"could expel a man whose grandfather had been hanged in 1798." When the +night of the special meeting came his expulsion was moved, but before the +vote could be taken an excited man announced that there was a crowd in the +street, that the papal soldier was making a speech, that in a moment we +should be attacked. Three or four of us ran and put our backs to the door +while others carried on the debate. It was an inner door with narrow glass +windows at each side and through these we could see the street-door and +the crowd in the street. Presently a man asked us through the crack in the +door if we would as a favour "leave the crowd to the workman's club +upstairs." In a couple of minutes there was a great noise of sticks and +broken glass, and after that our landlord came to find out who was to pay +for the hall-lamp. + + +XXIX + +From these debates, from O'Leary's conversation, and from the Irish books +he lent or gave me has come all I have set my hand to since. I had begun +to know a great deal about the Irish poets who had written in English. I +read with excitement books I should find unreadable to-day, and found +romance in lives that had neither wit nor adventure. I did not deceive +myself, I knew how often they wrote a cold and abstract language, and yet +I who had never wanted to see the houses where Keats and Shelley lived +would ask everybody what sort of place Inchedony was, because Callanan had +named after it a bad poem in the manner of "Childe Harold." Walking home +from a debate, I remember saying to some college student "Ireland cannot +put from her the habits learned from her old military civilization and +from a church that prays in Latin. Those popular poets have not touched +her heart, her poetry when it comes will be distinguished and lonely." +O'Leary had once said to me, "neither Ireland nor England knows the good +from the bad in any art, but Ireland unlike England does not hate the good +when it is pointed out to her." I began to plot and scheme how one might +seal with the right image the soft wax before it began to harden. I had +noticed that Irish Catholics among whom had been born so many political +martyrs had not the good taste, the household courtesy and decency of the +Protestant Ireland I had known, and yet Protestant Ireland had begun to +think of nothing but getting on. I thought we might bring the halves +together if we had a national literature that made Ireland beautiful in +the memory, and yet had been freed from provincialism by an exacting +criticism, an European pose. It was because of this dream when we returned +to London that I made with pastels upon the ceiling of my study a map of +Sligo decorated like some old map with a ship and an elaborate compass and +wrote, a little against the grain, a couple of Sligo stories, one a vague +echo of "Grettir the Strong," which my father had read to me in childhood, +and finished with better heart my "Wanderings of Oisin," and began after +ridding my style of romantic colour "The Countess Cathleen." I saw that +our people did not read, but that they listened patiently (how many long +political speeches have they listened to?) and saw that there must be a +theatre, and if I could find the right musicians, words set to music. I +foresaw a great deal that we are doing now, though never the appetite of +our new middle-class for "realism," nor the greatness of the opposition, +nor the slowness of the victory. Davis had done so much in the four years +of his working life, I had thought all needful pamphleteering and +speech-making could be run through at the day's end, not knowing that +taste is so much more deeply rooted than opinion that even if one had +school and newspaper to help, one could scarcely stir it under two +generations. Then too, bred up in a studio where all things are discussed +and where I had even been told that indiscretion and energy are +inseparable, I knew nothing of the conservatism or of the suspicions of +piety. I had planned a drama like that of Greece, and romances that were, +it may be, half Hugo and half de la Motte Fouqué, to bring into the town +the memories and visions of the country and to spread everywhere the +history and legends of mediaeval Ireland and to fill Ireland once more +with sacred places. I even planned out, and in some detail, (for those +mysterious lights and voices were never long forgotten,) another +Samothrace, a new Eleusis. I believed, so great was my faith, or so +deceptive the precedent of Young Ireland, that I should find men of genius +everywhere. I had not the conviction, as it may seem, that a people can be +compelled to write what one pleases, for that could but end in rhetoric or +in some educational movement but believed I had divined the soul of the +people and had set my shoes upon a road that would be crowded presently. + + +XXX + +Someone at the Young Ireland Society gave me a newspaper that I might read +some article or letter. I began idly reading verses describing the shore +of Ireland as seen by a returning, dying emigrant. My eyes filled with +tears and yet I knew the verses were badly written--vague, abstract words +such as one finds in a newspaper. I looked at the end and saw the name of +some political exile who had died but a few days after his return to +Ireland. They had moved me because they contained the actual thoughts of a +man at a passionate moment of life, and when I met my father I was full of +the discovery. We should write out our own thoughts in as nearly as +possible the language we thought them in, as though in a letter to an +intimate friend. We should not disguise them in any way; for our lives +give them force as the lives of people in plays give force to their words. +Personal utterance, which had almost ceased in English literature, could +be as fine an escape from rhetoric and abstraction as drama itself. My +father was indignant, almost violent, and would hear of nothing but drama. +"Personal utterance was only egotism." I knew it was not, but as yet did +not know how to explain the difference. I tried from that on to write out +of my emotions exactly as they came to me in life, not changing them to +make them more beautiful, and to rid my syntax of all inversions and my +vocabulary of literary words, and that made it hard to write at all. It +meant rejecting the words or the constructions that had been used over and +over because they flow most easily into rhyme and measure. Then, too, how +hard it was to be sincere, not to make the emotion more beautiful and more +violent or the circumstance more romantic. "If I can be sincere and make +my language natural, and without becoming discursive, like a novelist, and +so indiscreet and prosaic," I said to myself, "I shall, if good luck or +bad luck make my life interesting, be a great poet; for it will be no +longer a matter of literature at all." Yet when I re-read those early +poems which gave me so much trouble, I find little but romantic +convention, unconscious drama. It is so many years before one can believe +enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is. + + +XXXI + +Perhaps a year before we returned to London, a Catholic friend brought me +to a spiritualistic seance at the house of a young man who had been lately +arrested under a suspicion of Fenianism, but had been released for lack +of evidence. He and his friends had been sitting weekly about a table in +the hope of spiritual manifestation and one had developed mediumship. A +drawer full of books had leaped out of the table when no one was touching +it, a picture had moved upon the wall. There were some half dozen of us, +and our host began by making passes until the medium fell asleep sitting +upright in his chair. Then the lights were turned out, and we sat waiting +in the dim light of a fire. Presently my shoulders began to twitch and my +hands. I could easily have stopped them, but I had never heard of such a +thing and I was curious. After a few minutes the movement became violent +and I stopped it. I sat motionless for a while and then my whole body +moved like a suddenly unrolled watch-spring, and I was thrown backward on +the wall. I again stilled the movement and sat at the table. Everybody +began to say I was a medium, and that if I would not resist some wonderful +thing would happen. I remembered that my father had told me that Balzac +had once desired to take opium for the experience sake, but would not +because he dreaded the surrender of his will. We were now holding each +other's hands and presently my right hand banged the knuckles of the woman +next to me upon the table. She laughed, and the medium, speaking for the +first time, and with difficulty, out of his mesmeric sleep, said, "tell +her there is great danger." He stood up and began walking round me, making +movements with his hands as though he were pushing something away. I was +now struggling vainly with this force which compelled me to movements I +had not willed, and my movements had become so violent that the table was +broken. I tried to pray, and because I could not remember a prayer, +repeated in a loud voice + + Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit + Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste + Brought death into the world and all our woe... + Sing, heavenly muse. + +My Catholic friend had left the table and was saying a Pater Noster and +Ave Maria in the corner. Presently all became still and so dark that I +could not see anybody. I described it to somebody next day as like going +out of a noisy political meeting on to a quiet country road. I said to +myself, "I am now in a trance but I no longer have any desire to resist." +But when I turned my eyes to the fireplace I could see a faint gleam of +light, so I thought "no, I am not in a trance." Then I saw shapes faintly +appearing in the darkness & thought, "they are spirits;" but they were +only the spiritualists and my friend at her prayers. The medium said in a +faint voice, "we are through the bad spirits." I said, "will they ever +come again, do you think?" and he said, "no, never again, I think," and in +my boyish vanity I thought it was I who had banished them. For years +afterwards I would not go to a seance or turn a table and would often ask +myself what was that violent impulse that had run through my nerves? was +it a part of myself--something always to be a danger perhaps; or had it +come from without, as it seemed? + + +XXXII + +I had published my first book of poems by subscription, O'Leary finding +many subscribers, and a book of stories, when I heard that my grandmother +was dead and went to Sligo for the funeral. She had asked to see me but by +some mistake I was not sent for. She had heard that I was much about with +a beautiful, admired woman and feared that I did not speak of marriage +because I was poor, and wanted to say to me "women care nothing about +money." My grandfather was dying also and only survived her a few weeks. I +went to see him and wondered at his handsome face now sickness had refined +it, and noticed that he foretold the changes in the weather by +indications of the light and of the temperature that could not have told +me anything. As I sat there my old childish fear returned and I was glad +to get away. I stayed with my uncle whose house was opposite where my +grandfather lived, and walking home with him one day we met the doctor. +The doctor said there was no hope and that my grandfather should be told, +but my uncle would not allow it. He said "it would make a man mad to know +he was dying." In vain the doctor pleaded that he had never known a man +not made calmer by the knowledge. I listened sad and angry, but my uncle +always took a low view of human nature, his very tolerance which was +exceedingly great came from his hoping nothing of anybody. Before he had +given way my grandfather lifted up his arms and cried out "there she is," +and fell backward dead. Before he was dead, old servants of that house +where there had never been noise or disorder began their small pilferings, +and after his death there was a quarrel over the disposition of certain +mantle-piece ornaments of no value. + + +XXXIII + +For some months now I have lived with my own youth and childhood, not +always writing indeed but thinking of it almost every day, and I am +sorrowful and disturbed. It is not that I have accomplished too few of my +plans, for I am not ambitious; but when I think of all the books I have +read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have +given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all +life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for +something that never happens. + + +Printed in the United States of America. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Reveries over Childhood and Youth, by +William Butler Yeats + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 33348-8.txt or 33348-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/3/4/33348/ + +Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Reveries over Childhood and Youth + +Author: William Butler Yeats + +Release Date: August 4, 2010 [EBook #33348] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h2>REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH</h2> +<p> </p><p> </p> + + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/printer.png" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS<br /> +ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO<br /> +<br /> +MACMILLAN & CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br /> +LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br /> +MELBOURNE<br /> +<br /> +THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br /> +TORONTO</p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h1>REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD<br />AND YOUTH</h1> +<p> </p> +<h3>BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS</h3> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><strong>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />NEW YORK<span class="spacer"> </span>MCMXVI</strong></p> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1916,<br /> +<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br /> +<br /> +Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1916.<br /> +<br /> +Norwood Press<br /> +J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.<br /> +Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p> +<p> </p><p> </p> + + +<div class="note"> +<p class="center">To those few people mainly personal friends who have read all that I have +written.</p> +<p class="right">W. B. Y.</p></div> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<h2>Preface</h2> + +<p>Sometimes when I remember a relative that I have been fond of, or a +strange incident of the past, I wander here and there till I have somebody +to talk to. Presently I notice that my listener is bored; but now that I +have written it out, I may even begin to forget it all. In any case, +because one can always close a book, my friend need not be bored.</p> + +<p>I have changed nothing to my knowledge, and yet it must be that I have +changed many things without my knowledge, for I am writing after so many +years, and have consulted neither friend nor letter nor old newspaper and +describe what comes oftenest into my memory.</p> + +<p>I say this fearing that some surviving friend of my youth may remember +something in a different shape and be offended with my book.</p> + +<p class="right">Christmas Day, 1914.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH</h2> + +<p> </p> +<p><span class="dropfig"><img src="images/cap_m.png" style="margin-top: -0.5em;" alt="M" /></span>y first memories are fragmentary and isolated and contemporaneous, as +though one remembered vaguely some early day of the Seven Days. It seems +as if time had not yet been created, for all are connected with emotion +and place and without sequence.</p> + +<p>I remember sitting upon somebody’s knee, looking out of a window at a wall +covered with cracked and falling plaster, but what wall I do not remember, +and being told that some relation once lived there. I am looking out of +another window in London. It is at Fitzroy Road. Some boys are playing in +the road and among them a boy in uniform, a telegraph boy perhaps. When I +ask who the boy is, a servant tells me that he is going to blow the town +up, and I go to sleep in terror.</p> + +<p>After that come memories of Sligo, where I live with my grandparents. I am +sitting on the ground looking at a mastless toy boat, with the paint +rubbed and scratched, and I say to myself in great melancholy, “it is +further away than it used to be,” and while I am saying it I am looking at +a long scratch in the stern, for it is especially the scratch which is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> +further away. Then one day at dinner my great-uncle William Middleton +says, “we should not make light of the troubles of children. They are +worse than ours, because we can see the end of our trouble and they can +never see any end,” and I feel grateful for I know that I am very unhappy +and have often said to myself, “when you grow up, never talk as grown-up +people do of the happiness of childhood.” I may have already had the night +of misery when, having prayed for several days that I might die, I had +begun to be afraid that I was dying and prayed that I might live. There +was no reason for my unhappiness. Nobody was unkind, and my grandmother +has still after so many years my gratitude and my reverence. The house was +so big that there was always a room to hide in, and I had a red pony and a +garden where I could wander, and there were two dogs to follow at my +heels, one white with some black spots on his head and the other with long +black hair all over him. I used to think about God and fancy that I was +very wicked, and one day when I threw a stone and hit a duck in the yard +by mischance and broke its wing, I was full of wonder when I was told that +the duck would be cooked for dinner and that I should not be punished.</p> + +<p>Some of my misery was loneliness and some of it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> fear of old William +Pollexfen my grandfather. He was never unkind, and I cannot remember that +he ever spoke harshly to me, but it was the custom to fear and admire him. +He had won the freedom of some Spanish city for saving life, but was so +silent that his wife never knew it till he was near eighty, and then from +the chance visit of some old sailor. She asked him if it was true and he +said it was true, but she knew him too well to question and his old +shipmate had left the town. She too had the habit of fear. We knew that he +had been in many parts of the world, for there was a great scar on his +hand made by a whaling-hook, and in the dining-room was a cabinet with +bits of coral in it and a jar of water from the Jordan for the baptising +of his children and Chinese pictures upon rice-paper and an ivory +walking-stick from India that came to me after his death. He had great +physical strength and had the reputation of never ordering a man to do +anything he would not do himself. He owned many sailing ships and once, +when a captain just come to anchor at Rosses Point reported something +wrong with the rudder, had sent a messenger to say “send a man down to +find out what’s wrong.” “The crew all refuse” was the answer. “Go down +yourself” was my grandfather’s order, and when that was not obeyed, he +dived from the main deck, all the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>neighbourhood lined along the pebbles +of the shore. He came up with his skin torn but well informed about the +rudder. He had a violent temper and kept a hatchet at his bedside for +burglars and would knock a man down instead of going to law, and I once +saw him hunt a group of men with a horsewhip. He had no relation for he +was an only child, and being solitary and silent, he had few friends. He +corresponded with Campbell of Islay who had befriended him and his crew +after a shipwreck, and Captain Webb, the first man who had swum the +Channel and who was drowned swimming the Niagara Rapids, had been a mate +in his employ and became a close friend. That is all the friends I can +remember and yet he was so looked up to and admired that when he returned +from taking the waters at Bath his men would light bonfires along the +railway line for miles, while his partner William Middleton whose father +after the great famine had attended the sick for weeks, and taken cholera +from a man he carried in his arms into his own house and died of it, and +was himself civil to everybody and a cleverer man than my grandfather, +came and went without notice. I think I confused my grandfather with God, +for I remember in one of my attacks of melancholy praying that he might +punish me for my sins, and I was shocked and astonished when a daring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> +little girl—a cousin I think—having waited under a group of trees in the +avenue, where she knew he would pass near four o’clock on the way to his +dinner, said to him, “if I were you and you were a little girl, I would +give you a doll.”</p> + +<p>Yet for all my admiration and alarm, neither I nor anyone else thought it +wrong to outwit his violence or his rigour; and his lack of suspicion and +a certain helplessness made that easy while it stirred our affection. When +I must have been still a very little boy, seven or eight years old +perhaps, an uncle called me out of bed one night, to ride the five or six +miles to Rosses Point to borrow a railway-pass from a cousin. My +grandfather had one, but thought it dishonest to let another use it, but +the cousin was not so particular. I was let out through a gate that opened +upon a little lane beside the garden away from ear-shot of the house, and +rode delighted through the moonlight, and awoke my cousin in the small +hours by tapping on his window with a whip. I was home again by two or +three in the morning and found the coachman waiting in the little lane. My +grandfather would not have thought such an adventure possible, for every +night at eight he believed that the stable-yard was locked, and he knew +that he was brought the key. Some servant had once got into trouble at +night and so he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> arranged that they should all be locked in. He never +knew, what everybody else in the house knew, that for all the ceremonious +bringing of the key the gate was never locked.</p> + +<p>Even to-day when I read “King Lear” his image is always before me and I +often wonder if the delight in passionate men in my plays and in my poetry +is more than his memory. He must have been ignorant, though I could not +judge him in my childhood, for he had run away to sea when a boy, “gone to +sea through the hawse-hole” as he phrased it, and I can but remember him +with two books—his Bible and Falconer’s “Shipwreck,” a little +green-covered book that lay always upon his table; he belonged to some +younger branch of an old Cornish family. His father had been in the Army, +had retired to become an owner of sailing ships, and an engraving of some +old family place my grandfather thought should have been his hung next a +painted coat of arms in the little back parlour. His mother had been a +Wexford woman, and there was a tradition that his family had been linked +with Ireland for generations and once had their share in the old Spanish +trade with Galway. He had a good deal of pride and disliked his +neighbours, whereas his wife, a Middleton, was gentle and patient and did +many charities in the little back parlour among<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> frieze coats and shawled +heads, and every night when she saw him asleep went the round of the house +alone with a candle to make certain there was no burglar in danger of the +hatchet. She was a true lover of her garden and before the care of her +house had grown upon her, would choose some favourite among her flowers +and copy it upon rice-paper. I saw some of her handiwork the other day and +I wondered at the delicacy of form and colour and at a handling that may +have needed a magnifying glass it was so minute. I can remember no other +pictures but the Chinese paintings, and some coloured prints of battles in +the Crimea upon the wall of a passage, and the painting of a ship at the +passage end darkened by time.</p> + +<p>My grown-up uncles and aunts, my grandfather’s many sons and daughters, +came and went, and almost all they said or did has faded from my memory, +except a few harsh words that convince me by a vividness out of proportion +to their harshness that all were habitually kind and considerate. The +youngest of my uncles was stout and humorous and had a tongue of leather +over the keyhole of his door to keep the draught out, and another whose +bedroom was at the end of a long stone passage had a model turret ship in +a glass case. He was a clever man and had designed the Sligo quays, but +was now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> going mad and inventing a vessel of war that could not be sunk, +his pamphlet explained, because of a hull of solid wood. Only six months +ago my sister awoke dreaming that she held a wingless sea-bird in her arms +and presently she heard that he had died in his mad-house, for a sea-bird +is the omen that announces the death or danger of a Pollexfen. An uncle, +George Pollexfen, afterwards astrologer and mystic, and my dear friend, +came but seldom from Ballina, once to a race meeting with two postillions +dressed in green; and there was that younger uncle who had sent me for the +railway-pass. He was my grandmother’s favourite, and had, the servants +told me, been sent away from school for taking a crowbar to a bully.</p> + +<p>I can only remember my grandmother punishing me once. I was playing in the +kitchen and a servant in horseplay pulled my shirt out of my trousers in +front just as my grandmother came in and I, accused of I knew not what +childish indecency, was given my dinner in a room by myself. But I was +always afraid of my uncles and aunts, and once the uncle who had taken the +crowbar to the bully found me eating lunch which my grandmother had given +me and reproved me for it and made me ashamed. We breakfasted at nine and +dined at four and it was considered self-indulgent to eat anything +between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> meals; and once an aunt told me that I had reined in my pony and +struck it at the same moment that I might show it off as I rode through +the town, and I, because I had been accused of what I thought a very dark +crime, had a night of misery. Indeed I remember little of childhood but +its pain. I have grown happier with every year of life as though gradually +conquering something in myself, for certainly my miseries were not made by +others but were a part of my own mind.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>One day someone spoke to me of the voice of the conscience, and as I +brooded over the phrase I came to think that my soul, because I did not +hear an articulate voice, was lost. I had some wretched days until being +alone with one of my aunts I heard a whisper in my ear, “what a tease you +are!” At first I thought my aunt must have spoken, but when I found she +had not, I concluded it was the voice of my conscience and was happy +again. From that day the voice has come to me at moments of crisis, but +now it is a voice in my head that is sudden and startling. It does not +tell me what to do, but often reproves me. It will say perhaps, “that is +unjust” of some thought; and once when I complained that a prayer had not +been heard, it said, “you have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> been helped.” I had a little flagstaff in +front of the house and a red flag with the Union Jack in the corner. Every +night I pulled my flag down and folded it up and laid it on a shelf in my +bedroom, and one morning before breakfast I found it, though I knew I had +folded it up the night before, knotted round the bottom of the flagstaff +so that it was touching the grass. I must have heard the servants talking +of the faeries for I concluded at once that a faery had tied those four +knots and from that on believed that one had whispered in my ear. I have +been told, though I do not remember it myself, that I saw, whether once or +many times I do not know, a supernatural bird in the corner of the room. +Once too I was driving with my grandmother a little after dark close to +the Channel that runs for some five miles from Sligo to the sea, and my +grandmother showed me the red light of an outward-bound steamer and told +me that my grandfather was on board, and that night in my sleep I screamed +out and described the steamer’s wreck. The next morning my grandfather +arrived on a blind horse found for him by grateful passengers. He had, as +I remember the story, been asleep when the captain aroused him to say they +were going on the rocks. He said, “have you tried sail on her?” and +judging from some answer that the captain was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> demoralised took over the +command and, when the ship could not be saved, got the crew and passengers +into the boats. His own boat was upset and he saved himself and some +others by swimming; some women had drifted ashore, buoyed up by their +crinolines. “I was not so much afraid of the sea as of that terrible man +with his oar,” was the comment of a schoolmaster who was among the +survivors. Eight men were, however, drowned and my grandfather suffered +from that memory at intervals all his life, and if asked to read family +prayers never read anything but the shipwreck of St. Paul.</p> + +<p>I remember the dogs more clearly than anyone except my grandfather and +grandmother. The black hairy one had no tail because it had been sliced +off, if I was told the truth, by a railway train. I think I followed at +their heels more than they did at mine, and that their journeys ended at a +rabbit-warren behind the garden; and sometimes they had savage fights, the +black hairy dog, being well protected by its hair, suffering least. I can +remember one so savage that the white dog would not take his teeth out of +the black dog’s hair till the coachman hung them over the side of a +water-butt, one outside and one in the water. My grandmother once told the +coachman to cut the hair like a lion’s hair and, after a long consultation +with the stable-boy, he cut it all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> over the head and shoulders and left +it on the lower part of the body. The dog disappeared for a few days and I +did not doubt that its heart was broken. There was a large garden behind +the house full of apple-trees with flower-beds and grass-plots in the +centre and two figure-heads of ships, one among the strawberry plants +under a wall covered with fruit trees and one among the flowers. The one +among the flowers was a white lady in flowing robes, while the other, a +stalwart man in uniform, had been taken from a three-masted ship of my +grandfather’s called “The Russia,” and there was a belief among the +servants that the stalwart man represented the Tsar and had been presented +by the Tsar himself. The avenue, or as they say in England the drive, that +went from the hall door through a clump of big trees to an insignificant +gate and a road bordered by broken and dirty cottages, was but two or +three hundred yards, and I often thought it should have been made to wind +more, for I judged people’s social importance mainly by the length of +their avenues. This idea may have come from the stable-boy, for he was my +principal friend. He had a book of Orange rhymes, and the days when we +read them together in the hay-loft gave me the pleasure of rhyme for the +first time. Later on I can remember being told, when there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> was a rumour +of a Fenian rising, that rifles had been served out to the Orangemen and +presently, when I had begun to dream of my future life, I thought I would +like to die fighting the Fenians. I was to build a very fast and beautiful +ship and to have under my command a company of young men who were always +to be in training like athletes and so become as brave and handsome as the +young men in the story-books, and there was to be a big battle on the +sea-shore near Rosses and I was to be killed. I collected little pieces of +wood and piled them up in a corner of the yard, and there was an old +rotten log in a distant field I often went to look at because I thought it +would go a long way in the making of the ship. All my dreams were of +ships; and one day a sea captain who had come to dine with my grandfather +put a hand on each side of my head and lifted me up to show me Africa, and +another day a sea captain pointed to the smoke from the Pern mill on the +quays rising up beyond the trees of the lawn, as though it came from the +mountain, and asked me if Ben Bulben was a burning mountain.</p> + +<p>Once every few months I used to go to Rosses Point or Ballisodare to see +another little boy, who had a piebald pony that had once been in a circus +and sometimes forgot where it was and went round<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> and round. He was George +Middleton, son of my great-uncle William Middleton. Old Middleton had +bought land, then believed a safe investment, at Ballisodare and at +Rosses, and spent the winter at Ballisodare and the summer at Rosses. The +Middleton and Pollexfen flour mills were at Ballisodare, and a great +salmon weir, rapids and a waterfall, but it was more often at Rosses that +I saw my cousin. We rowed in the river mouth or were taken sailing in a +heavy slow schooner yacht or in a big ship’s boat that had been rigged and +decked. There were great cellars under the house, for it had been a +smuggler’s house a hundred years before, and sometimes three loud raps +would come upon the drawing room window at sun-down, setting all the dogs +barking, some dead smuggler giving his accustomed signal. One night I +heard them very distinctly and my cousins often heard them, and later on +my sister. A pilot had told me that, after dreaming three times of a +treasure buried in my uncle’s garden, he had climbed the wall in the +middle of the night and begun to dig but grew disheartened “because there +was so much earth.” I told somebody what he had said and was told that it +was well he did not find it for it was guarded by a spirit that looked +like a flat iron. At Ballisodare there was a cleft among the rocks that I +passed with terror because I believed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> that a murderous monster lived +there that made a buzzing sound like a bee.</p> + +<p>It was through the Middletons perhaps that I got my interest in country +stories and certainly the first faery stories that I heard were in the +cottages about their houses. The Middletons took the nearest for friends +and were always in and out of the cottages of pilots and of tenants. They +were practical, always doing something with their hands, making boats, +feeding chickens, and without ambition. One of them had designed a steamer +many years before my birth and long after I had grown to manhood one could +hear it—it had some sort of obsolete engine—many miles off wheezing in +the Channel like an asthmatic person. It had been built on the lake and +dragged through the town by many horses, stopping before the windows where +my mother was learning her lessons, and plunging the whole school into +candle-light for five days, and was still patched and repatched mainly +because it was believed to be a bringer of good luck. It had been called +after the betrothed of its builder “Janet,” long corrupted into the more +familiar “Jennet,” and the betrothed died in my youth having passed her +eightieth year and been her husband’s plague because of the violence of +her temper. Another who was but a year or two older than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> myself used to +shock me by running after hens to know by their feel if they were on the +point of dropping an egg. They let their houses decay and the glass fall +from the windows of their greenhouses, but one among them at any rate had +the second sight. They were liked but had not the pride and reserve, the +sense of decorum and order, the instinctive playing before themselves that +belongs to those who strike the popular imagination.</p> + +<p>Sometimes my grandmother would bring me to see some old Sligo gentlewoman +whose garden ran down to the river, ending there in a low wall full of +wallflowers, and I would sit up upon my chair, very bored, while my elders +ate their seed-cake and drank their sherry. My walks with the servants +were more interesting; sometimes we would pass a little fat girl and a +servant persuaded me to write her a love-letter, and the next time she +passed she put her tongue out. But it was the servant’s stories that +interested me. At such and such a corner a man had got a shilling from a +drill sergeant by standing in a barrel and had then rolled out of it and +shown his crippled legs. And in such and such a house an old woman had hid +herself under the bed of her guests, an officer and his wife, and on +hearing them abuse her, beaten them with a broomstick. All the well-known +families had their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> grotesque or tragic or romantic legends, and I often +said to myself how terrible it would be to go away and die where nobody +would know my story. Years afterwards, when I was ten or twelve years old +and in London, I would remember Sligo with tears, and when I began to +write, it was there I hoped to find my audience. Next to Merville where I +lived, was another tree-surrounded house where I sometimes went to see a +little boy who stayed there occasionally with his grandmother, whose name +I forget and who seemed to me kind and friendly, though when I went to see +her in my thirteenth or fourteenth year I discovered that she only cared +for very little boys. When the visitors called I hid in the hay-loft and +lay hidden behind the great heap of hay while a servant was calling my +name in the yard.</p> + +<p>I do not know how old I was (for all these events seem at the same +distance) when I was made drunk. I had been out yachting with an uncle and +my cousins and it had come on very rough. I had lain on deck between the +mast and the bowsprit and a wave had burst over me and I had seen green +water over my head. I was very proud and very wet. When we got into Rosses +again, I was dressed up in an older boy’s clothes so that the trousers +came down below my boots and a pilot gave me a little raw whiskey. I drove +home with the uncle on an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> outside car and was so pleased with the strange +state in which I found myself that for all my uncle could do, I cried to +every passer-by that I was drunk, and went on crying it through the town +and everywhere until I was put to bed by my grandmother and given +something to drink that tasted of black currants and so fell asleep.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Some six miles off towards Ben Bulben and beyond the Channel, as we call +the tidal river between Sligo and the Rosses, and on top of a hill there +was a little square two-storeyed house covered with creepers and looking +out upon a garden where the box borders were larger than any I had ever +seen, and where I saw for the first time the crimson streak of the +gladiolus and awaited its blossom with excitement. Under one gable a dark +thicket of small trees made a shut-in mysterious place, where one played +and believed that something was going to happen. My great-aunt Micky lived +there. Micky was not her right name for she was Mary Yeats and her father +had been my great-grandfather, John Yeats, who had been Rector of +Drumcliffe, a few miles further off, and died in 1847. She was a spare, +high-coloured, elderly woman and had the oldest looking cat I had ever +seen, for its hair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> had grown into matted locks of yellowy white. She +farmed and had one old man-servant, but could not have farmed at all, had +not neighbouring farmers helped to gather in the crops, in return for the +loan of her farm implements and “out of respect for the family,” for as +Johnny MacGurk, the Sligo barber said to me, “the Yeats’s were always very +respectable.” She was full of family history; all her dinner knives were +pointed like daggers through much cleaning, and there was a little James +the First cream-jug with the Yeats motto and crest, and on her dining-room +mantle-piece a beautiful silver cup that had belonged to my +great-great-grandfather, who had married a certain Mary Butler. It had +upon it the Butler crest and had been already old at the date 1534, when +the initials of some bride and bridegroom were engraved under the lip. All +its history for generations was rolled up inside it upon a piece of paper +yellow with age, until some caller took the paper to light his pipe. +Another family of Yeats, a widow and her two children on whom I called +sometimes with my grandmother, lived near in a long low cottage, and owned +a very fierce turkeycock that did battle with their visitors; and some +miles away lived the secretary to the Grand Jury and Land Agent, my +great-uncle Mat Yeats and his big family of boys and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> girls; but I think +it was only in later years that I came to know them well. I do not think +any of these liked the Pollexfens, who were well off and seemed to them +purse-proud, whereas they themselves had come down in the world. I +remember them as very well-bred and very religious in the Evangelical way +and thinking a good deal of Aunt Micky’s old histories. There had been +among our ancestors a Kings County soldier, one of Marlborough’s generals, +and when his nephew came to dine he gave him boiled pork, and when the +nephew said he disliked boiled pork he had asked him to dine again and +promised him something he would like better. However, he gave him boiled +pork again and the nephew took the hint in silence. The other day as I was +coming home from America, I met one of his descendants whose family has +not another discoverable link with ours, and he too knew the boiled pork +story and nothing else. We have the General’s portrait, and he looks very +fine in his armour and his long curly wig, and underneath it, after his +name, are many honours that have left no tradition among us. Were we +country people, we could have summarised his life in a legend.</p> + +<p>Another ancestor or great-uncle had chased the United Irishmen for a +fortnight, fallen into their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> hands and been hanged, and the notorious +Major Sirr who betrayed the brothers Shears, taking their children upon +his knees to question them, if the tale does not lie, had been god-father +to several of my great-great-grandfather’s children; while to make a +balance, my great-grandfather had been Robert Emmett’s friend and been +suspected and imprisoned though but for a few hours. A great-uncle had +been Governor of Penang, and led the forlorn hope at the taking of +Rangoon, and an uncle of a still older generation had fallen at New +Orleans in 1813, and even in the last generation there had been lives of +some power and pleasure. An old man who had entertained many famous +people, in his 18th century house, where battlement and tower showed the +influence of Horace Walpole, had but lately, after losing all his money, +drowned himself, first taking off his rings and chain and watch as became +a collector of many beautiful things; and once to remind us of more +passionate life, a gun-boat put into Rosses, commanded by the illegitimate +son of some great-uncle or other. Now that I can look at their miniatures, +turning them over to find the name of soldier, or lawyer, or Castle +official, and wondering if they cared for good books or good music, I am +delighted with all that joins my life to those who had power in Ireland or +with those <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>anywhere that were good servants and poor bargainers, but I +cared nothing as a child for Micky’s tales. I could see my grandfather’s +ships come up the bay or the river, and his sailors treated me with +deference, and a ship’s carpenter made and mended my toy boats and I +thought that nobody could be so important as my grandfather. Perhaps, too, +it is only now that I can value those more gentle natures so unlike his +passion and violence. An old Sligo priest has told me how my +great-grandfather John Yeats always went into his kitchen rattling the +keys, so much did he fear finding some one doing wrong, and how when the +agent of the great landowner of his parish brought him from cottage to +cottage to bid the women send their children to the Protestant school and +all had promised till they came to one who cried, “child of mine will +never darken your door,” he had said “thank you, my woman, you are the +first honest woman I have met to-day.” My uncle, Mat Yeats, the Land +Agent, had once waited up every night for a week to catch some boys who +stole his apples and when he caught them had given them sixpence and told +them not to do it again. Perhaps it is only fancy or the softening touch +of the miniaturist that makes me discover in their faces some courtesy and +much gentleness. Two 18th century faces interest me the most, one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> that of +a great-great-grandfather, for both have under their powdered curling wigs +a half-feminine charm, and as I look at them I discover a something clumsy +and heavy in myself. Yet it was a Yeats who spoke the only eulogy that +turns my head. “We have ideas and no passions, but by marriage with a +Pollexfen we have given a tongue to the sea cliffs.”</p> + +<p>Among the miniatures there is a larger picture, an admirable drawing by I +know not what master, that is too harsh and merry for its company. He was +a connection and close friend of my great-grandmother Corbet, and though +we spoke of him as “Uncle Beattie” in our childhood, no blood relation. My +great-grandmother who died at ninety-three had many memories of him. He +was the friend of Goldsmith & was accustomed to boast, clergyman though he +was, that he belonged to a hunt-club of which every member but himself had +been hanged or transported for treason, and that it was not possible to +ask him a question he could not reply to with a perfectly appropriate +blasphemy or indecency.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>Because I had found it hard to attend to anything less interesting than my +thoughts, I was difficult to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> teach. Several of my uncles and aunts had +tried to teach me to read, and because they could not, and because I was +much older than children who read easily, had come to think, as I have +learnt since, that I had not all my faculties. But for an accident they +might have thought it for a long time. My father was staying in the house +and never went to church, and that gave me the courage to refuse to set +out one Sunday morning. I was often devout, my eyes filling with tears at +the thought of God and of my own sins, but I hated church. My grandmother +tried to teach me to put my toes first to the ground because I suppose I +stumped on my heels and that took my pleasure out of the way there. Later +on when I had learnt to read I took pleasure in the words of the hymn, but +never understood why the choir took three times as long as I did in +getting to the end; and the part of the service I liked, the sermon and +passages of the Apocalypse and Ecclesiastes, were no compensation for all +the repetitions and for the fatigue of so much standing. My father said if +I would not go to church he would teach me to read. I think now that he +wanted to make me go for my grandmother’s sake and could think of no other +way. He was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at +my head, and next Sunday I decided to go to church.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> My father had, +however, got interested in teaching me, and only shifted the lesson to a +week-day till he had conquered my wandering mind. My first clear image of +him was fixed on my imagination, I believe, but a few days before the +first lesson. He had just arrived from London and was walking up and down +the nursery floor. He had a very black beard and hair, and one cheek +bulged out with a fig that was there to draw the pain out of a bad tooth. +One of the nurses (a nurse had come from London with my brothers and +sisters) said to the other that a live frog, she had heard, was best of +all. Then I was sent to a dame school kept by an old woman who stood us in +rows and had a long stick like a billiard cue to get at the back rows. My +father was still at Sligo when I came back from my first lesson and asked +me what I had been taught. I said I had been taught to sing, and he said, +“sing then” and I sang</p> + +<p class="poem">“Little drops of water,<br /> +Little grains of sand,<br /> +Make the mighty ocean,<br /> +And the pleasant land”</p> + +<p>high up in my head. So my father wrote to the old woman that I was never +to be taught to sing again, and afterwards other teachers were told the +same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> thing. Presently my eldest sister came on a long visit and she and I +went to a little two-storeyed house in a poor street where an old +gentlewoman taught us spelling and grammar. When we had learned our lesson +well, we were allowed to look at a sword presented to her father who had +led troops in India or China and to spell out a long complimentary +inscription on the silver scabbard. As we walked to her house or home +again we held a large umbrella before us, both gripping the handle and +guiding ourselves by looking out of a round hole gnawed in the cover by a +mouse. When I had got beyond books of one syllable, I began to spend my +time in a room called the Library, though there were no books in it that I +can remember except some old novels I never opened and a many volumed +encyclopaedia published towards the end of the 18th century. I read this +encyclopaedia a great deal and can remember a long passage considering +whether fossil wood despite its appearance might not be only a curiously +shaped stone.</p> + +<p>My father’s unbelief had set me thinking about the evidences of religion +and I weighed the matter perpetually with great anxiety, for I did not +think I could live without religion. All my religious emotions were, I +think, connected with clouds and cloudy glimpses of luminous sky, perhaps +because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> of some bible picture of God’s speaking to Abraham or the like. +At least I can remember the sight moving me to tears. One day I got a +decisive argument for belief. A cow was about to calve, and I went to the +field where the cow was with some farm-hands who carried a lantern, and +next day I heard that the cow had calved in the early morning. I asked +everybody how calves were born, and because nobody would tell me, made up +my mind that nobody knew. They were the gift of God, that much was +certain, but it was plain that nobody had ever dared to see them come, and +children must come in the same way. I made up my mind that when I was a +man I would wait up till calf or child had come. I was certain there would +be a cloud and a burst of light and God would bring the calf in the cloud +out of the light. That thought made me content until a boy of twelve or +thirteen, who had come on a visit for the day, sat beside me in a hay-loft +and explained all the mechanism of sex. He had learnt all about it from an +elder boy whose pathic he was (to use a term he would not have understood) +and his description, given, as I can see now, as if he were telling of any +other fact of physical life, made me miserable for weeks. After the first +impression wore off, I began to doubt if he had spoken truth, but one day +I discovered a passage in the encyclopaedia, though I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> only partly +understood its long words, that confirmed what he had said. I did not know +enough to be shocked at his relation to the elder boy, but it was the +first breaking of the dream of childhood.</p> + +<p>My realization of death came when my father and mother and my two brothers +and my two sisters were on a visit. I was in the Library when I heard feet +running past and heard somebody say in the passage that my younger +brother, Robert, had died. He had been ill for some days. A little later +my sister and I sat at the table, very happy, drawing ships with their +flags half-mast high. We must have heard or seen that the ships in the +harbour had their flags at half-mast. Next day at breakfast I heard people +telling how my mother and the servant had heard the banshee crying the +night before he died. It must have been after this that I told my +grandmother I did not want to go with her when she went to see old +bed-ridden people because they would soon die.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>At length when I was eight or nine an aunt said to me, “you are going to +London. Here you are somebody. There you will be nobody at all.” I knew at +the time that her words were a blow at my father, not at me, but it was +some years before I knew her reason. She thought so able a man as my +father<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> could have found out some way of painting more popular pictures if +he had set his mind to it and that it was wrong of him “to spend every +evening at his club.” She had mistaken, for what she would have considered +a place of wantonness, Heatherley’s Art School.</p> + +<p>My mother and brother and sister were at Sligo perhaps when I was sent to +England, for my father and I and a group of landscape painters lodged at +Burnham Beeches with an old Mr. and Mrs. Earle. My father was painting the +first big pond you come to if you have driven from Slough through Farnham +Royal. He began it in spring and painted all through the year, the picture +changing with the seasons, and gave it up unfinished when he had painted +the snow upon the heath-covered banks. He is never satisfied and can never +make himself say that any picture is finished. In the evening he heard me +my lessons or read me some novel of Fenimore Cooper’s. I found delightful +adventures in the woods—one day a blind worm and an adder fighting in a +green hollow, and sometimes Mrs. Earle would be afraid to tidy the room +because I had put a bottle full of newts on the mantle-piece. Now and then +a boy from a farm on the other side of the road threw a pebble at my +window at daybreak, and he and I went fishing in the big second<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> pond. Now +and then another farmer’s boy and I shot sparrows with an old pepper box +revolver and the boy would roast them on a string. There was an old horse +one of the painters called the scaffolding, and sometimes a son of old +Earle’s drove with me to Slough and once to Windsor, and at Windsor we +made our lunch of cold sausages bought from a public house. I did not know +what it was to be alone, for I could wander in pleasant alarm through the +enclosed parts, then very large, or round some pond imagining ships going +in and out among the reeds and thinking of Sligo or of strange seafaring +adventures in the fine ship I should launch when I grew up. I had always a +lesson to learn before night and that was a continual misery, for I could +very rarely, with so much to remember, set my thoughts upon it and then +only in fear. One day my father told me that a painter had said I was very +thick-skinned and did not mind what was said to me, and I could not +understand how anybody could be so unjust. It made me wretched to be idle +but one could not help it. I was once surprised and shocked. All but my +father and myself had been to London, and Kennedy and Farrar and Page, I +remember the names vaguely, arrived laughing and talking. One of them had +carried off a card of texts from the waiting room of the station and hung +it up on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> wall. I thought “he has stolen it,” but my father and all +made it a theme of merry conversation.</p> + +<p>Then I returned to Sligo for a few weeks as I was to do once or twice in +every year for years, and after that we settled in London. Perhaps my +mother and the other children had been there all the time, for I remember +my father now and again going to London. The first house we lived in was +close to Burne Jones’s house at North End, but we moved after a year or +two to Bedford Park. At North End we had a pear tree in the garden and +plenty of pears, but the pears used to be full of maggots, and almost +opposite lived a school-master called O’Neill, and when a little boy told +me that the school-master’s great-grandfather had been a king I did not +doubt it. I was sitting against the hedge and iron railing of some +villa-garden there, when I heard one boy say to another it was something +wrong with my liver that gave me such a dark complexion and that I could +not live more than a year. I said to myself a year is a very long time, +one can do such a lot of things in a year, and put it out of my head. When +my father gave me a holiday and later when I had a holiday from school I +took my schooner boat to the round pond, sailing it very commonly against +the two cutter yachts of an old naval officer. He would sometimes look at +the ducks and say, “I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> would like to take that fellow home for my dinner,” +and he sang me a sailor’s song about a coffin ship which left Sligo after +the great famine, that made me feel very important. The servants at Sligo +had told me the story. When she was moved from the berth she had lain in, +an unknown dead man’s body had floated up, a very evil omen; and my +grandfather, who was Lloyds’ agent, had condemned her, but she slipped out +in the night. The pond had its own legends; and a boy who had seen a +certain model steamer “burned to the water’s edge” was greatly valued as a +friend. There was a little boy I was kind to because I knew his father had +done something disgraceful, though I did not know what. It was years +before I discovered that his father was but the maker of certain popular +statues, many of which are now in public places. I had heard my father’s +friends speak of him. Sometimes my sister came with me, and we would look +into all the sweet shops & toy shops on our way home, especially into one +opposite Holland House because there was a cutter yacht made of sugar in +the window, and we drank at all the fountains. Once a stranger spoke to us +and bought us sweets and came with us almost to our door. We asked him to +come in and told him our father’s name. He would not come in, but laughed +and said, “Oh, that is the painter who <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>scrapes out every day what he +painted the day before.” A poignant memory came upon me the other day +while I was passing the drinking-fountain near Holland Park, for there I +and my sister had spoken together of our longing for Sligo and our hatred +of London. I know we were both very close to tears and remember with +wonder, for I had never known anyone that cared for such momentoes, that I +longed for a sod of earth from some field I knew, something of Sligo to +hold in my hand. It was some old race instinct like that of a savage, for +we had been brought up to laugh at all display of emotion. Yet it was our +mother, who would have thought its display a vulgarity, who kept alive +that love. She would spend hours listening to stories or telling stories +of the pilots and fishing people of Rosses Point, or of her own Sligo +girlhood, and it was always assumed between her and us that Sligo was more +beautiful than other places. I can see now that she had great depth of +feeling, that she was her father’s daughter. My memory of what she was +like in those days has grown very dim, but I think her sense of +personality, her desire of any life of her own, had disappeared in her +care for us and in much anxiety about money. I always see her sewing or +knitting in spectacles and wearing some plain dress. Yet ten years ago +when I was in San Francisco,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> an old cripple came to see me who had left +Sligo before her marriage; he came to tell me, he said, that my mother +“had been the most beautiful girl in Sligo.”</p> + +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/mrs_yeats.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><i>Mrs. Yeats</i><br /> +<i>from a drawing by J. B. Yeats made in 1867</i></p> +<p> </p> + +<p>The only lessons I had ever learned were those my father taught me, for he +terrified me by descriptions of my moral degradation and he humiliated me +by my likeness to disagreeable people; but presently I was sent to school +at Hammersmith. It was a Gothic building of yellow brick: a large hall +full of desks, some small class-rooms and a separate house for boarders, +all built perhaps in 1840 or 1850. I thought it an ancient building and +that it had belonged to the founder of the school, Lord Godolphin, who was +romantic to me because there was a novel about him. I never read the +novel, but I thought only romantic people were put in books. On one side, +there was a piano factory of yellow brick, upon two sides half finished +rows of little shops and villas all yellow brick, and on the fourth side, +outside the wall of our playing field, a brickfield of cinders and piles +of half-burned yellow bricks. All the names and faces of my school-fellows +have faded from me except one name without a face and the face and name of +one friend, mainly no doubt because it was all so long ago, but partly +because I only seem to remember things that have mixed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> themselves up with +scenes that have some quality to bring them again and again before the +memory. For some days, as I walked homeward along the Hammersmith Road, I +told myself that whatever I most cared for had been taken away. I had +found a small, green-covered book given to my father by a Dublin man of +science; it gave an account of the strange sea creatures the man of +science had discovered among the rocks at Howth or dredged out of Dublin +Bay. It had long been my favourite book; and when I read it I believed +that I was growing very wise, but now I should have no time for it nor for +my own thoughts. Every moment would be taken up learning or saying lessons +or walking between school and home four times a day, for I came home in +the middle of the day for dinner. But presently I forgot my trouble, +absorbed in two things I had never known, companionship and enmity. After +my first day’s lesson, a circle of boys had got around me in a playing +field and asked me questions, “who’s your father?” “what does he do?” “how +much money has he?” Presently a boy said something insulting. I had never +struck anybody or been struck, and now all in a minute, without any +intention upon my side, but as if I had been a doll moved by a string, I +was hitting at the boys within reach and being hit. After that I was +called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> names for being Irish, and had many fights and never, for years, +got the better of any one of them; for I was delicate and had no muscles. +Sometimes, however, I found means of retaliation, even of aggression. +There was a boy with a big stride, much feared by little boys, and finding +him alone in the playing field, I went up to him and said, “rise upon +Sugaun and sink upon Gad.” “What does that mean?” he said. “Rise upon +hay-leg and sink upon straw,” I answered and told him that in Ireland the +sergeant tied straw and hay to the ankles of a stupid recruit to show him +the difference between his legs. My ears were boxed, and when I complained +to my friends, they said I had brought it upon myself; and that I deserved +all I got. I probably dared myself to other feats of a like sort, for I +did not think English people intelligent or well-behaved unless they were +artists. Everyone I knew well in Sligo despised Nationalists and +Catholics, but all disliked England with a prejudice that had come down +perhaps from the days of the Irish Parliament. I knew stories to the +discredit of England, and took them all seriously. My mother had met some +English woman who did not like Dublin because the legs of the men were too +straight, and at Sligo, as everybody knew, an Englishman had once said to +a car-driver, “if you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> people were not so lazy, you would pull down the +mountain and spread it out over the sand and that would give you acres of +good fields.” At Sligo there is a wide river mouth and at ebb tide most of +it is dry sand, but all Sligo knew that in some way I cannot remember it +was the spreading of the tide over the sand that left the narrow channel +fit for shipping. At any rate the carman had gone chuckling all over Sligo +with his tale. People would tell it to prove that Englishmen were always +grumbling. “They grumble about their dinners and everything—there was an +Englishman who wanted to pull down Knock-na-Rea” and so on. My mother had +shown them to me kissing at railway stations, and taught me to feel +disgust at their lack of reserve, and my father told how my grandfather, +William Yeats, who had died before I was born, when he came home to his +Rectory in County Down from an English visit, spoke of some man he had met +on a coach road who “Englishman-like” told him all his affairs. My father +explained that an Englishman generally believed that his private affairs +did him credit, while an Irishman, being poor and probably in debt, had no +such confidence. I, however, did not believe in this explanation. My Sligo +nurses, who had in all likelihood the Irish Catholic political hatred, had +never spoken well of any Englishman.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>Once when walking in the town of Sligo I had turned to look after an +English man and woman whose clothes attracted me. The man I remember had +gray clothes and knee-breeches and the woman a gray dress, and my nurse +had said contemptuously, “towrows.” Perhaps before my time, there had been +some English song with the burden “tow row row,” and everybody had told me +that English people ate skates and even dog-fish, and I myself had only +just arrived in England when I saw an old man put marmalade in his +porridge. I was divided from all those boys, not merely by the anecdotes +that are everywhere perhaps a chief expression of the distrust of races, +but because our mental images were different. I read their boys’ books and +they excited me, but if I read of some English victory, I did not believe +that I read of my own people. They thought of Cressy and Agincourt and the +Union Jack and were all very patriotic, and I, without those memories of +Limerick and the Yellow Ford that would have strengthened an Irish +Catholic, thought of mountain and lake, of my grandfather and of ships. +Anti-Irish feeling was running high, for the Land League had been founded +and landlords had been shot, and I, who had no politics, was yet full of +pride, for it is romantic to live in a dangerous country.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>I daresay I thought the rough manners of a cheap school, as my grandfather +Yeats had those of a chance companion, typical of all England. At any rate +I had a harassed life & got many a black eye and had many outbursts of +grief and rage. Once a boy, the son of a great Bohemian glass-maker, and +who was older than the rest of us, and had been sent out of his country +because of a love affair, beat a boy for me because we were “both +foreigners.” And a boy, who grew to be the school athlete and my chief +friend, beat a great many. His are the face and name that I remember—his +name was of Huguenot origin and his face like his gaunt and lithe body had +something of the American Indian in colour and lineament.</p> + +<p>I was very much afraid of the other boys, and that made me doubt myself +for the first time. When I had gathered pieces of wood in the corner for +my great ship, I was confident that I could keep calm among the storms and +die fighting when the great battle came. But now I was ashamed of my lack +of courage; for I wanted to be like my grandfather who thought so little +of danger that he had jumped overboard in the Bay of Biscay after an old +hat. I was very much afraid of physical pain, and one day when I had made +some noise in class, my friend the athlete was accused and I allowed him +to get two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> strokes of the cane before I gave myself up. He had held out +his hands without flinching and had not rubbed them on his sides +afterwards. I was not caned, but was made to stand up for the rest of the +lesson. I suffered very much afterwards when the thought came to me, but +he did not reproach me.</p> + +<p>I had been some years at school before I had my last fight. My friend, the +athlete, had given me many months of peace, but at last refused to beat +any more and said I must learn to box, and not go near the other boys till +I knew how. I went home with him every day and boxed in his room, and the +bouts had always the same ending. My excitability gave me an advantage at +first and I would drive him across the room, and then he would drive me +across and it would end very commonly with my nose bleeding. One day his +father, an elderly banker, brought us out into the garden and tried to +make us box in a cold-blooded, courteous way, but it was no use. At last +he said I might go near the boys again and I was no sooner inside the gate +of the playing field than a boy flung a handful of mud and cried out “mad +Irishman.” I hit him several times on the face without being hit, till the +boys round said we should make friends. I held out my hand in fear; for I +knew if we went on I should be beaten, and he took it sullenly. I had so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> +poor a reputation as a fighter that it was a great disgrace to him, and +even the masters made fun of his swollen face; and though some little boys +came in a deputation to ask me to lick a boy they named, I had never +another fight with a school-fellow. We had a great many fights with the +street boys and the boys of a neighbouring charity school. We had always +the better because we were not allowed to fling stones, and that compelled +us to close or do our best to close. The monitors had been told to report +any boy who fought in the street, but they only reported those who flung +stones. I always ran at the athlete’s heels, but I never hit anyone. My +father considered these fights absurd, and even that they were an English +absurdity, and so I could not get angry enough to like hitting and being +hit; and then too my friend drove the enemy before him. He had no doubts +or speculations to lighten his fist upon an enemy, that, being of low +behaviour, should be beaten as often as possible, and there were real +wrongs to avenge: one of our boys had been killed by the blow of a stone +hid in a snowball. Sometimes we on our side got into trouble with the +parents of boys. There was a quarrel between the athlete and an old German +who had a barber’s shop we passed every day on our way home, and one day +he spat through the window and hit the German on his bald<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> head—the +monitors had not forbidden spitting. The German ran after us, but when the +athlete squared up he went away. Now, though I knew it was not right to +spit at people, my admiration for my friend arose to a great height. I +spread his fame over the school, and next day there was a fine stir when +somebody saw the old German going up the gravel walk to the head-master’s +room. Presently there was such a noise in the passage that even the master +had to listen. It was the head-master’s red-haired brother turning the old +German out and shouting to the man-servant “see that he doesn’t steal the +top-coats.” We heard afterwards that he had asked the names of the two +boys who passed his window every day and been told the names of the two +head boys who passed also but were notoriously gentlemanly in their +manners. Yet my friend was timid also and that restored my confidence in +myself. He would often ask me to buy the sweets or the ginger-beer because +he was afraid sometimes when speaking to a stranger.</p> + +<p>I had one reputation that I valued. At first when I went to the +Hammersmith swimming-baths with the other boys, I was afraid to plunge in +until I had gone so far down the ladder that the water came up to my +thighs; but one day when I was alone I fell from the spring-board which +was five or six feet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> above the water. After that I would dive from a +greater height than the others and I practised swimming under water and +pretending not to be out of breath when I came up. And then if I ran a +race, I took care not to pant or show any sign of strain. And in this I +had an advantage even over the athlete; for though he could run faster and +was harder to tire than anybody else, he grew very pale and I was often +paid compliments. I used to run with my friend when he was training to +keep him in company. He would give me a long start and soon overtake me.</p> + +<p>I followed the career of a certain professional runner for months, buying +papers that would tell me if he had won or lost. I had seen him described +as “the bright particular star of American athletics,” and the wonderful +phrase had thrown enchantment over him. Had he been called the particular +bright star, I should have cared nothing for him. I did not understand the +symptom for years after. I was nursing my own dream, my form of the common +school-boy dream, though I was no longer gathering the little pieces of +broken and rotting wood. Often, instead of learning my lesson, I covered +the white squares of the chessboard on my little table with pen and ink +pictures of myself, doing all kinds of courageous things. One day my +father said “there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> was a man in Nelson’s ship at the battle of Trafalgar, +a ship’s purser, whose hair turned white; what a sensitive temperament; +that man should have achieved something!” I was vexed and bewildered, and +am still bewildered and still vexed, finding it a poor and crazy thing +that we who have imagined so many noble persons cannot bring our flesh to +heel.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>The head-master was a clergyman, a good-humoured, easy-going man, as +temperate, one had no doubt, in his religious life as in all else, and if +he ever lost sleep on our account, it was from a very proper anxiety as to +our gentility. I was in disgrace once because I went to school in some +brilliant blue homespun serge my mother had bought in Devonshire, and I +was told I must never wear it again. He had tried several times, though he +must have known it was hopeless, to persuade our parents to put us into +Eton clothes, and on certain days we were compelled to wear gloves. After +my first year, we were forbidden to play marbles because it was a form of +gambling and was played by nasty little boys, and a few months later told +not to cross our legs in class. It was a school for the sons of +professional men who had failed or were at the outset of their career, and +the boys held an indignation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> meeting when they discovered that a new boy +was an apothecary’s son (I think at first I was his only friend,) and we +all pretended that our parents were richer than they were. I told a little +boy who had often seen my mother knitting or mending my clothes that she +only mended or knitted because she liked it, though I knew it was +necessity.</p> + +<p>It was like, I suppose, most schools of its type, an obscene, bullying +place, where a big boy would hit a small boy in the wind to see him double +up, and where certain boys, too young for any emotion of sex, would sing +the dirty songs of the street, but I daresay it suited me better than a +better school. I have heard the head-master say, “how has so-and-so done +in his Greek?” and the class-master reply, “very badly, but he is doing +well in his cricket,” and the head-master has gone away saying “Oh, leave +him alone.” I was unfitted for school work, and though I would often work +well for weeks together, I had to give the whole evening to one lesson if +I was to know it. My thoughts were a great excitement, but when I tried to +do anything with them, it was like trying to pack a balloon into a shed in +a high wind. I was always near the bottom of my class, and always making +excuses that but added to my timidity; but no master was rough with me. I +was known to collect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> moths and butterflies and to get into no worse +mischief than hiding now and again an old tailless white rat in my +coat-pocket or my desk. There was but one interruption of our quiet +habits, the brief engagement of an Irish master, a fine Greek scholar and +vehement teacher, but of fantastic speech. He would open the class by +saying, “there he goes, there he goes,” or some like words as the +head-master passed by at the end of the hall. “Of course this school is no +good. How could it be with a clergyman for head-master?” And then perhaps +his eye would light on me, and he would make me stand up and tell me it +was a scandal I was so idle when all the world knew that any Irish boy was +cleverer than a whole class-room of English boys, a description I had to +pay for afterwards. Sometimes he would call up a little boy who had a +girl’s face and kiss him upon both cheeks and talk of taking him to Greece +in the holidays, and presently we heard he had written to the boy’s +parents about it, but long before the holidays he was dismissed.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p>Two pictures come into my memory. I have climbed to the top of a tree by +the edge of the playing field, and am looking at my school-fellows and am +as proud of myself as a March cock when it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> crows to its first sunrise. I +am saying to myself, “if when I grow up I am as clever among grown-up men +as I am among these boys, I shall be a famous man.” I remind myself how +they think all the same things and cover the school walls at election +times with the opinions their fathers find in the newspapers. I remind +myself that I am an artist’s son and must take some work as the whole end +of life and not think as the others do of becoming well off and living +pleasantly. The other picture is of a hotel sitting-room in the Strand, +where a man is hunched up over the fire. He is a cousin who has speculated +with another cousin’s money and has fled from Ireland in danger of arrest. +My father has brought us to spend the evening with him, to distract him +from the remorse my father knows that he must be suffering.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>VIII</h3> + +<p>For years Bedford Park was a romantic excitement. At North End my father +had announced at breakfast that our glass chandelier was absurd and was to +be taken down, and a little later he described the village Norman Shaw was +building. I had thought he said, “there is to be a wall round and no +newspapers to be allowed in.” And when I had told him how put out I was at +finding neither wall nor gate,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> he explained that he had merely described +what ought to be. We were to see De Morgan tiles, peacock-blue doors and +the pomegranate pattern and the tulip pattern of Morris, and to discover +that we had always hated doors painted with imitation grain and the roses +of mid-Victoria, and tiles covered with geometrical patterns that seemed +to have been shaken out of a muddy kaleidoscope. We went to live in a +house like those we had seen in pictures and even met people dressed like +people in the storybooks. The streets were not straight and dull as at +North End, but wound about where there was a big tree or for the mere +pleasure of winding, and there were wood palings instead of iron railings. +The newness of everything, the empty houses where we played at +hide-and-seek, and the strangeness of it all, made us feel that we were +living among toys. We could imagine people living happy lives as we +thought people did long ago when the poor were picturesque and the master +of a house would tell of strange adventures over the sea. Only the better +houses had been built. The commercial builder had not begun to copy and to +cheapen, and besides we only knew the most beautiful houses, the houses of +artists. My two sisters and my brother and myself had dancing lessons in a +low, red-brick and tiled house that drove away dreams, long cherished, of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>some day living in a house made exactly like a ship’s cabin. The +dining-room table, where Sinbad the sailor might have sat, was painted +peacock-blue, and the woodwork was all peacock-blue and upstairs there was +a window niche so big and high up, there was a flight of steps to go up +and down by and a table in the niche. The two sisters of the master of the +house, a well-known pre-Raphaelite painter, were our teachers, and they +and their old mother were dressed in peacock-blue and in dresses so simply +cut that they seemed a part of every story. Once when I had been looking +with delight at the old woman, my father who had begun to be influenced by +French art, muttered, “imagine dressing up your old mother like that.”</p> + +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/mr_yeats.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><i>John Butler Yeats</i><br /><i>from a watercolour drawing by himself</i></p> +<p> </p> + +<p>My father’s friends were painters who had been influenced by the +pre-Raphaelite movement but had lost their confidence. Wilson, Page, +Nettleship, Potter are the names I remember, and at North End, I remember +them most clearly. I often heard one and another say that Rossetti had +never mastered his materials, and though Nettleship had already turned +lion-painter, my father talked constantly of the designs of his youth, +especially of “God creating Evil,” which Browning praised in a letter my +father had seen “as the most sublime<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> conception in ancient or modern +Art.” In those early days, that he might not be tempted from his work by +society, he had made a rent in the tail of his coat; and I have heard my +mother tell how she had once sewn it up, but before he came again he had +pulled out all the stitches. Potter’s exquisite “Dormouse,” now in the +Tate Gallery, hung in our house for years. His dearest friend was a pretty +model who was, when my memory begins, working for some position in a +board-school. I can remember her sitting at the side of the throne in the +North End Studio, a book in her hand and my father hearing her say a Latin +lesson. Her face was the typical mild, oval face of the painting of that +time, and may indeed have helped in the moulding of an ideal of beauty. I +found it the other day drawn in pencil on a blank leaf of a volume of the +“Earthly Paradise.” It was at Bedford Park that I had heard Farrar, whom I +had first known at Burnham Beeches, tell of Potter’s death and burial. +Potter had been very poor and had died from the effects of +semi-starvation. He had lived so long on bread and tea that his stomach +withered—I am sure that was the word used, and when his relations found +out and gave him good food, it was too late. Farrar had been at the +funeral and had stood behind some well-to-do people who were close about +the grave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> and saw one point to the model, who had followed the hearse on +foot and was now crying at a distance, and say, “that is the woman who had +all his money.” She had often begged him to allow her to pay his debts, +but he would not have it. Probably his rich friends blamed his poor +friends, and they the rich, and I daresay, nobody had known enough to help +him. Besides, he had a strange form of dissipation, I had heard someone +say; he was devoted to children, and would become interested in some +child—his “Dormouse” is a portrait of a child—and spend his money on its +education. My sister remembers seeing him paint with a dark glove on his +right hand, and his saying that he had used so much varnish the reflection +of the hand would have teased him but for the glove. “I will soon have to +paint my face some dark colour,” he added. I have no memory, however, but +of noticing that he sat at the easel, whereas my father always stands and +walks up and down, and that there was dark blue, a colour that always +affects me, in the background of his picture. There is a public gallery of +Wilson’s work in his native Aberdeen and my sisters have a number of his +landscapes—wood-scenes for the most part—painted with phlegm and +melancholy, the romantic movement drawing to its latest phase.</p> + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p> +<h3>IX</h3> + +<p>My father read out to me, for the first time, when I was eight or nine +years old. Between Sligo and Rosses Point, there is a tongue of land +covered with coarse grass that runs out into the sea or the mud according +to the state of the tide. It is the place where dead horses are buried. +Sitting there, my father read me “The Lays of Ancient Rome.” It was the +first poetry that had moved me after the stable-boy’s “Orange Rhymes.” +Later on he read me “Ivanhoe” and “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” and they +are still vivid in the memory. I re-read “Ivanhoe” the other day, but it +has all vanished except Gurth, the swineherd, at the outset and Friar Tuck +and his venison pasty, the two scenes that laid hold of me in childhood. +“The Lay of the Last Minstrel” gave me a wish to turn magician that +competed for years with the dream of being killed upon the sea-shore. When +I first went to school, he tried to keep me from reading boys’ papers, +because a paper, by its very nature, as he explained to me, had to be made +for the average boy or man and so could not but thwart one’s growth. He +took away my paper and I had not courage to say that I was but reading and +delighting in a prose re-telling of the Iliad. But after a few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> months, my +father said he had been too anxious and became less urgent about my +lessons and less violent if I had learnt them badly, and he ceased to +notice what I read. From that on I shared the excitement which ran through +all my fellows on Wednesday afternoons when the boys’ papers were +published, and I read endless stories I have forgotten as completely as +Grimm’s Fairy Tales that I read at Sligo, and all of Hans Andersen except +the Ugly Duckling which my mother had read to me and to my sisters. I +remember vaguely that I liked Hans Andersen better than Grimm because he +was less homely, but even he never gave me the knights and dragons and +beautiful ladies that I longed for. I have remembered nothing that I read, +but only those things that I heard or saw. When I was ten or twelve my +father took me to see Irving play Hamlet, and did not understand why I +preferred Irving to Ellen Terry, who was, I can now see, the idol of +himself and his friends. I could not think of her, as I could of Irving’s +Hamlet, as but myself, and I was not old enough to care for feminine charm +and beauty. For many years Hamlet was an image of heroic self-possession +for the poses of youth and childhood to copy, a combatant of the battle +within myself. My father had read me the story of the little boy murdered +by the Jews in Chaucer and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> tale of Sir Topaz, explaining the hard +words, and though both excited me, I had liked Sir Topaz best and been +disappointed that it left off in the middle. As I grew older, he would +tell me plots of Balzac’s novels, using incident or character as an +illustration for some profound criticism of life. Now that I have read all +the Comédie Humaine, certain pages have an unnatural emphasis, straining +and overbalancing the outline, and I remember how in some suburban street, +he told me of Lucien de Rubempré, or of the duel after the betrayal of his +master, and how the wounded Lucien had muttered “so much the worse” when +he heard someone say that he was not dead.</p> + +<p>I now can but share with a friend my thoughts and my emotions, and there +is a continual discovery of difference, but in those days, before I had +found myself, we could share adventures. When friends plan and do +together, their minds become one mind and the last secret disappears. I +was useless at games. I cannot remember that I ever kicked a goal or made +a run, but I was a mine of knowledge when I and the athlete and those two +notoriously gentlemanly boys—theirs was the name that I remember without +a face—set out for Richmond Park, for Coomb Wood or Twyford Abbey to look +for butterflies and moths and beetles. Sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> to-day I meet people at +lunch or dinner whose address will sound familiar and I remember of a +sudden how a game-keeper chased me from the plantation behind their house, +and how I have turned over the cow-dung in their paddock in the search for +some rare beetle believed to haunt the spot. The athlete was our watchman +and our safety. He would suggest, should we meet a carriage on the drive, +that we take off our hats and walk on as though about to pay a call. And +once when we were sighted by a game-keeper at Coomb Wood, he persuaded the +eldest of the brothers to pretend to be a school-master taking his boys +for a walk, and the keeper, instead of swearing and threatening the law, +was sad and argumentative. No matter how charming the place, (and there is +a little stream in a hollow where Wimbledon Common flows into Coomb Wood +that is pleasant in the memory,) I knew that those other boys saw +something I did not see. I was a stranger there. There was something in +their way of saying the names of places that made me feel this.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>X</h3> + +<p>When I arrived at the Clarence Basin, Liverpool, (the dock Clarence Mangan +had his first name from) on my way to Sligo for my holidays I was among +Sligo people. When I was a little boy, an old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> woman who had come to +Liverpool with crates of fowl, made me miserable by throwing her arms +around me the moment I had alighted from my cab and telling the sailor who +carried my luggage that she had held me in her arms when I was a baby. The +sailor may have known me almost as well, for I was often at Sligo quay to +sail my boat; and I came and went once or twice in every year upon the ss. +<i>Sligo</i> or the ss. <i>Liverpool</i> which belonged to a company that had for +directors my grandfather and his partner William Middleton. I was always +pleased if it was the <i>Liverpool</i>, for she had been built to run the +blockade during the war of North and South.</p> + +<p>I waited for this voyage always with excitement and boasted to other boys +about it, and when I was a little boy had walked with my feet apart as I +had seen sailors walk. I used to be sea-sick, but I must have hidden this +from the other boys and partly even from myself; for, as I look back, I +remember very little about it, while I remember stories I was told by the +captain or by his first mate, and the look of the great cliffs of Donegal +& Tory Island men coming alongside with lobsters, talking Irish and, if it +was night, blowing on a burning sod to draw our attention. The captain, an +old man with square shoulders and a fringe of grey hair round his face, +would tell his first mate, a very admiring man, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> fights he had had on +shore at Liverpool; and perhaps it was of him I was thinking when I was +very small and asked my grandmother if God was as strong as sailors. Once, +at any rate, he had been nearly wrecked; the <i>Liverpool</i> had been all but +blown upon the Mull of Galloway with her shaft broken, and the captain had +said to his mate, “mind and jump when she strikes, for we don’t want to be +killed by the falling spars;” and when the mate answered, “my God, I +cannot swim,” he had said, “who could keep afloat for five minutes in a +sea like that?” He would often say his mate was the most timid of men and +that “a girl along the quays could laugh him out of anything.” My +grandfather had more than once given the mate a ship of his own, but he +had always thrown up his berth to sail with his old captain where he felt +safe. Once he had been put in charge of a ship in a dry dock in Liverpool, +but a boy was drowned in Sligo, and before the news could reach him he +wired to his wife, “ghost, come at once, or I will throw up berth.” He had +been wrecked a number of times and maybe that had broken his nerve or +maybe he had a sensitiveness that would in another class have given him +taste & culture. I once forgot a copy of “Count Robert of Paris” on a +deck-seat, and when I found it again, it was all covered with the prints +of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> his dirty thumb. He had once seen the coach-a-baur or death coach. It +came along the road, he said, till it was hidden by a cottage and it never +came out on the other side of the cottage. Once I smelled new-mown hay +when we were quite a long way from land, and once when I was watching the +sea-parrots (as the sailors call the puffin) I noticed they had different +ways of tucking their heads under their wings, or I fancied it and said to +the captain “they have different characters.” Sometimes my father came +too, and the sailors when they saw him coming would say “there is John +Yeats and we shall have a storm,” for he was considered unlucky.</p> + +<p>I no longer cared for little shut-in-places, for a coppice against the +stable-yard at Merville where my grandfather lived or against the gable at +Seaview where Aunt Micky lived, and I began to climb the mountains, +sometimes with the stable-boy for companion, and to look up their stories +in the county history. I fished for trout with a worm in the mountain +streams and went out herring-fishing at night: and because my grandfather +had said the English were in the right to eat skates, I carried a large +skate all the six miles or so from Rosses Point, but my grandfather did +not eat it.</p> + +<p>One night just as the equinoctial gales were coming when I was sailing +home in the coastguard’s boat a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> boy told me a beetle of solid gold, +strayed maybe from Poe’s “gold bug,” had been seen by somebody in Scotland +and I do not think that either of us doubted his news. Indeed, so many +stories did I hear from sailors along the wharf, or round the fo’castle +fire of the little steamer that ran between Sligo and Rosses, or from boys +out fishing that the world was full of monsters and marvels. The foreign +sailors wearing ear-rings did not tell me stories, but like the fishing +boys, I gazed at them in wonder and admiration. When I look at my +brother’s picture, “Memory Harbour,” houses and anchored ship and distant +lighthouse all set close together as in some old map, I recognize in the +blue-coated man with the mass of white shirt the pilot I went fishing +with, and I am full of disquiet and of excitement, and I am melancholy +because I have not made more and better verses. I have walked on Sinbad’s +yellow shore and never shall another hit my fancy.</p> + +<p>I had still my red pony, and once my father came with me riding too, and +was very exacting. He was indignant and threatening because he did not +think I rode well. “You must do everything well,” he said, “that the +Pollexfens respect, though you must do other things also.” He used to say +the same about my lessons, and tell me to be good at <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>mathematics. I can +see now that he had a sense of inferiority among those energetic, +successful people. He himself, some Pollexfen told me, though he rode very +badly, would go hunting upon anything and take any ditch. His father, the +County Down Rector, though a courtly man and a scholar, had been so +dandified a horseman that I had heard of his splitting three riding +breeches before he had settled into his saddle for a day’s hunting, and of +his first rector exclaiming, “I had hoped for a curate but they have sent +me a jockey.”</p> + +<p>Left to myself, I rode without ambition though getting many falls, and +more often to Rathbroughan where my great-uncle Mat lived, than to any +place else. His children and I used to sail our toy-boats in the river +before his house, arming them with toy-cannon, touch-paper at all the +touch-holes, always hoping but always in vain that they would not twist +about in the eddies but fire their cannon at one another. I must have gone +to Sligo sometimes in the Christmas holidays, for I can remember riding my +red pony to a hunt. He balked at the first jump, to my relief, and when a +crowd of boys began to beat him, I would not allow it. They all jeered at +me for being afraid. I found a gap and when I was alone in a field tried +another ditch, but the pony would not jump that either; so I tied him to a +tree<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> and lay down among the ferns and looked up into the sky. On my way +home I met the hunt again and noticed that everybody avoided the dogs, and +because I wanted to find out why they did so I rode to where the dogs had +gathered in the middle of the lane and stood my pony amongst them, and +everybody began to shout at me.</p> + +<p>Sometimes I would ride to Castle Dargan, where lived a brawling squireen, +married to one of my Middleton cousins, and once I went thither on a visit +with my cousin George Middleton. It was, I dare say, the last household +where I could have found the reckless Ireland of a hundred years ago in +final degradation. But I liked the place for the romance of its two ruined +castles facing one another across a little lake, Castle Dargan and Castle +Fury. The squireen lived in a small house whither his family had moved +from their castle some time in the 18th century, and two old Miss Furys, +who let lodgings in Sligo, were the last remnants of the breed of the +other ruin. Once in every year he drove to Sligo for the two old women, +that they might look upon the ancestral stones and remember their +gentility, and he would put his wildest horses into the shafts to enjoy +their terror.</p> + +<p>He himself, with a reeling imagination, knew not what he could be at to +find a spur for the heavy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> hours. The first day I came there, he gave my +cousin a revolver, (we were upon the high road,) and to show it off, or +his own shooting, he shot a passing chicken; and half an hour later, when +he had brought us to the lake’s edge under his castle, now but the broken +corner of a tower with a winding stair, he fired at or over an old +countryman who was walking on the far edge of the lake. The next day I +heard him settling the matter with the old countryman over a bottle of +whiskey, and both were in good humour. Once he had asked a timid aunt of +mine if she would like to see his last new pet, and thereupon had marched +a race-horse in through the hall door and round the dining-room table. And +once she came down to a bare table because he had thought it a good joke +to open the window and let his harriers eat the breakfast. There was a +current story, too, of his shooting, in the pride of his marksmanship, at +his own door with a Martini-Henry rifle till he had shot the knocker off. +At last he quarrelled with my great-uncle William Middleton, and to avenge +himself gathered a rabble of wild country-lads and mounted them and +himself upon the most broken-down rascally horses he could lay hands on +and marched them through Sligo under a land-league banner. After that, +having neither friends nor money, he made off to Australia or to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> Canada. +I fished for pike at Castle Dargan and shot at birds with a muzzle-loading +pistol until somebody shot a rabbit and I heard it squeal. From that on I +would kill nothing but the dumb fish.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XI</h3> + +<p>We left Bedford Park for a long thatched house at Howth, Co. Dublin. The +land war was now at its height and our Kildare land, that had been in the +family for many generations, was slipping from us. Rents had fallen more +and more, we had to sell to pay some charge or mortgage, but my father and +his tenants parted without ill-will. During the worst times an old tenant +had under his roof my father’s shooting-dog and gave it better care than +the annual payment earned. He had set apart for its comfort the best place +at the fire; and if some man were in the place when the dog walked into +the house, the man must needs make room for the dog. And a good while +after the sale, I can remember my father being called upon to settle some +dispute between this old man and his sons.</p> + +<p>I was now fifteen; and as he did not want to leave his painting my father +told me to go to Harcourt Street and put myself to school. I found a bleak +18th century house and a small playing-field full of mud and pebbles, +fenced by an iron railing from a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> wide 18th century street, but opposite a +long hoarding and a squalid, ornamental railway station. Here, as I soon +found, nobody gave a thought to decorum. We worked in a din of voices. We +began the morning with prayers, but when class began the head-master, if +he was in the humour, would laugh at Church and Clergy. “Let them say what +they like,” he would say, “but the earth does go round the sun.” On the +other hand there was no bullying and I had not thought it possible that +boys could work so hard. Cricket and football, the collection of moths and +butterflies, though not forbidden, were discouraged. They were for idle +boys. I did not know, as I used to, the mass of my school-fellows; for we +had little life in common outside the class-rooms. I had begun to think of +my school-work as an interruption of my natural history studies, but even +had I never opened a book not in the school course, I could not have +learned a quarter of my night’s work. I had always done Euclid easily, +making the problems out while the other boys were blundering at the +blackboard, and it had often carried me from the bottom to the top of my +class; but these boys had the same natural gift and instead of being in +the fourth or fifth book were in the modern books at the end of the +primer; and in place of a dozen lines of Virgil with a dictionary,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> I was +expected to learn with the help of a crib a hundred and fifty lines. The +other boys were able to learn the translation off, and to remember what +words of Latin and English corresponded with one another, but I, who it +may be had tried to find out what happened in the parts we had not read, +made ridiculous mistakes; and what could I, who never worked when I was +not interested, do with a history lesson that was but a column of seventy +dates? I was worst of all at literature, for we read Shakespeare for his +grammar exclusively.</p> + +<p>One day I had a lucky thought. A great many lessons were run through in +the last hour of the day, things we had learnt or should have learnt by +heart over night, and after not having known one of them for weeks, I cut +off that hour without anybody’s leave. I asked the mathematical master to +give me a sum to work and nobody said a word. My father often interfered, +and always with disaster, to teach me my Latin lesson. “But I have also my +geography,” I would say. “Geography,” he would reply, “should never be +taught. It is not a training for the mind. You will pick up all that you +need, in your general reading.” And if it was a history lesson, he would +say just the same, and “Euclid,” he would say, “is too easy. It comes +naturally to the literary imagination. The old idea,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> that it is a good +training for the mind, was long ago refuted.” I would know my Latin lesson +so that it was a nine days’ wonder, and for weeks after would be told it +was scandalous to be so clever and so idle. No one knew that I had learnt +it in the terror that alone could check my wandering mind. I must have +told on him at some time or other for I remember the head-master saying, +“I am going to give you an imposition because I cannot get at your father +to give him one.” Sometimes we had essays to write; & though I never got a +prize, for the essays were judged by hand-writing and spelling I caused a +measure of scandal. I would be called up before some master and asked if I +really believed such things, and that would make me angry for I had +written what I had believed all my life, what my father had told me, or a +memory of the conversation of his friends. There were other beliefs, but +they were held by people one did not know, people who were vulgar or +stupid. I was asked to write an essay on “men may rise on stepping-stones +of their dead selves to higher things.” My father read the subject to my +mother, who had no interest in such matters. “That is the way,” he said, +“boys are made insincere and false to themselves. Ideals make the blood +thin, and take the human nature out of people.” He walked up and down the +room<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> in eloquent indignation, and told me not to write on such a subject +at all, but upon Shakespeare’s lines “to thine own self be true, and it +must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man.” +At another time, he would denounce the idea of duty, and “imagine,” he +would say, “how the right sort of woman would despise a dutiful husband;” +and he would tell us how much my mother would scorn such a thing. Maybe +there were people among whom such ideas were natural, but they were the +people with whom one does not dine. All he said was, I now believe right, +but he should have taken me away from school. He would have taught me +nothing but Greek and Latin, and I would now be a properly educated man, +and would not have to look in useless longing at books that have been, +through the poor mechanism of translation, the builders of my soul, nor +faced authority with the timidity born of excuse and evasion. Evasion and +excuse were in the event as wise as the house-building instinct of the +beaver.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XII</h3> + +<p>My London schoolfellow, the athlete, spent a summer with us, but the +friendship of boyhood, founded upon action and adventure, was drawing to +an end. He was still my superior in all physical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> activity and climbed to +places among the rocks that even now are uncomfortable memories, but I had +begun to criticize him. One morning I proposed a journey to Lambay Island, +and was contemptuous because he said we should miss our mid-day meal. We +hoisted a sail on our small boat and ran quickly over the nine miles and +saw on the shore a tame sea-gull, while a couple of boys, the sons of a +coastguard, ran into the water in their clothes to pull us to land, as we +had read of savage people doing. We spent an hour upon the sunny shore and +I said, “I would like to live here always, and perhaps some day I will.” I +was always discovering places where I would like to spend my whole life. +We started to row home, and when dinner-time had passed for about an hour, +the athlete lay down on the bottom of the boat doubled up with the gripes. +I mocked at him and at his fellow-countrymen whose stomachs struck the +hour as if they were clocks.</p> + +<p>Our natural history, too, began to pull us apart. I planned some day to +write a book about the changes through a twelve-month among the creatures +of some hole in the rock, and had some theory of my own, which I cannot +remember, as to the colour of sea-anemones: and after much hesitation, +trouble and bewilderment, was hot for argument in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> refutation of Adam and +Noah and the Seven Days. I had read Darwin and Wallace, Huxley and +Haeckel, and would spend hours on a holiday plaguing a pious geologist, +who, when not at some job in Guinness’s brewery, came with a hammer to +look for fossils in the Howth Cliffs. “You know,” I would say, “that such +and such human remains cannot be less, because of the strata they were +found in, than fifty thousand years old.” “Oh!” he would answer, “they are +an isolated instance.” And once when I pressed hard my case against +Ussher’s chronology, he begged me not to speak of the subject again. “If I +believed what you do,” he said, “I could not live a moral life.” But I +could not even argue with the athlete who still collected his butterflies +for the adventure’s sake, and with no curiosity but for their names. I +began to judge his intelligence, and to tell him that his natural history +had as little to do with science as his collection of postage stamps. Even +during my school days in London, influenced perhaps by my father, I had +looked down upon the postage stamps.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XIII</h3> + +<p>Our house for the first year or so was on the top of a cliff, so that in +stormy weather the spray would sometimes soak my bed at night, for I had +taken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> the glass out of the window, sash and all. A literary passion for +the open air was to last me for a few years. Then for another year or two, +we had a house overlooking the harbour where the one great sight was the +going and coming of the fishing fleet. We had one regular servant, a +fisherman’s wife, and the occasional help of a big, red-faced girl who ate +a whole pot of jam while my mother was at church and accused me of it. +Some such arrangement lasted until long after the time I write of, and +until my father going into the kitchen by chance found a girl, who had +been engaged during a passing need, in tears at the thought of leaving our +other servant, and promised that they should never be parted. I have no +doubt that we lived at the harbour for my mother’s sake. She had, when we +were children, refused to take us to a seaside place because she heard it +possessed a bathing box, but she loved the activities of a fishing +village. When I think of her, I almost always see her talking over a cup +of tea in the kitchen with our servant, the fisherman’s wife, on the only +themes outside our house that seemed of interest—the fishing people of +Howth, or the pilots and fishing people of Rosses Point. She read no +books, but she and the fisherman’s wife would tell each other stories that +Homer might have told, pleased with any moment of sudden intensity and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> +laughing together over any point of satire. There is an essay called +“Village Ghosts” in my “Celtic Twilight” which is but a record of one such +afternoon, and many a fine tale has been lost because it had not occurred +to me soon enough to keep notes. My father was always praising her to my +sisters and to me, because she pretended to nothing she did not feel. She +would write him letters telling of her delight in the tumbling clouds, but +she did not care for pictures, and never went to an exhibition even to see +a picture of his, nor to his studio to see the day’s work, neither now nor +when they were first married. I remember all this very clearly and little +after until her mind had gone in a stroke of paralysis and she had found, +liberated at last from financial worry, perfect happiness feeding the +birds at a London window. She had always, my father would say, intensity, +and that was his chief word of praise; and once he added to the praise “no +spendthrift ever had a poet for a son, though a miser might.”</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XIV</h3> + +<p>The great event of a boy’s life is the awakening of sex. He will bathe +many times a day, or get up at dawn and having stripped leap to and fro +over a stick laid upon two chairs and hardly know, and never admit, that +he had begun to take pleasure in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> his own nakedness, nor will he +understand the change until some dream discovers it. He may never +understand at all the greater change in his mind.</p> + +<p>It all came upon me when I was close upon seventeen like the bursting of a +shell. Somnambulistic country-girls, when it is upon them, throw plates +about or pull them with long hairs in simulation of the polter-geist, or +become mediums for some genuine spirit-mischief, surrendering to their +desire of the marvellous. As I look backward, I seem to discover that my +passions, my loves and my despairs, instead of being my enemies, a +disturbance and an attack, became so beautiful that I must be constantly +alone to give them my whole attention. I notice that, for the first time +as I run through my memory, what I saw when alone is more vivid than what +I did or saw in company.</p> + +<p>A herd had shown me a cave some hundred and fifty feet below the cliff +path and a couple of hundred above the sea, and told me how an evicted +tenant called Macrom, dead some fifteen years, had lived there many years, +and shown me a rusty nail in the rock which had served perhaps to hold up +some wooden protection from wind and weather. Here I stored a tin of cocoa +and some biscuits, and instead of going to my bed, would slip out on warm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> +nights and sleep in the cave on the excuse of catching moths. One had to +pass over a rocky ledge, safe enough for anyone with a fair head, yet +seeming, if looked at from above, narrow and sloping; and a remonstrance +from a stranger who had seen me climbing along it doubled my delight in +the adventure. When however, upon a bank holiday, I found lovers in my +cave, I was not content with it again till I heard of alarm among the +fishing boats, because the ghost of Macrom had been seen a little before +the dawn, stooping over his fire in the cave-mouth. I had been trying to +cook eggs, as I had read in some book, by burying them in the earth under +a fire of sticks.</p> + +<p>At other times, I would sleep among the rhododendrons and rocks in the +wilder part of the grounds of Howth Castle. After a while my father said I +must stay in-doors half the night, meaning that I should get some sleep in +my bed; but I, knowing that I would be too sleepy and comfortable to get +up again, used to sit over the kitchen fire till half the night was gone. +Exaggerated accounts spread through the school, and sometimes when I did +not know a lesson some master would banter me. My interest in science +began to fade away, and presently I said to myself, “it has all been a +misunderstanding.” I remembered how soon I tired of my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> specimens, and how +little I knew after all my years of collecting, and I came to believe that +I had gone through so much labour because of a text, heard for the first +time in St. John’s Church in Sligo. I wanted to be certain of my own +wisdom by copying Solomon, who had knowledge of hyssop and of tree. I +still carried my green net but I began to play at being a sage, a magician +or a poet. I had many idols, and now as I climbed along the narrow ledge I +was Manfred on his glacier, and now I thought of Prince Athanase and his +solitary lamp, but I soon chose Alastor for my chief of men and longed to +share his melancholy, and maybe at last to disappear from everybody’s +sight as he disappeared drifting in a boat along some slow-moving river +between great trees. When I thought of women they were modelled on those +in my favourite poets and loved in brief tragedy, or, like the girl in +“The Revolt of Islam,” accompanied their lovers through all manner of wild +places, lawless women without homes and without children.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XV</h3> + +<p>My father’s influence upon my thoughts was at its height. We went to +Dublin by train every morning, breakfasting in his studio. He had taken a +large room with a beautiful 18th century mantle-piece<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> in a York Street +tenement house, and at breakfast he read passages from the poets, and +always from the play or poem at its most passionate moment. He never read +me a passage because of its speculative interest, and indeed did not care +at all for poetry where there was generalisation or abstraction however +impassioned. He would read out the first speeches of the Prometheus +Unbound, but never the ecstatic lyricism of that famous fourth act; and +another day the scene where Coriolanus comes to the house of Aufidius and +tells the impudent servants that his home is under the canopy. I have seen +Coriolanus played a number of times since then, and read it more than +once, but that scene is more vivid than the rest, and it is my father’s +voice that I hear and not Irving’s or Benson’s. He did not care even for a +fine lyric passage unless one felt some actual man behind its elaboration +of beauty, and he was always looking for the lineaments of some desirable, +familiar life. When the spirits sang their scorn of Manfred I was to judge +by Manfred’s answer “O sweet and melancholy voices” that they could not, +even in anger, put off their spiritual sweetness. He thought Keats a +greater poet than Shelley, because less abstract, but did not read him, +caring little, I think, for any of that most beautiful poetry which has +come in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> modern times from the influence of painting. All must be an +idealisation of speech, and at some moment of passionate action or +somnambulistic reverie. I remember his saying that all contemplative men +were in a conspiracy to overrate their state of life, and that all writers +were of them, excepting the great poets. Looking backwards, it seems to me +that I saw his mind in fragments, which had always hidden connections I +only now begin to discover. He disliked the Victorian poetry of ideas, and +Wordsworth but for certain passages or whole poems. He described one +morning over his breakfast how in the shape of the head of a Wordsworthian +scholar, an old and greatly respected clergyman whose portrait he was +painting, he had discovered all the animal instincts of a prizefighter. He +despised the formal beauty of Raphael, that calm which is not an ordered +passion but an hypocrisy, and attacked Raphael’s life for its love of +pleasure and its self-indulgence. In literature he was always +pre-Raphaelite, and carried into literature principles that, while the +Academy was still unbroken, had made the first attack upon academic form. +He no longer read me anything for its story, and all our discussion was of +style.</p> + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> +<h3>XVI</h3> + +<p>I began to make blunders when I paid calls or visits, and a woman I had +known and liked as a child told me I had changed for the worse. I had +wanted to be wise and eloquent, an essay on the younger Ampère had helped +me to this ambition, and when I was alone I exaggerated my blunders and +was miserable. I had begun to write poetry in imitation of Shelley and of +Edmund Spenser, play after play—for my father exalted dramatic poetry +above all other kinds—and I invented fantastic and incoherent plots. My +lines but seldom scanned, for I could not understand the prosody in the +books, although there were many lines that taken by themselves had music. +I spoke them slowly as I wrote and only discovered when I read them to +somebody else that there was no common music, no prosody. There were, +however, moments of observation; for, even when I caught moths no longer, +I still noticed all that passed; how the little moths came out at sunset, +and how after that there were only a few big moths till dawn brought +little moths again; and what birds cried out at night as if in their +sleep.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XVII</h3> + +<p>At Sligo, where I still went for my holidays, I stayed with my uncle, +George Pollexfen, who had come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> from Ballina to fill the place of my +grandfather, who had retired. My grandfather had no longer his big house, +his partner William Middleton was dead, and there had been legal trouble. +He was no longer the rich man he had been, and his sons and daughters were +married and scattered. He had a tall, bare house overlooking the harbour, +and had nothing to do but work himself into a rage if he saw a mudlighter +mismanaged or judged from the smoke of a steamer that she was burning +cheap coal, and to superintend the making of his tomb. There was a +Middleton tomb and a long list of Middletons on the wall, and an almost +empty place for Pollexfen names, but he had said, because there was a +Middleton there he did not like, “I am not going to lie with those old +bones;” and already one saw his name in large gilt letters on the stone +fence of the new tomb. He ended his walk at St. John’s churchyard almost +daily, for he liked everything neat and compendious as upon shipboard, and +if he had not looked after the tomb himself the builder might have added +some useless ornament. He had, however, all his old skill and nerve. I was +going to Rosses Point on the little trading steamer and saw him take the +wheel from the helmsman and steer her through a gap in the channel wall, +and across the sand, an unheard-of-course, and at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> journey’s end bring +her alongside her wharf at Rosses without the accustomed zigzagging or +pulling on a rope but in a single movement. He took snuff when he had a +cold, but had never smoked or taken alcohol; and when in his eightieth +year his doctor advised a stimulant, he replied, “no, no, I am not going +to form a bad habit.”</p> + +<p>My brother had partly taken my place in my grandmother’s affections. He +had lived permanently in her house for some years now, and went to a Sligo +school where he was always bottom of his class. My grandmother did not +mind that, for she said, “he is too kind-hearted to pass the other boys.” +He spent his free hours going here and there with crowds of little boys, +sons of pilots and sailors, as their well-liked leader, arranging donkey +races or driving donkeys tandem, an occupation which requires all one’s +intellect because of their obstinacy. Besides he had begun to amuse +everybody with his drawings; and in half the pictures he paints to-day I +recognise faces that I have met at Rosses or the Sligo quays. It is long +since he has lived there, but his memory seems as accurate as the sight of +the eye.</p> + +<p>George Pollexfen was as patient as his father was impetuous, and did all +by habit. A well-to-do, elderly man, he lived with no more comfort than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> +when he had set out as a young man. He had a little house and one old +general servant and a man to look after his horse, and every year he gave +up some activity and found that there was one more food that disagreed +with him. A hypochondriac, he passed from winter to summer through a +series of woollens that had always to be weighed; for in April or May or +whatever the date was he had to be sure he carried the exact number of +ounces he had carried upon that date since boyhood. He lived in +despondency, finding in the most cheerful news reasons of discouragement, +and sighing every twenty-second of June over the shortening of the days. +Once in later years, when I met him in Dublin sweating in a midsummer +noon, I brought him into the hall of the Kildare Street Library, a cool +and shady place, without lightening his spirits; for he but said in a +melancholy voice, “how very cold this place must be in winter time.” +Sometimes when I had pitted my cheerfulness against his gloom over the +breakfast table, maintaining that neither his talent nor his memory nor +his health were running to the dregs, he would rout me with the sentence, +“how very old I shall be in twenty years.” Yet this inactive man, in whom +the sap of life seemed to be dried away, had a mind full of pictures. +Nothing had ever happened to him <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>except a love affair, not I think very +passionate, that had gone wrong, and a voyage when a young man. My +grandfather had sent him in a schooner to a port in Spain where the +shipping agents were two Spaniards called O’Neill, descendants of Hugh +O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who had fled from Ireland in the reign of James +I; and their Irish trade was a last remnant of the Spanish trade that had +once made Galway wealthy. For some years he and they had corresponded, for +they cherished the memory of their origin. In some Connaught burying +ground, he had chanced upon the funeral of a child with but one mourner, a +distinguished foreign-looking man. It was an Austrian count burying the +last of an Irish family, long nobles of Austria, who were always carried +to that half-ruined burying ground.</p> + +<p>My uncle had almost given up hunting and was soon to give it up +altogether, and he had once ridden steeple-chases and been, his +horse-trainer said, the best rider in Connaught. He had certainly great +knowledge of horses, for I have been told, several counties away, that at +Ballina he cured horses by conjuring. He had, however, merely great skill +in diagnosis, for the day was still far off when he was to give his nights +to astrology and ceremonial magic. His servant, Mary Battle, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> had been +with him since he was a young man, had the second sight and that, maybe, +inclined him to strange studies. He would tell how more than once when he +had brought home a guest without giving her notice he had found the +dinner-table set for two, and one morning she was about to bring him a +clean shirt, but stopped saying there was blood on the shirt-front and +that she must bring him another. On his way to his office he fell, +crossing over a little wall, and cut himself and bled on to the linen +where she had seen the blood. In the evening, she told how surprised she +had been to find when she looked again that the shirt she had thought +bloody was quite clean. She could neither read nor write and her mind, +which answered his gloom with its merriment, was rammed with every sort of +old history and strange belief. Much of my “Celtic Twilight” is but her +daily speech.</p> + +<p>My uncle had the respect of the common people as few Sligo men have had +it; he would have thought a stronger emotion an intrusion on his privacy. +He gave to all men the respect due to their station or their worth with an +added measure of ceremony, and kept among his workmen a discipline that +had about it something of a regiment or a ship, knowing nothing of any but +personal authority. If a carter, let us say, was in fault, he would not +dismiss<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> him, but send for him and take his whip away and hang it upon the +wall; and having reduced the offender, as it were, to the ranks for +certain months, would restore him to his post and his whip. This man of +diligence and of method, who had no enterprise but in contemplation, and +claimed that his wealth, considerable for Ireland, came from a brother’s +or partner’s talent, was the confidant of my boyish freaks and reveries. +When I said to him, echoing some book I had read, that one never knew a +countryside till one knew it at night, (though nothing would have kept him +from his bed a moment beyond the hour) he was pleased; for he loved +natural things and had learnt two cries of the lapwing, one that drew them +to where he stood and one that made them fly away. And he approved, and +arranged my meals conveniently, when I told him I was going to walk round +Lough Gill and sleep in a wood. I did not tell him all my object, for I +was nursing a new ambition. My father had read to me some passage out of +“Walden,” and I planned to live some day in a cottage on a little island +called Innisfree, and Innisfree was opposite Slish Wood where I meant to +sleep.</p> + +<p>I thought that having conquered bodily desire and the inclination of my +mind towards women and love, I should live, as Thoreau lived, seeking +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>wisdom. There was a story in the county history of a tree that had once +grown upon that island guarded by some terrible monster and borne the food +of the gods. A young girl pined for the fruit and told her lover to kill +the monster and carry the fruit away. He did as he had been told, but +tasted the fruit; and when he reached the mainland where she had waited +for him, was dying of its powerful virtue. And from sorrow and from +remorse she too ate of it and died. I do not remember whether I chose the +island because of its beauty or for the story’s sake, but I was twenty-two +or three before I gave up the dream.</p> + +<p>I set out from Sligo about six in the evening, walking slowly, for it was +an evening of great beauty; but though I was well into Slish Wood by +bed-time, I could not sleep, not from the discomfort of the dry rock I had +chosen for my bed, but from my fear of the wood-ranger. Somebody had told +me, though I do not think it could have been true, that he went his round +at some unknown hour. I kept going over what I should say if I was found +and could not think of anything he would believe. However, I could watch +my island in the early dawn and notice the order of the cries of the +birds.</p> + +<p>I came home next day unimaginably tired & sleepy, having walked some +thirty miles partly over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> rough and boggy ground. For months afterwards, +if I alluded to my walk, my uncle’s general servant (not Mary Battle, who +was slowly recovering from an illness and would not have taken the +liberty) would go into fits of laughter. She believed I had spend the +night in a different fashion and had invented the excuse to deceive my +uncle, and would say to my great embarrassment, for I was as prudish as an +old maid, “and you had good right to be fatigued.”</p> + +<p>Once when staying with my uncle at Rosses Point where he went for certain +months of the year, I called upon a cousin towards midnight and asked him +to get his yacht out, for I wanted to find what sea birds began to stir +before dawn. He was indignant and refused; but his elder sister had +overheard me and came to the head of the stairs and forbade him to stir, +and that so vexed him that he shouted to the kitchen for his sea-boots. He +came with me in great gloom for he had people’s respect, he declared, and +nobody so far had said that he was mad as they said I was, and we got a +very sleepy boy out of his bed in the village and set up sail. We put a +trawl out, as he thought it would restore his character if he caught some +fish, but the wind fell and we were becalmed. I rolled myself in the +main-sail and went to sleep for I could sleep <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>anywhere in those days. I +was awakened towards dawn to see my cousin and the boy turning out their +pockets for money and to rummage in my own pockets. A boat was rowing in +from Roughley with fish and they wanted to buy some and would pretend they +had caught it, but all our pockets were empty. It was for the poem that +became fifteen years afterwards “The Shadowy Waters” that I had wanted the +birds’ cries, and it had been full of observation had I been able to write +it when I first planned it. I had found again the windy light that moved +me when a child. I persuaded myself that I had a passion for the dawn, and +this passion, though mainly histrionic like a child’s play, an ambitious +game, had moments of sincerity. Years afterwards when I had finished “The +Wanderings of Oisin,” dissatisfied with its yellow and its dull green, +with all that overcharged colour inherited from the romantic movement, I +deliberately reshaped my style, deliberately sought out an impression as +of cold light and tumbling clouds. I cast off traditional metaphors and +loosened my rhythm, and recognizing that all the criticism of life known +to me was alien and English, became as emotional as possible but with an +emotion which I described to myself as cold. It is a natural conviction +for a painter’s son to believe that there may be a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>landscape symbolical +of some spiritual condition that awakens a hunger such as cats feel for +valerian.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XVIII</h3> + +<p>I was writing a long play on a fable suggested by one of my father’s early +designs. A king’s daughter loves a god seen in the luminous sky above her +garden in childhood, and to be worthy of him and put away mortality, +becomes without pity & commits crimes, and at last, having made her way to +the throne by murder, awaits the hour among her courtiers. One by one they +become chilly and drop dead, for, unseen by all but her, her god is +walking through the hall. At last he is at her throne’s foot and she, her +mind in the garden once again, dies babbling like a child.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XIX</h3> + +<p>Once when I was sailing with my cousin, the boy who was our crew talked of +a music-hall at a neighbouring seaport, and how the girls there gave +themselves to men, and his language was as extravagant as though he +praised that courtezan after whom they named a city or the queen of Sheba +herself. Another day he wanted my cousin to sail some fifty miles along +the coast and put in near some cottages where he had heard there were +girls<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> “and we would have a great welcome before us.” He pleaded with +excitement (I imagine that his eyes shone) but hardly hoped to persuade +us, and perhaps but played with fabulous images of life and of sex. A +young jockey and horse-trainer, who had trained some horses for my uncle, +once talked to me of wicked England while we cooked a turkey for our +Christmas dinner making it twist about on a string in front of his +harness-room fire. He had met two lords in England where he had gone +racing, who “always exchanged wives when they went to the Continent for a +holiday.” He himself had once been led into temptation and was going home +with a woman, but having touched his scapular by chance, saw in a moment +an angel waving white wings in the air. Presently I was to meet him no +more and my uncle said he had done something disgraceful about a horse.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XX</h3> + +<p>I was climbing up a hill at Howth when I heard wheels behind me and a +pony-carriage drew up beside me. A pretty girl was driving alone and +without a hat. She told me her name and said we had friends in common and +asked me to ride beside her. After that I saw a great deal of her and was +soon in love. I did not tell her I was in love, however, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>because she was +engaged. She had chosen me for her confidant and I learned all about her +quarrels with her lover. Several times he broke the engagement off, and +she would fall ill, and friends would make peace. Sometimes she would +write to him three times a day, but she could not do without a confidant. +She was a wild creature, a fine mimic and given to bursts of religion. I +have known her to weep at a sermon, call herself a sinful woman, and mimic +it after. I wrote her some bad poems and had more than one sleepless night +through anger with her betrothed.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXI</h3> + +<p>At Ballisodare an event happened that brought me back to the superstitions +of my childhood. I do not know when it was, for the events of this period +have as little sequence as those of childhood. I was staying with cousins +at Avena house, a young man a few years older and a girl of my own age and +perhaps her sister who was a good deal older. My girl cousin had often +told me of strange sights she had seen at Ballisodare or Rosses. An old +woman three or four feet in height and leaning on a stick had once come to +the window and looked in at her, and sometimes she would meet people on +the road who would say “how is so-and-so,” naming some member of her +family, and she would know, though she could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> explain how, that they +were not people of this world. Once she had lost her way in a familiar +field, and when she found it again the silver mounting on a walking-stick +belonging to her brother which she carried had vanished. An old woman in +the village said afterwards “you have good friends amongst them, and the +silver was taken instead of you.”</p> + +<p>Though it was all years ago, what I am going to tell now must be accurate, +for no great while ago she wrote out her unprompted memory of it all and +it was the same as mine. She was sitting under an old-fashioned mirror +reading and I was reading in another part of the room. Suddenly I heard a +sound as if somebody was throwing a shower of peas at the mirror. I got +her to go into the next room and rap with her knuckles on the other side +of the wall to see if the sound could come from there, and while I was +alone a great thump came close to my head upon the wainscot and on a +different wall of the room. Later in the day a servant heard a heavy +footstep going through the empty house, and that night, when I and my two +cousins went for a walk, she saw the ground under some trees all in a +blaze of light. I saw nothing, but presently we crossed the river and went +along its edge where, they say, there was a village destroyed, I think in +the wars of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> the 17th century, and near an old grave-yard. Suddenly we all +saw light moving over the river where there is a great rush of waters. It +was like a very brilliant torch. A moment later the girl saw a man coming +towards us who disappeared in the water. I kept asking myself if I could +be deceived. Perhaps after all, though it seemed impossible, somebody was +walking in the water with a torch. But we could see a small light low down +on Knock-na-rea seven miles off, and it began to move upward over the +mountain slope. I timed it on my watch and in five minutes it reached the +summit, and I, who had often climbed the mountain, knew that no human +footstep was so speedy.</p> + +<p>From that on I wandered about raths and faery hills and questioned old +women and old men and, when I was tired out or unhappy, began to long for +some such end as True Thomas found. I did not believe with my intellect +that you could be carried away body and soul, but I believed with my +emotions and the belief of the country people made that easy. Once when I +had crawled into the stone passage in some rath of the third Rosses, the +pilot who had come with me called down the passage: “are you all right, +sir?”</p> + +<p>And one night as I came near the village of Rosses on the road from Sligo, +a fire blazed up on a green<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> bank at my right side seven or eight feet +above me, and another fire suddenly answered from Knock-na-rea. I hurried +on doubting, and yet hardly doubting in my heart that I saw again the +fires that I had seen by the river at Ballisodare. I began occasionally +telling people that one should believe whatever had been believed in all +countries and periods, and only reject any part of it after much evidence, +instead of starting all over afresh and only believing what one could +prove. But I was always ready to deny or turn into a joke what was for all +that my secret fanaticism. When I had read Darwin and Huxley and believed +as they did, I had wanted, because an established authority was upon my +side, to argue with everybody.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXII</h3> + +<p>I no longer went to the Harcourt Street school and we had moved from Howth +to Rathgar. I was at the Arts schools in Kildare Street, but my father, +who came to the school now and then, was my teacher. The masters left me +alone, for they liked a very smooth surface and a very neat outline, and +indeed understood nothing but neatness and smoothness. A drawing of the +Discobolus, after my father had touched it, making the shoulder stand out +with swift and broken lines, had no meaning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> for them; and for the most +part I exaggerated all that my father did. Sometimes indeed, out of +rivalry to some student near, I too would try to be smooth and neat. One +day I helped the student next me, who certainly had no artistic gifts, to +make a drawing of some plaster fruit. In his gratitude he told me his +history. “I don’t care for art,” he said. “I am a good billiard player, +one of the best in Dublin; but my guardian said I must take a profession, +so I asked my friends to tell me where I would not have to pass an +examination, and here I am.” It may be that I myself was there for no +better reason. My father had wanted me to go to Trinity College and, when +I would not, had said, “my father and grandfather and great-grandfather +have been there.” I did not tell him my reason was that I did not believe +my classics or my mathematics good enough for any examination.</p> + +<p>I had for fellow-student an unhappy “village genius” sent to Dublin by +some charitable Connaught landlord. He painted religious pictures upon +sheets nailed to the wall of his bedroom, a “Last Judgment” among the +rest. Then there was a wild young man who would come to school of a +morning with a daisy-chain hung round his neck; and George Russel, “Æ,” +the poet, and mystic. He did not paint the model as we tried to, for some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> +other image rose always before his eyes (a St. John in the Desert I +remember,) and already he spoke to us of his visions. His conversation, so +lucid and vehement to-day, was all but incomprehensible, though now and +again some phrase would be understood and repeated. One day he announced +that he was leaving the Art schools because his will was weak and the arts +or any other emotional pursuit could but weaken it further.</p> + +<p>Presently I went to the modelling class to be with certain elder students +who had authority among us. Among these were John Hughes and Oliver +Sheppard, well-known now as Irish sculptors. The day I first went into the +studio where they worked, I stood still upon the threshold in amazement. A +pretty gentle-looking girl was modelling in the middle of the room, and +all the men were swearing at her for getting in their light with the most +violent and fantastic oaths, and calling her every sort of name, and +through it all she worked in undisturbed diligence. Presently the man +nearest me saw my face and called out, “she is stone deaf, so we always +swear at her and call her names when she gets in our light.” In reality I +soon found that everyone was kind to her, carrying her drawing-boards and +the like, and putting her into the tram at the day’s end. We had no +scholarship, no critical knowledge of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> history of painting, and no +settled standards. A student would show his fellows some French +illustrated paper that we might all admire, now some statue by Rodin or +Dalou and now some declamatory Parisian monument, and if I did not happen +to have discussed the matter with my father I would admire with no more +discrimination than the rest. That pretentious monument to Gambetta made a +great stir among us. No influence touched us but that of France, where one +or two of the older students had been already and all hoped to go. Of +England I alone knew anything. Our ablest student had learnt Italian to +read Dante, but had never heard of Tennyson or Browning, and it was I who +carried into the school some knowledge of English poetry, especially of +Browning who had begun to move me by his air of wisdom. I do not believe +that I worked well, for I wrote a great deal and that tired me, and the +work I was set to bored me. When alone and uninfluenced, I longed for +pattern, for pre-Raphaelitism, for an art allied to poetry, and returned +again and again to our National Gallery to gaze at Turner’s Golden Bough. +Yet I was too timid, had I known how, to break away from my father’s style +and the style of those about me. I was always hoping that my father would +return to the style of his youth, and make pictures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> out of certain +designs now lost, that one could still find in his portfolios. There was +one of an old hunchback in vague medieval dress, going through some +underground place where there are beds with people in the beds; a girl +half rising from one has seized his hand and is kissing it. I have +forgotten its story, but the strange old man and the intensity in the +girl’s figure are vivid as in my childhood. There is some passage, I +believe in the Bible, about a man who saved a city and went away and was +never heard of again and here he was in another design, an old ragged +beggar in the market-place laughing at his own statue. But my father would +say: “I must paint what I see in front of me. Of course I shall really +paint something different because my nature will come in unconsciously.” +Sometimes I would try to argue with him, for I had come to think the +philosophy of his fellow-artists and himself a misunderstanding created by +Victorian science, and science I had grown to hate with a monkish hate; +but no good came of it, and in a moment I would unsay what I had said and +pretend that I did not really believe it. My father was painting many fine +portraits, Dublin leaders of the bar, college notabilities, or chance +comers whom he would paint for nothing if he liked their heads; but all +displeased me. In my heart I thought that only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> beautiful things should be +painted, and that only ancient things and the stuff of dreams were +beautiful. And I almost quarrelled with my father when he made a large +water-colour, one of his finest pictures and now lost, of a consumptive +beggar girl. And a picture at the Hibernian Academy of cocottes with +yellow faces sitting before a café by some follower of Manet’s made me +miserable for days, but I was happy when partly through my father’s +planning some Whistlers were brought over and exhibited, and did not agree +when my father said: “imagine making your old mother an arrangement in +gray!” I did not care for mere reality and believed that creation should +be conscious, and yet I could only imitate my father. I could not compose +anything but a portrait and even to-day I constantly see people as a +portrait painter, posing them in the mind’s eye before such and such a +background. Meanwhile I was still very much of a child, sometimes drawing +with an elaborate frenzy, simulating what I believed of inspiration and +sometimes walking with an artificial stride in memory of Hamlet and +stopping at shop windows to look at my tie gathered into a loose +sailor-knot and to regret that it could not be always blown out by the +wind like Byron’s tie in the picture. I had as many ideas as I have now, +only I did not know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> how to choose from among them those that belonged to +my life.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXIII</h3> + +<p>We lived in a villa where the red bricks were made pretentious and vulgar +with streaks of slate colour, and there seemed to be enemies everywhere. +At one side indeed there was a friendly architect, but on the other some +stupid stout woman and her family. I had a study with a window opposite +some window of hers, & one night when I was writing I heard voices full of +derision and saw the stout woman and her family standing in the window. I +have a way of acting what I write and speaking it aloud without knowing +what I am doing. Perhaps I was on my hands and knees, or looking down over +the back of a chair talking into what I imagined an abyss. Another day a +woman asked me to direct her on her way and while I was hesitating, being +so suddenly called out of my thought, a woman from some neighbouring house +came by. She said I was a poet and my questioner turned away +contemptuously. Upon the other hand, the policeman and tramway conductor +thought my absence of mind sufficiently explained when our servant told +them I was a poet. “Oh well,” said the policeman, who had been asking why +I went indifferently through clean and muddy places, “if it is only the +poetry that is working<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> in his head!” I imagine I looked gaunt and +emaciated, for the little boys at the neighbouring cross-road used to say +when I passed by: “Oh, here is King Death again.” One morning when my +father was on the way to his studio, he met his landlord who had a big +grocer’s shop and they had this conversation: “will you tell me, sir, if +you think Tennyson should have been given that peerage?” “one’s only doubt +is if he should have accepted it: it was a finer thing to be Alfred +Tennyson.” There was a silence, and then: “well, all the people I know +think he should not have got it.” Then, spitefully: “what’s the good of +poetry?” “Oh, it gives our minds a great deal of pleasure.” “But wouldn’t +it have given your mind more pleasure if he had written an improving +book?” “Oh, in that case I should not have read it.” My father returned in +the evening delighted with his story, but I could not understand how he +could take such opinions lightly and not have seriously argued with the +man. None of these people had ever seen any poet but an old white-haired +man who had written volumes of easy, too-honied verse, and run through his +money and gone clean out of his mind. He was a common figure in the +streets and lived in some shabby neighbourhood of tenement houses where +there were hens and chickens among the cobble stones. Every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> morning he +carried home a loaf and gave half of it to the hens and chickens, the +birds, or to some dog or starving cat. He was known to live in one room +with a nail in the middle of the ceiling from which innumerable cords were +stretched to other nails in the walls. In this way he kept up the illusion +that he was living under canvas in some Arabian desert. I could not escape +like this old man from house and neighbourhood, but hated both, hearing +every whisper, noticing every passing glance. When my grandfather came for +a few days to see a doctor, I was shocked to see him in our house. My +father read out to him in the evening Clark Russell’s “Wreck of the +Grosvenor;” but the doctor forbade it, for my grandfather got up in the +middle of the night and acted through the mutiny, as I acted my verse, +saying the while, “yes, yes, that is the way it would all happen.”</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXIV</h3> + +<p>From our first arrival in Dublin, my father had brought me from time to +time to see Edward Dowden. He and my father had been college friends and +were trying, perhaps, to take up again their old friendship. Sometimes we +were asked to breakfast, and afterwards my father would tell me to read +out one of my poems. Dowden was wise in his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>encouragement, never +overpraising and never unsympathetic, and he would sometimes lend me +books. The orderly, prosperous house where all was in good taste, where +poetry was rightly valued, made Dublin tolerable for a while, and for +perhaps a couple of years he was an image of romance. My father would not +share my enthusiasm and soon, I noticed, grew impatient at these meetings. +He would sometimes say that he had wanted Dowden when they were young to +give himself to creative art, and would talk of what he considered +Dowden’s failure in life. I know now that he was finding in his friend +what he himself had been saved from by the conversation of the +pre-Raphaelites. “He will not trust his nature,” he would say, or “he is +too much influenced by his inferiors,” or he would praise “Renunciants,” +one of Dowden’s poems, to prove what Dowden might have written. I was not +influenced for I had imagined a past worthy of that dark, romantic face. I +took literally his verses, touched here and there with Swinburnian +rhetoric, and believed that he had loved, unhappily and illicitly; and +when through the practice of my art I discovered that certain images about +the love of woman were the properties of a school, I but changed my fancy +and thought of him as very wise.</p> + +<p>I was constantly troubled about philosophic <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>questions. I would say to my +fellow students at the Art school, “poetry and sculpture exist to keep our +passions alive;” and somebody would say, “we would be much better without +our passions.” Or I would have a week’s anxiety over the problem: do the +arts make us happier, or more sensitive and therefore more unhappy. And I +would say to Hughes or Sheppard, “if I cannot be certain they make us +happier I will never write again.” If I spoke of these things to Dowden he +would put the question away with good-humoured irony: he seemed to +condescend to everybody and everything and was now my sage. I was about to +learn that if a man is to write lyric poetry he must be shaped by nature +and art to some one out of half-a-dozen traditional poses, and be lover or +saint, sage or sensualist, or mere mocker of all life; and that none but +that stroke of luckless luck can open before him the accumulated +expression of the world. And this thought before it could be knowledge was +an instinct.</p> + +<p>I was vexed when my father called Dowden’s irony timidity, but after many +years his impression has not changed for he wrote to me but a few months +ago, “it was like talking to a priest. One had to be careful not to remind +him of his sacrifice.” Once after breakfast Dowden read us some chapters +of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> the unpublished “Life of Shelley,” and I who had made the “Prometheus +Unbound” my sacred book was delighted with all he read. I was chilled, +however, when he explained that he had lost his liking for Shelley and +would not have written it but for an old promise to the Shelley family. +When it was published, Matthew Arnold made sport of certain +conventionalities and extravagances that were, my father and I had come to +see, the violence or clumsiness of a conscientious man hiding from himself +a lack of sympathy. He had abandoned too, or was about to abandon, what +was to have been his master-work, “The Life of Goethe,” though in his +youth a lecture course at Alexandra College that spoke too openly of +Goethe’s loves had brought upon him the displeasure of our Protestant +Archbishop of Dublin. Only Wordsworth, he said, kept, more than all, his +early love.</p> + +<p>Though my faith was shaken, it was only when he urged me to read George +Eliot that I became angry and disillusioned & worked myself into a quarrel +or half-quarrel. I had read all Victor Hugo’s romances and a couple of +Balzac’s and was in no mind to like her. She seemed to have a distrust or +a distaste for all in life that gives one a springing foot. Then too she +knew so well how to enforce her distaste by the authority of her +mid-Victorian science or by some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> habit of mind of its breeding, that I, +who had not escaped the fascination of what I loathed, doubted while the +book lay open whatsoever my instinct knew of splendour. She disturbed me +and alarmed me, but when I spoke of her to my father, he threw her aside +with a phrase, “Oh, she was an ugly woman who hated handsome men and +handsome women;” and he began to praise “Wuthering Heights.”</p> + +<p>Only the other day, when I got Dowden’s letters, did I discover for how +many years the friendship between Dowden and my father had been an +antagonism. My father had written from Fitzroy Road in the sixties that +the brotherhood, by which he meant the poet Edwin Ellis, Nettleship and +himself, “abhorred Wordsworth;” and Dowden, not remembering that another +week would bring a different mood and abhorrence, had written a pained and +solemn letter. My father had answered that Dowden believed too much in the +intellect and that all valuable education was but a stirring up of the +emotions and had added that this did not mean excitability. “In the +completely emotional man,” he wrote, “the least awakening of feeling is a +harmony in which every chord of every feeling vibrates. Excitement is the +feature of an insufficiently emotional nature, the harsh vibrating +discourse of but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> one or two chords.” Living in a free world accustomed to +the gay exaggeration of the talk of equals, of men who talk and write to +discover truth and not for popular instruction, he had already, when both +men were in their twenties, decided it is plain that Dowden was a +Provincial.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXV</h3> + +<p>It was only when I began to study psychical research and mystical +philosophy that I broke away from my father’s influence. He had been a +follower of John Stuart Mill and had grown to manhood with the scientific +movement. In this he had never been of Rossetti’s party who said that it +mattered to nobody whether the sun went round the earth or the earth round +the sun. But through this new research, this reaction from popular +science, I had begun to feel that I had allies for my secret thought. Once +when I was in Dowden’s drawing-room a servant announced my late +head-master. I must have got pale or red, for Dowden, with some ironical, +friendly remark, brought me into another room and there I stayed until the +visitor was gone. A few months later, when I met the head-master again I +had more courage. We chanced upon one another in the street and he said, +“I want you to use your influence with so-and-so, for he is giving all his +time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> to some sort of mysticism and he will fail in his examination.” I +was in great alarm, but I managed to say something about the children of +this world being wiser than the children of light. He went off with a +brusque “good morning.” I do not think that even at that age I would have +been so grandiloquent but for my alarm. He had, however, aroused all my +indignation.</p> + +<p>My new allies and my old had alike sustained me. “Intermediate +examinations,” which I had always refused, meant money for pupil and for +teacher, and that alone. My father had brought me up never when at school +to think of the future or of any practical result. I have even known him +to say, “when I was young, the definition of a gentleman was a man not +wholly occupied in getting on.” And yet this master wanted to withdraw my +friend from the pursuit of the most important of all the truths. My +friend, now in his last year at school, was a show boy, and had beaten all +Ireland again and again, but now he and I were reading Baron Reichenbach +on Odic Force and manuals published by the Theosophical Society. We spent +a good deal of time in the Kildare Street Museum passing our hands over +the glass cases, feeling or believing we felt the Odic Force flowing from +the big crystals. We also found pins blindfolded and read papers on our +discoveries<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> to the Hermetic Society that met near the roof in York +Street. I had, when we first made our society, proposed for our +consideration that whatever the great poets had affirmed in their finest +moments was the nearest we could come to an authoritative religion, and +that their mythology, their spirits of water and wind were but literal +truth. I had read “Prometheus Unbound” with this thought in mind and +wanted help to carry my study through all literature. I was soon to vex my +father by defining truth as “the dramatically appropriate utterance of the +highest man.” And if I had been asked to define the “highest” man, I would +have said perhaps, “we can but find him as Homer found Odysseus when he +was looking for a theme.”</p> + +<p>My friend had written to some missionary society to send him to the South +Seas, when I offered him Renan’s “Life of Christ” and a copy of “Esoteric +Buddhism.” He refused both, but a few days later while reading for an +examination in Kildare Street Library, he asked in an idle moment for +“Esoteric Buddhism” and came out an esoteric Buddhist. He wrote to the +missionaries withdrawing his letter and offered himself to the +Theosophical Society as a <i>chela</i>. He was vexed now at my lack of zeal, +for I had stayed somewhere between the books, held there perhaps by my +father’s scepticism. I said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> and he thought it was a great joke though I +was serious, that even if I were certain in my own mind, I did not know “a +single person with a talent for conviction.” For a time he made me ashamed +of my world and its lack of zeal, and I wondered if his world (his father +was a notorious Orange leader) where everything was a matter of belief was +not better than mine. He himself proposed the immediate conversion of the +other show boy, a clever little fellow, now a Dublin mathematician and +still under five feet. I found him a day later in much depression. I said, +“did he refuse to listen to you?” “Not at all,” was the answer, “for I had +only been talking for a quarter of an hour when he said he believed.” +Certainly those minds, parched by many examinations, were thirsty.</p> + +<p>Sometimes a professor of Oriental Languages at Trinity College, a Persian, +came to our Society and talked of the magicians of the East. When he was a +little boy, he had seen a vision in a pool of ink, a multitude of spirits +singing in Arabic, “woe unto those that do not believe in us.” And we +persuaded a Brahmin philosopher to come from London and stay for a few +days with the only one among us who had rooms of his own. It was my first +meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed +at once logical and boundless. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>Consciousness, he taught, does not merely +spread out its surface but has, in vision and in contemplation, another +motion and can change in height and in depth. A handsome young man with +the typical face of Christ, he chaffed me good-humouredly because he said +I came at breakfast and began some question that was interrupted by the +first caller, waited in silence till ten or eleven at night when the last +caller had gone, and finished my question.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXVI</h3> + +<p>I thought a great deal about the system of education from which I had +suffered, and believing that everybody had a philosophical defence for all +they did, I desired greatly to meet some school-master that I might +question him. For a moment it seemed as if I should have my desire. I had +been invited to read out a poem called “The Island of Statues,” an +arcadian play in imitation of Edmund Spenser, to a gathering of critics +who were to decide whether it was worthy of publication in the College +magazine. The magazine had already published a lyric of mine, the first +ever printed, and people began to know my name. We met in the rooms of Mr. +C. H. Oldham, now professor of Political Economy at our new University; +and though Professor Bury, then a very young man, was to be the deciding +voice, Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Oldham had asked quite a large audience. When the reading was +over and the poem had been approved I was left alone, why I cannot +remember, with a young man who was, I had been told, a school-master. I +was silent, gathering my courage, and he also was silent; and presently I +said without anything to lead up to it, “I know you will defend the +ordinary system of education by saying that it strengthens the will, but I +am convinced that it only seems to do so because it weakens the impulses.” +Then I stopped, overtaken by shyness. He made no answer but smiled and +looked surprised as though I had said, “you will say they are Persian +attire; but let them be changed.”</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXVII</h3> + +<p>I had begun to frequent a club founded by Mr. Oldham, and not from natural +liking, but from a secret ambition. I wished to become self-possessed, to +be able to play with hostile minds as Hamlet played, to look in the lion’s +face, as it were, with unquivering eyelash. In Ireland harsh argument +which had gone out of fashion in England was still the manner of our +conversation, and at this club Unionist and Nationalist could interrupt +one another and insult one another without the formal and traditional +restraint of public speech. Sometimes they would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> change the subject & +discuss Socialism, or a philosophical question, merely to discover their +old passions under a new shape. I spoke easily and I thought well till +some one was rude and then I would become silent or exaggerate my opinion +to absurdity, or hesitate and grow confused, or be carried away myself by +some party passion. I would spend hours afterwards going over my words and +putting the wrong ones right. Discovering that I was only self-possessed +with people I knew intimately, I would often go to a strange house where I +knew I would spend a wretched hour for schooling sake. I did not discover +that Hamlet had his self-possession from no schooling but from +indifference and passion conquering sweetness, and that less heroic minds +can but hope it from old age.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXVIII</h3> + +<p>I had very little money and one day the toll-taker at the metal bridge +over the Liffey and a gossip of his laughed when I refused the halfpenny +and said “no, I will go round by O’Connell Bridge.” When I called for the +first time at a house in Leinster Road several middle-aged women were +playing cards and suggested my taking a hand and gave me a glass of +sherry. The sherry went to my head and I was impoverished for days by the +loss of sixpence. My<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> hostess was Ellen O’Leary, who kept house for her +brother John O’Leary the Fenian, the handsomest old man I had ever seen. +He had been condemned to twenty years penal servitude but had been set +free after five on condition that he did not return to Ireland for fifteen +years. He had said to the government, “I will not return if Germany makes +war on you, but I will return if France does.” He and his old sister lived +exactly opposite the Orange leader for whom he had a great respect. His +sister stirred my affection at first for no better reason than her +likeness of face and figure to the matron of my London school, a friendly +person, but when I came to know her I found sister and brother alike were +of Plutarch’s people. She told me of her brother’s life, how in his youth +as now in his age, he would spend his afternoons searching for rare books +among second-hand book-shops, how the Fenian organizer James Stephens had +found him there and asked for his help. “I do not think you have any +chance of success,” he had said, “but if you never ask me to enroll +anybody else I will join, it will be very good for the morals of the +country.” She told me how it grew to be a formidable movement, and of the +arrests that followed (I believe that her own sweetheart had somehow +fallen among the wreckage,) of sentences of death pronounced upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> false +evidence amid a public panic, and told it all without bitterness. No +fanaticism could thrive amid such gentleness. She never found it hard to +believe that an opponent had as high a motive as her own and needed upon +her difficult road no spur of hate.</p> + +<p>Her brother seemed very unlike on a first hearing for he had some violent +oaths, “Good God in Heaven” being one of them; and if he disliked anything +one said or did, he spoke all his thought, but in a little one heard his +justice match her charity. “Never has there been a cause so bad,” he would +say, “that it has not been defended by good men for good reasons.” Nor +would he overvalue any man because they shared opinions; and when he lent +me the poems of Davis and the Young Irelanders, of whom I had known +nothing, he did not, although the poems of Davis had made him a patriot, +claim that they were very good poetry.</p> + +<p>His room was full of books, always second-hand copies that had often been +ugly and badly printed when new and had not grown to my unhistoric mind +more pleasing from the dirt of some old Dublin book-shop. Great numbers +were Irish, and for the first time I began to read histories and verses +that a Catholic Irishman knows from boyhood. He seemed to consider +politics almost wholly as a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> moral discipline, and seldom said of any +proposed course of action that it was practical or otherwise. When he +spoke to me of his prison life he spoke of all with seeming freedom, but +presently one noticed that he never spoke of hardship and if one asked him +why, he would say, “I was in the hands of my enemies, why should I +complain?” I have heard since that the governor of his jail found out that +he had endured some unnecessary discomfort for months and had asked why he +did not speak of it. “I did not come here to complain,” was the answer. He +had the moral genius that moves all young people and moves them the more +if they are repelled by those who have strict opinions and yet have lived +commonplace lives. I had begun, as would any other of my training, to say +violent and paradoxical things to shock provincial sobriety, and Dowden’s +ironical calm had come to seem but a professional pose. But here was +something as spontaneous as the life of an artist. Sometimes he would say +things that would have sounded well in some heroic Elizabethan play. It +became my delight to rouse him to these outbursts for I was the poet in +the presence of his theme. Once when I was defending an Irish politician +who had made a great outcry because he was treated as a common felon, by +showing that he did it for the cause’s sake, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> said, “there are things +that a man must not do even to save a nation.” He would speak a sentence +like that in ignorance of its passionate value, and would forget it the +moment after.</p> + +<p>I met at his house friends of later life, Katharine Tynan who still lived +upon her father’s farm, and Dr. Hyde, still a college student who took +snuff like those Mayo county people, whose stories and songs he was +writing down. “Davitt wants followers by the thousand,” O’Leary would say, +“I only want half-a-dozen.” One constant caller looked at me with much +hostility, John F. Taylor, an obscure great orator. The other day in +Dublin I overheard a man murmuring to another one of his speeches as I +might some Elizabethan lyric that is in my very bones. It was delivered at +some Dublin debate, some College society perhaps. The Lord Chancellor had +spoken with balanced unemotional sentences now self-complacent, now in +derision. Taylor began hesitating and stopping for words, but after +speaking very badly for a little, straightened his figure and spoke as out +of a dream: “I am carried to another age, a nobler court, and another Lord +Chancellor is speaking. I am at the court of the first Pharaoh.” Thereupon +he put into the mouth of that Egyptian all his audience had listened to, +but now it was spoken to the children of Israel. “If you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> have any +spirituality as you boast, why not use our great empire to spread it +through the world, why still cling to that beggarly nationality of yours? +what are its history and its works weighed with those of Egypt.” Then his +voice changed and sank: “I see a man at the edge of the crowd; he is +standing listening there, but he will not obey;” and then with his voice +rising to a cry, “had he obeyed he would never have come down the mountain +carrying in his arms the tables of the Law in the language of the outlaw.”</p> + +<p>He had been in a linen-draper’s shop for a while, had educated himself and +put himself to college, and was now, as a lawyer, famous for hopeless +cases where unsure judgment could not make things worse, and eloquence, +power of cross-examination and learning might amend all. Conversation with +him was always argument, and for an obstinate opponent he had such phrases +as, “have you your head in a bag, sir?” and I seemed his particular +aversion. As with many of the self-made men of that generation, Carlyle +was his chief literary enthusiasm, supporting him, as he believed, in his +contempt for the complexities and refinements he had not found in his hard +life, and I belonged to a generation that had begun to call Carlyle +rhetorician and demagogue. I had once seen what I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> believed to be an +enraged bull in a field and had walked up to it as a test of courage to +discover, just as panic fell upon me, that it was merely an irritable cow. +I braved Taylor again and again, but always found him worse than my +expectation. I would say, quoting Mill, “oratory is heard, poetry is +overheard.” And he would answer, his voice full of contempt, that there +was always an audience; and yet, in his moments of lofty speech, he +himself was alone no matter what the crowd.</p> + +<p>At other times his science or his Catholic orthodoxy, I never could +discover which, would become enraged with my supernaturalism. I can but +once remember escaping him unabashed and unconquered. I said with +deliberate exaggeration at some evening party at O’Leary’s “five out of +every six people have seen a ghost;” and Taylor fell into my net with +“well, I will ask everybody here.” I managed that the first answer should +come from a man who had heard a voice he believed to be that of his dead +brother, and the second from a doctor’s wife who had lived in a haunted +house and met a man with his throat cut, whose throat as he drifted along +the garden-walk “had opened and closed like the mouth of a fish.” Taylor +threw up his head like an angry horse, but asked no further question, and +did not return to the subject that evening. If he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> gone on he would +have heard from everybody some like story though not all at first hand, +and Miss O’Leary would have told him what happened at the death of one of +the MacManus brothers, well known in the politics of Young Ireland. One +brother was watching by the bed where the other lay dying and saw a +strange hawk-like bird fly through the open window and alight upon the +breast of the dying man. He did not dare to drive it away and it remained +there, as it seemed, looking into his brother’s eyes until death came, and +then it flew out of the window. I think, though I am not sure, that she +had the story from the watcher himself.</p> + +<p>It was understood that Taylor’s temper kept him from public life, though +he may have been the greatest orator of his time, partly because no leader +would accept him, and still more because, in the words of one of his +Dublin enemies, “he had never joined any party and as soon as one joined +him he seceded.” With O’Leary he was always, even when they differed, as +they often did, gentle and deferential, but once only, and that was years +afterwards, did I think that he was about to include me among his friends. +We met by chance in a London street and he stopped me with an abrupt +movement: “Yeats,” he said, “I have been thinking.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> If you and ... (naming +another aversion,) were born in a small Italian principality in the Middle +Ages, he would have friends at court and you would be in exile with a +price on your head.” He went off without another word, and the next time +we met he was no less offensive than before. He, imprisoned in himself, +and not the always unperturbed O’Leary, comes before me as the tragic +figure of my youth. The same passion for all moral and physical splendour +that drew him to O’Leary would make him beg leave to wear, for some few +days, a friend’s ring or pin, and gave him a heart that every pretty woman +set on fire. I doubt if he was happy in his loves; for those his powerful +intellect had fascinated were, I believe, repelled by his coarse red hair, +his gaunt ungainly body, his stiff movements as of a Dutch doll, his badly +rolled, shabby umbrella. And yet with women, as with O’Leary, he was +gentle, deferential, almost diffident.</p> + +<p>A Young Ireland Society met in the lecture hall of a workman’s club in +York Street with O’Leary for president, and there four or five university +students and myself and occasionally Taylor spoke on Irish history or +literature. When Taylor spoke, it was a great event, and his delivery in +the course of a speech or lecture of some political verse by Thomas Davis +gave me a conviction of how great might be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> the effect of verse spoken by +a man almost rhythm-drunk at some moment of intensity, the apex of long +mounting thought. Verses that seemed when one saw them upon the page flat +and empty caught from that voice, whose beauty was half in its harsh +strangeness, nobility and style. My father had always read verse with an +equal intensity and a greater subtlety, but this art was public and his +private, and it is Taylor’s voice that rings in my ears and awakens my +longing when I have heard some player speak lines, “so naturally,” as a +famous player said to me, “that nobody can find out that it is verse at +all.” I made a good many speeches, more I believe as a training for +self-possession than from desire of speech.</p> + +<p>Once our debates roused a passion that came to the newspapers and the +streets. There was an excitable man who had fought for the Pope against +the Italian patriots and who always rode a white horse in our Nationalist +processions. He got on badly with O’Leary who had told him that +“attempting to oppress others was a poor preparation for liberating your +own country.” O’Leary had written some letter to the press condemning the +“Irish-American Dynamite Party” as it was called, and defining the limits +of “honourable warfare.” At the next meeting, the papal soldier rose in +the middle of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>discussion on some other matter and moved a vote of +censure on O’Leary. “I myself” he said “do not approve of bombs, but I do +not think that any Irishman should be discouraged.” O’Leary ruled him out +of order. He refused to obey and remained standing. Those round him began +to threaten. He swung the chair he had been sitting on round his head and +defied everybody. However he was seized from all sides and thrown out, and +a special meeting called to expel him. He wrote letters to the papers and +addressed a crowd somewhere. “No Young Ireland Society,” he protested, +“could expel a man whose grandfather had been hanged in 1798.” When the +night of the special meeting came his expulsion was moved, but before the +vote could be taken an excited man announced that there was a crowd in the +street, that the papal soldier was making a speech, that in a moment we +should be attacked. Three or four of us ran and put our backs to the door +while others carried on the debate. It was an inner door with narrow glass +windows at each side and through these we could see the street-door and +the crowd in the street. Presently a man asked us through the crack in the +door if we would as a favour “leave the crowd to the workman’s club +upstairs.” In a couple of minutes there was a great noise of sticks and +broken glass, and after that our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> landlord came to find out who was to pay +for the hall-lamp.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXIX</h3> + +<p>From these debates, from O’Leary’s conversation, and from the Irish books +he lent or gave me has come all I have set my hand to since. I had begun +to know a great deal about the Irish poets who had written in English. I +read with excitement books I should find unreadable to-day, and found +romance in lives that had neither wit nor adventure. I did not deceive +myself, I knew how often they wrote a cold and abstract language, and yet +I who had never wanted to see the houses where Keats and Shelley lived +would ask everybody what sort of place Inchedony was, because Callanan had +named after it a bad poem in the manner of “Childe Harold.” Walking home +from a debate, I remember saying to some college student “Ireland cannot +put from her the habits learned from her old military civilization and +from a church that prays in Latin. Those popular poets have not touched +her heart, her poetry when it comes will be distinguished and lonely.” +O’Leary had once said to me, “neither Ireland nor England knows the good +from the bad in any art, but Ireland unlike England does not hate the good +when it is pointed out to her.” I began to plot and scheme how one might +seal with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> the right image the soft wax before it began to harden. I had +noticed that Irish Catholics among whom had been born so many political +martyrs had not the good taste, the household courtesy and decency of the +Protestant Ireland I had known, and yet Protestant Ireland had begun to +think of nothing but getting on. I thought we might bring the halves +together if we had a national literature that made Ireland beautiful in +the memory, and yet had been freed from provincialism by an exacting +criticism, an European pose. It was because of this dream when we returned +to London that I made with pastels upon the ceiling of my study a map of +Sligo decorated like some old map with a ship and an elaborate compass and +wrote, a little against the grain, a couple of Sligo stories, one a vague +echo of “Grettir the Strong,” which my father had read to me in childhood, +and finished with better heart my “Wanderings of Oisin,” and began after +ridding my style of romantic colour “The Countess Cathleen.” I saw that +our people did not read, but that they listened patiently (how many long +political speeches have they listened to?) and saw that there must be a +theatre, and if I could find the right musicians, words set to music. I +foresaw a great deal that we are doing now, though never the appetite of +our new middle-class for “realism,” nor the greatness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> of the opposition, +nor the slowness of the victory. Davis had done so much in the four years +of his working life, I had thought all needful pamphleteering and +speech-making could be run through at the day’s end, not knowing that +taste is so much more deeply rooted than opinion that even if one had +school and newspaper to help, one could scarcely stir it under two +generations. Then too, bred up in a studio where all things are discussed +and where I had even been told that indiscretion and energy are +inseparable, I knew nothing of the conservatism or of the suspicions of +piety. I had planned a drama like that of Greece, and romances that were, +it may be, half Hugo and half de la Motte Fouqué, to bring into the town +the memories and visions of the country and to spread everywhere the +history and legends of mediaeval Ireland and to fill Ireland once more +with sacred places. I even planned out, and in some detail, (for those +mysterious lights and voices were never long forgotten,) another +Samothrace, a new Eleusis. I believed, so great was my faith, or so +deceptive the precedent of Young Ireland, that I should find men of genius +everywhere. I had not the conviction, as it may seem, that a people can be +compelled to write what one pleases, for that could but end in rhetoric or +in some educational movement but <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>believed I had divined the soul of the +people and had set my shoes upon a road that would be crowded presently.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXX</h3> + +<p>Someone at the Young Ireland Society gave me a newspaper that I might read +some article or letter. I began idly reading verses describing the shore +of Ireland as seen by a returning, dying emigrant. My eyes filled with +tears and yet I knew the verses were badly written—vague, abstract words +such as one finds in a newspaper. I looked at the end and saw the name of +some political exile who had died but a few days after his return to +Ireland. They had moved me because they contained the actual thoughts of a +man at a passionate moment of life, and when I met my father I was full of +the discovery. We should write out our own thoughts in as nearly as +possible the language we thought them in, as though in a letter to an +intimate friend. We should not disguise them in any way; for our lives +give them force as the lives of people in plays give force to their words. +Personal utterance, which had almost ceased in English literature, could +be as fine an escape from rhetoric and abstraction as drama itself. My +father was indignant, almost violent, and would hear of nothing but drama. +“Personal utterance was only egotism.” I knew it was not,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> but as yet did +not know how to explain the difference. I tried from that on to write out +of my emotions exactly as they came to me in life, not changing them to +make them more beautiful, and to rid my syntax of all inversions and my +vocabulary of literary words, and that made it hard to write at all. It +meant rejecting the words or the constructions that had been used over and +over because they flow most easily into rhyme and measure. Then, too, how +hard it was to be sincere, not to make the emotion more beautiful and more +violent or the circumstance more romantic. “If I can be sincere and make +my language natural, and without becoming discursive, like a novelist, and +so indiscreet and prosaic,” I said to myself, “I shall, if good luck or +bad luck make my life interesting, be a great poet; for it will be no +longer a matter of literature at all.” Yet when I re-read those early +poems which gave me so much trouble, I find little but romantic +convention, unconscious drama. It is so many years before one can believe +enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXXI</h3> + +<p>Perhaps a year before we returned to London, a Catholic friend brought me +to a spiritualistic seance at the house of a young man who had been lately +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>arrested under a suspicion of Fenianism, but had been released for lack +of evidence. He and his friends had been sitting weekly about a table in +the hope of spiritual manifestation and one had developed mediumship. A +drawer full of books had leaped out of the table when no one was touching +it, a picture had moved upon the wall. There were some half dozen of us, +and our host began by making passes until the medium fell asleep sitting +upright in his chair. Then the lights were turned out, and we sat waiting +in the dim light of a fire. Presently my shoulders began to twitch and my +hands. I could easily have stopped them, but I had never heard of such a +thing and I was curious. After a few minutes the movement became violent +and I stopped it. I sat motionless for a while and then my whole body +moved like a suddenly unrolled watch-spring, and I was thrown backward on +the wall. I again stilled the movement and sat at the table. Everybody +began to say I was a medium, and that if I would not resist some wonderful +thing would happen. I remembered that my father had told me that Balzac +had once desired to take opium for the experience sake, but would not +because he dreaded the surrender of his will. We were now holding each +other’s hands and presently my right hand banged the knuckles of the woman +next to me upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> table. She laughed, and the medium, speaking for the +first time, and with difficulty, out of his mesmeric sleep, said, “tell +her there is great danger.” He stood up and began walking round me, making +movements with his hands as though he were pushing something away. I was +now struggling vainly with this force which compelled me to movements I +had not willed, and my movements had become so violent that the table was +broken. I tried to pray, and because I could not remember a prayer, +repeated in a loud voice</p> + +<p class="poem">Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit<br /> +Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste<br /> +Brought death into the world and all our woe...<br /> +Sing, heavenly muse.</p> + +<p>My Catholic friend had left the table and was saying a Pater Noster and +Ave Maria in the corner. Presently all became still and so dark that I +could not see anybody. I described it to somebody next day as like going +out of a noisy political meeting on to a quiet country road. I said to +myself, “I am now in a trance but I no longer have any desire to resist.” +But when I turned my eyes to the fireplace I could see a faint gleam of +light, so I thought “no, I am not in a trance.” Then I saw shapes faintly +appearing in the darkness & thought, “they are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> spirits;” but they were +only the spiritualists and my friend at her prayers. The medium said in a +faint voice, “we are through the bad spirits.” I said, “will they ever +come again, do you think?” and he said, “no, never again, I think,” and in +my boyish vanity I thought it was I who had banished them. For years +afterwards I would not go to a seance or turn a table and would often ask +myself what was that violent impulse that had run through my nerves? was +it a part of myself—something always to be a danger perhaps; or had it +come from without, as it seemed?</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXXII</h3> + +<p>I had published my first book of poems by subscription, O’Leary finding +many subscribers, and a book of stories, when I heard that my grandmother +was dead and went to Sligo for the funeral. She had asked to see me but by +some mistake I was not sent for. She had heard that I was much about with +a beautiful, admired woman and feared that I did not speak of marriage +because I was poor, and wanted to say to me “women care nothing about +money.” My grandfather was dying also and only survived her a few weeks. I +went to see him and wondered at his handsome face now sickness had refined +it, and noticed that he foretold the changes in the weather<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> by +indications of the light and of the temperature that could not have told +me anything. As I sat there my old childish fear returned and I was glad +to get away. I stayed with my uncle whose house was opposite where my +grandfather lived, and walking home with him one day we met the doctor. +The doctor said there was no hope and that my grandfather should be told, +but my uncle would not allow it. He said “it would make a man mad to know +he was dying.” In vain the doctor pleaded that he had never known a man +not made calmer by the knowledge. I listened sad and angry, but my uncle +always took a low view of human nature, his very tolerance which was +exceedingly great came from his hoping nothing of anybody. Before he had +given way my grandfather lifted up his arms and cried out “there she is,” +and fell backward dead. Before he was dead, old servants of that house +where there had never been noise or disorder began their small pilferings, +and after his death there was a quarrel over the disposition of certain +mantle-piece ornaments of no value.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>XXXIII</h3> + +<p>For some months now I have lived with my own youth and childhood, not +always writing indeed but thinking of it almost every day, and I am +sorrowful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> and disturbed. It is not that I have accomplished too few of my +plans, for I am not ambitious; but when I think of all the books I have +read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have +given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all +life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for +something that never happens.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">Printed in the United States of America.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Reveries over Childhood and Youth, by +William Butler Yeats + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 33348-h.htm or 33348-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/3/4/33348/ + +Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Reveries over Childhood and Youth + +Author: William Butler Yeats + +Release Date: August 4, 2010 [EBook #33348] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + +REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH + + + + + THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS + ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO + + MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED + LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA + MELBOURNE + + THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. + TORONTO + + + + + REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH + + BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS + + THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + NEW YORK MCMXVI + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1916, + BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. + + Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1916. + + Norwood Press + J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. + Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. + + + + +To those few people mainly personal friends who have read all that I have +written. + +W. B. Y. + + + + +Preface + + +Sometimes when I remember a relative that I have been fond of, or a +strange incident of the past, I wander here and there till I have somebody +to talk to. Presently I notice that my listener is bored; but now that I +have written it out, I may even begin to forget it all. In any case, +because one can always close a book, my friend need not be bored. + +I have changed nothing to my knowledge, and yet it must be that I have +changed many things without my knowledge, for I am writing after so many +years, and have consulted neither friend nor letter nor old newspaper and +describe what comes oftenest into my memory. + +I say this fearing that some surviving friend of my youth may remember +something in a different shape and be offended with my book. + +Christmas Day, 1914. + + + + +REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH + + +My first memories are fragmentary and isolated and contemporaneous, as +though one remembered vaguely some early day of the Seven Days. It seems +as if time had not yet been created, for all are connected with emotion +and place and without sequence. + +I remember sitting upon somebody's knee, looking out of a window at a wall +covered with cracked and falling plaster, but what wall I do not remember, +and being told that some relation once lived there. I am looking out of +another window in London. It is at Fitzroy Road. Some boys are playing in +the road and among them a boy in uniform, a telegraph boy perhaps. When I +ask who the boy is, a servant tells me that he is going to blow the town +up, and I go to sleep in terror. + +After that come memories of Sligo, where I live with my grandparents. I am +sitting on the ground looking at a mastless toy boat, with the paint +rubbed and scratched, and I say to myself in great melancholy, "it is +further away than it used to be," and while I am saying it I am looking at +a long scratch in the stern, for it is especially the scratch which is +further away. Then one day at dinner my great-uncle William Middleton +says, "we should not make light of the troubles of children. They are +worse than ours, because we can see the end of our trouble and they can +never see any end," and I feel grateful for I know that I am very unhappy +and have often said to myself, "when you grow up, never talk as grown-up +people do of the happiness of childhood." I may have already had the night +of misery when, having prayed for several days that I might die, I had +begun to be afraid that I was dying and prayed that I might live. There +was no reason for my unhappiness. Nobody was unkind, and my grandmother +has still after so many years my gratitude and my reverence. The house was +so big that there was always a room to hide in, and I had a red pony and a +garden where I could wander, and there were two dogs to follow at my +heels, one white with some black spots on his head and the other with long +black hair all over him. I used to think about God and fancy that I was +very wicked, and one day when I threw a stone and hit a duck in the yard +by mischance and broke its wing, I was full of wonder when I was told that +the duck would be cooked for dinner and that I should not be punished. + +Some of my misery was loneliness and some of it fear of old William +Pollexfen my grandfather. He was never unkind, and I cannot remember that +he ever spoke harshly to me, but it was the custom to fear and admire him. +He had won the freedom of some Spanish city for saving life, but was so +silent that his wife never knew it till he was near eighty, and then from +the chance visit of some old sailor. She asked him if it was true and he +said it was true, but she knew him too well to question and his old +shipmate had left the town. She too had the habit of fear. We knew that he +had been in many parts of the world, for there was a great scar on his +hand made by a whaling-hook, and in the dining-room was a cabinet with +bits of coral in it and a jar of water from the Jordan for the baptising +of his children and Chinese pictures upon rice-paper and an ivory +walking-stick from India that came to me after his death. He had great +physical strength and had the reputation of never ordering a man to do +anything he would not do himself. He owned many sailing ships and once, +when a captain just come to anchor at Rosses Point reported something +wrong with the rudder, had sent a messenger to say "send a man down to +find out what's wrong." "The crew all refuse" was the answer. "Go down +yourself" was my grandfather's order, and when that was not obeyed, he +dived from the main deck, all the neighbourhood lined along the pebbles +of the shore. He came up with his skin torn but well informed about the +rudder. He had a violent temper and kept a hatchet at his bedside for +burglars and would knock a man down instead of going to law, and I once +saw him hunt a group of men with a horsewhip. He had no relation for he +was an only child, and being solitary and silent, he had few friends. He +corresponded with Campbell of Islay who had befriended him and his crew +after a shipwreck, and Captain Webb, the first man who had swum the +Channel and who was drowned swimming the Niagara Rapids, had been a mate +in his employ and became a close friend. That is all the friends I can +remember and yet he was so looked up to and admired that when he returned +from taking the waters at Bath his men would light bonfires along the +railway line for miles, while his partner William Middleton whose father +after the great famine had attended the sick for weeks, and taken cholera +from a man he carried in his arms into his own house and died of it, and +was himself civil to everybody and a cleverer man than my grandfather, +came and went without notice. I think I confused my grandfather with God, +for I remember in one of my attacks of melancholy praying that he might +punish me for my sins, and I was shocked and astonished when a daring +little girl--a cousin I think--having waited under a group of trees in the +avenue, where she knew he would pass near four o'clock on the way to his +dinner, said to him, "if I were you and you were a little girl, I would +give you a doll." + +Yet for all my admiration and alarm, neither I nor anyone else thought it +wrong to outwit his violence or his rigour; and his lack of suspicion and +a certain helplessness made that easy while it stirred our affection. When +I must have been still a very little boy, seven or eight years old +perhaps, an uncle called me out of bed one night, to ride the five or six +miles to Rosses Point to borrow a railway-pass from a cousin. My +grandfather had one, but thought it dishonest to let another use it, but +the cousin was not so particular. I was let out through a gate that opened +upon a little lane beside the garden away from ear-shot of the house, and +rode delighted through the moonlight, and awoke my cousin in the small +hours by tapping on his window with a whip. I was home again by two or +three in the morning and found the coachman waiting in the little lane. My +grandfather would not have thought such an adventure possible, for every +night at eight he believed that the stable-yard was locked, and he knew +that he was brought the key. Some servant had once got into trouble at +night and so he had arranged that they should all be locked in. He never +knew, what everybody else in the house knew, that for all the ceremonious +bringing of the key the gate was never locked. + +Even to-day when I read "King Lear" his image is always before me and I +often wonder if the delight in passionate men in my plays and in my poetry +is more than his memory. He must have been ignorant, though I could not +judge him in my childhood, for he had run away to sea when a boy, "gone to +sea through the hawse-hole" as he phrased it, and I can but remember him +with two books--his Bible and Falconer's "Shipwreck," a little +green-covered book that lay always upon his table; he belonged to some +younger branch of an old Cornish family. His father had been in the Army, +had retired to become an owner of sailing ships, and an engraving of some +old family place my grandfather thought should have been his hung next a +painted coat of arms in the little back parlour. His mother had been a +Wexford woman, and there was a tradition that his family had been linked +with Ireland for generations and once had their share in the old Spanish +trade with Galway. He had a good deal of pride and disliked his +neighbours, whereas his wife, a Middleton, was gentle and patient and did +many charities in the little back parlour among frieze coats and shawled +heads, and every night when she saw him asleep went the round of the house +alone with a candle to make certain there was no burglar in danger of the +hatchet. She was a true lover of her garden and before the care of her +house had grown upon her, would choose some favourite among her flowers +and copy it upon rice-paper. I saw some of her handiwork the other day and +I wondered at the delicacy of form and colour and at a handling that may +have needed a magnifying glass it was so minute. I can remember no other +pictures but the Chinese paintings, and some coloured prints of battles in +the Crimea upon the wall of a passage, and the painting of a ship at the +passage end darkened by time. + +My grown-up uncles and aunts, my grandfather's many sons and daughters, +came and went, and almost all they said or did has faded from my memory, +except a few harsh words that convince me by a vividness out of proportion +to their harshness that all were habitually kind and considerate. The +youngest of my uncles was stout and humorous and had a tongue of leather +over the keyhole of his door to keep the draught out, and another whose +bedroom was at the end of a long stone passage had a model turret ship in +a glass case. He was a clever man and had designed the Sligo quays, but +was now going mad and inventing a vessel of war that could not be sunk, +his pamphlet explained, because of a hull of solid wood. Only six months +ago my sister awoke dreaming that she held a wingless sea-bird in her arms +and presently she heard that he had died in his mad-house, for a sea-bird +is the omen that announces the death or danger of a Pollexfen. An uncle, +George Pollexfen, afterwards astrologer and mystic, and my dear friend, +came but seldom from Ballina, once to a race meeting with two postillions +dressed in green; and there was that younger uncle who had sent me for the +railway-pass. He was my grandmother's favourite, and had, the servants +told me, been sent away from school for taking a crowbar to a bully. + +I can only remember my grandmother punishing me once. I was playing in the +kitchen and a servant in horseplay pulled my shirt out of my trousers in +front just as my grandmother came in and I, accused of I knew not what +childish indecency, was given my dinner in a room by myself. But I was +always afraid of my uncles and aunts, and once the uncle who had taken the +crowbar to the bully found me eating lunch which my grandmother had given +me and reproved me for it and made me ashamed. We breakfasted at nine and +dined at four and it was considered self-indulgent to eat anything +between meals; and once an aunt told me that I had reined in my pony and +struck it at the same moment that I might show it off as I rode through +the town, and I, because I had been accused of what I thought a very dark +crime, had a night of misery. Indeed I remember little of childhood but +its pain. I have grown happier with every year of life as though gradually +conquering something in myself, for certainly my miseries were not made by +others but were a part of my own mind. + + +II + +One day someone spoke to me of the voice of the conscience, and as I +brooded over the phrase I came to think that my soul, because I did not +hear an articulate voice, was lost. I had some wretched days until being +alone with one of my aunts I heard a whisper in my ear, "what a tease you +are!" At first I thought my aunt must have spoken, but when I found she +had not, I concluded it was the voice of my conscience and was happy +again. From that day the voice has come to me at moments of crisis, but +now it is a voice in my head that is sudden and startling. It does not +tell me what to do, but often reproves me. It will say perhaps, "that is +unjust" of some thought; and once when I complained that a prayer had not +been heard, it said, "you have been helped." I had a little flagstaff in +front of the house and a red flag with the Union Jack in the corner. Every +night I pulled my flag down and folded it up and laid it on a shelf in my +bedroom, and one morning before breakfast I found it, though I knew I had +folded it up the night before, knotted round the bottom of the flagstaff +so that it was touching the grass. I must have heard the servants talking +of the faeries for I concluded at once that a faery had tied those four +knots and from that on believed that one had whispered in my ear. I have +been told, though I do not remember it myself, that I saw, whether once or +many times I do not know, a supernatural bird in the corner of the room. +Once too I was driving with my grandmother a little after dark close to +the Channel that runs for some five miles from Sligo to the sea, and my +grandmother showed me the red light of an outward-bound steamer and told +me that my grandfather was on board, and that night in my sleep I screamed +out and described the steamer's wreck. The next morning my grandfather +arrived on a blind horse found for him by grateful passengers. He had, as +I remember the story, been asleep when the captain aroused him to say they +were going on the rocks. He said, "have you tried sail on her?" and +judging from some answer that the captain was demoralised took over the +command and, when the ship could not be saved, got the crew and passengers +into the boats. His own boat was upset and he saved himself and some +others by swimming; some women had drifted ashore, buoyed up by their +crinolines. "I was not so much afraid of the sea as of that terrible man +with his oar," was the comment of a schoolmaster who was among the +survivors. Eight men were, however, drowned and my grandfather suffered +from that memory at intervals all his life, and if asked to read family +prayers never read anything but the shipwreck of St. Paul. + +I remember the dogs more clearly than anyone except my grandfather and +grandmother. The black hairy one had no tail because it had been sliced +off, if I was told the truth, by a railway train. I think I followed at +their heels more than they did at mine, and that their journeys ended at a +rabbit-warren behind the garden; and sometimes they had savage fights, the +black hairy dog, being well protected by its hair, suffering least. I can +remember one so savage that the white dog would not take his teeth out of +the black dog's hair till the coachman hung them over the side of a +water-butt, one outside and one in the water. My grandmother once told the +coachman to cut the hair like a lion's hair and, after a long consultation +with the stable-boy, he cut it all over the head and shoulders and left +it on the lower part of the body. The dog disappeared for a few days and I +did not doubt that its heart was broken. There was a large garden behind +the house full of apple-trees with flower-beds and grass-plots in the +centre and two figure-heads of ships, one among the strawberry plants +under a wall covered with fruit trees and one among the flowers. The one +among the flowers was a white lady in flowing robes, while the other, a +stalwart man in uniform, had been taken from a three-masted ship of my +grandfather's called "The Russia," and there was a belief among the +servants that the stalwart man represented the Tsar and had been presented +by the Tsar himself. The avenue, or as they say in England the drive, that +went from the hall door through a clump of big trees to an insignificant +gate and a road bordered by broken and dirty cottages, was but two or +three hundred yards, and I often thought it should have been made to wind +more, for I judged people's social importance mainly by the length of +their avenues. This idea may have come from the stable-boy, for he was my +principal friend. He had a book of Orange rhymes, and the days when we +read them together in the hay-loft gave me the pleasure of rhyme for the +first time. Later on I can remember being told, when there was a rumour +of a Fenian rising, that rifles had been served out to the Orangemen and +presently, when I had begun to dream of my future life, I thought I would +like to die fighting the Fenians. I was to build a very fast and beautiful +ship and to have under my command a company of young men who were always +to be in training like athletes and so become as brave and handsome as the +young men in the story-books, and there was to be a big battle on the +sea-shore near Rosses and I was to be killed. I collected little pieces of +wood and piled them up in a corner of the yard, and there was an old +rotten log in a distant field I often went to look at because I thought it +would go a long way in the making of the ship. All my dreams were of +ships; and one day a sea captain who had come to dine with my grandfather +put a hand on each side of my head and lifted me up to show me Africa, and +another day a sea captain pointed to the smoke from the Pern mill on the +quays rising up beyond the trees of the lawn, as though it came from the +mountain, and asked me if Ben Bulben was a burning mountain. + +Once every few months I used to go to Rosses Point or Ballisodare to see +another little boy, who had a piebald pony that had once been in a circus +and sometimes forgot where it was and went round and round. He was George +Middleton, son of my great-uncle William Middleton. Old Middleton had +bought land, then believed a safe investment, at Ballisodare and at +Rosses, and spent the winter at Ballisodare and the summer at Rosses. The +Middleton and Pollexfen flour mills were at Ballisodare, and a great +salmon weir, rapids and a waterfall, but it was more often at Rosses that +I saw my cousin. We rowed in the river mouth or were taken sailing in a +heavy slow schooner yacht or in a big ship's boat that had been rigged and +decked. There were great cellars under the house, for it had been a +smuggler's house a hundred years before, and sometimes three loud raps +would come upon the drawing room window at sun-down, setting all the dogs +barking, some dead smuggler giving his accustomed signal. One night I +heard them very distinctly and my cousins often heard them, and later on +my sister. A pilot had told me that, after dreaming three times of a +treasure buried in my uncle's garden, he had climbed the wall in the +middle of the night and begun to dig but grew disheartened "because there +was so much earth." I told somebody what he had said and was told that it +was well he did not find it for it was guarded by a spirit that looked +like a flat iron. At Ballisodare there was a cleft among the rocks that I +passed with terror because I believed that a murderous monster lived +there that made a buzzing sound like a bee. + +It was through the Middletons perhaps that I got my interest in country +stories and certainly the first faery stories that I heard were in the +cottages about their houses. The Middletons took the nearest for friends +and were always in and out of the cottages of pilots and of tenants. They +were practical, always doing something with their hands, making boats, +feeding chickens, and without ambition. One of them had designed a steamer +many years before my birth and long after I had grown to manhood one could +hear it--it had some sort of obsolete engine--many miles off wheezing in +the Channel like an asthmatic person. It had been built on the lake and +dragged through the town by many horses, stopping before the windows where +my mother was learning her lessons, and plunging the whole school into +candle-light for five days, and was still patched and repatched mainly +because it was believed to be a bringer of good luck. It had been called +after the betrothed of its builder "Janet," long corrupted into the more +familiar "Jennet," and the betrothed died in my youth having passed her +eightieth year and been her husband's plague because of the violence of +her temper. Another who was but a year or two older than myself used to +shock me by running after hens to know by their feel if they were on the +point of dropping an egg. They let their houses decay and the glass fall +from the windows of their greenhouses, but one among them at any rate had +the second sight. They were liked but had not the pride and reserve, the +sense of decorum and order, the instinctive playing before themselves that +belongs to those who strike the popular imagination. + +Sometimes my grandmother would bring me to see some old Sligo gentlewoman +whose garden ran down to the river, ending there in a low wall full of +wallflowers, and I would sit up upon my chair, very bored, while my elders +ate their seed-cake and drank their sherry. My walks with the servants +were more interesting; sometimes we would pass a little fat girl and a +servant persuaded me to write her a love-letter, and the next time she +passed she put her tongue out. But it was the servant's stories that +interested me. At such and such a corner a man had got a shilling from a +drill sergeant by standing in a barrel and had then rolled out of it and +shown his crippled legs. And in such and such a house an old woman had hid +herself under the bed of her guests, an officer and his wife, and on +hearing them abuse her, beaten them with a broomstick. All the well-known +families had their grotesque or tragic or romantic legends, and I often +said to myself how terrible it would be to go away and die where nobody +would know my story. Years afterwards, when I was ten or twelve years old +and in London, I would remember Sligo with tears, and when I began to +write, it was there I hoped to find my audience. Next to Merville where I +lived, was another tree-surrounded house where I sometimes went to see a +little boy who stayed there occasionally with his grandmother, whose name +I forget and who seemed to me kind and friendly, though when I went to see +her in my thirteenth or fourteenth year I discovered that she only cared +for very little boys. When the visitors called I hid in the hay-loft and +lay hidden behind the great heap of hay while a servant was calling my +name in the yard. + +I do not know how old I was (for all these events seem at the same +distance) when I was made drunk. I had been out yachting with an uncle and +my cousins and it had come on very rough. I had lain on deck between the +mast and the bowsprit and a wave had burst over me and I had seen green +water over my head. I was very proud and very wet. When we got into Rosses +again, I was dressed up in an older boy's clothes so that the trousers +came down below my boots and a pilot gave me a little raw whiskey. I drove +home with the uncle on an outside car and was so pleased with the strange +state in which I found myself that for all my uncle could do, I cried to +every passer-by that I was drunk, and went on crying it through the town +and everywhere until I was put to bed by my grandmother and given +something to drink that tasted of black currants and so fell asleep. + + +III + +Some six miles off towards Ben Bulben and beyond the Channel, as we call +the tidal river between Sligo and the Rosses, and on top of a hill there +was a little square two-storeyed house covered with creepers and looking +out upon a garden where the box borders were larger than any I had ever +seen, and where I saw for the first time the crimson streak of the +gladiolus and awaited its blossom with excitement. Under one gable a dark +thicket of small trees made a shut-in mysterious place, where one played +and believed that something was going to happen. My great-aunt Micky lived +there. Micky was not her right name for she was Mary Yeats and her father +had been my great-grandfather, John Yeats, who had been Rector of +Drumcliffe, a few miles further off, and died in 1847. She was a spare, +high-coloured, elderly woman and had the oldest looking cat I had ever +seen, for its hair had grown into matted locks of yellowy white. She +farmed and had one old man-servant, but could not have farmed at all, had +not neighbouring farmers helped to gather in the crops, in return for the +loan of her farm implements and "out of respect for the family," for as +Johnny MacGurk, the Sligo barber said to me, "the Yeats's were always very +respectable." She was full of family history; all her dinner knives were +pointed like daggers through much cleaning, and there was a little James +the First cream-jug with the Yeats motto and crest, and on her dining-room +mantle-piece a beautiful silver cup that had belonged to my +great-great-grandfather, who had married a certain Mary Butler. It had +upon it the Butler crest and had been already old at the date 1534, when +the initials of some bride and bridegroom were engraved under the lip. All +its history for generations was rolled up inside it upon a piece of paper +yellow with age, until some caller took the paper to light his pipe. +Another family of Yeats, a widow and her two children on whom I called +sometimes with my grandmother, lived near in a long low cottage, and owned +a very fierce turkeycock that did battle with their visitors; and some +miles away lived the secretary to the Grand Jury and Land Agent, my +great-uncle Mat Yeats and his big family of boys and girls; but I think +it was only in later years that I came to know them well. I do not think +any of these liked the Pollexfens, who were well off and seemed to them +purse-proud, whereas they themselves had come down in the world. I +remember them as very well-bred and very religious in the Evangelical way +and thinking a good deal of Aunt Micky's old histories. There had been +among our ancestors a Kings County soldier, one of Marlborough's generals, +and when his nephew came to dine he gave him boiled pork, and when the +nephew said he disliked boiled pork he had asked him to dine again and +promised him something he would like better. However, he gave him boiled +pork again and the nephew took the hint in silence. The other day as I was +coming home from America, I met one of his descendants whose family has +not another discoverable link with ours, and he too knew the boiled pork +story and nothing else. We have the General's portrait, and he looks very +fine in his armour and his long curly wig, and underneath it, after his +name, are many honours that have left no tradition among us. Were we +country people, we could have summarised his life in a legend. + +Another ancestor or great-uncle had chased the United Irishmen for a +fortnight, fallen into their hands and been hanged, and the notorious +Major Sirr who betrayed the brothers Shears, taking their children upon +his knees to question them, if the tale does not lie, had been god-father +to several of my great-great-grandfather's children; while to make a +balance, my great-grandfather had been Robert Emmett's friend and been +suspected and imprisoned though but for a few hours. A great-uncle had +been Governor of Penang, and led the forlorn hope at the taking of +Rangoon, and an uncle of a still older generation had fallen at New +Orleans in 1813, and even in the last generation there had been lives of +some power and pleasure. An old man who had entertained many famous +people, in his 18th century house, where battlement and tower showed the +influence of Horace Walpole, had but lately, after losing all his money, +drowned himself, first taking off his rings and chain and watch as became +a collector of many beautiful things; and once to remind us of more +passionate life, a gun-boat put into Rosses, commanded by the illegitimate +son of some great-uncle or other. Now that I can look at their miniatures, +turning them over to find the name of soldier, or lawyer, or Castle +official, and wondering if they cared for good books or good music, I am +delighted with all that joins my life to those who had power in Ireland or +with those anywhere that were good servants and poor bargainers, but I +cared nothing as a child for Micky's tales. I could see my grandfather's +ships come up the bay or the river, and his sailors treated me with +deference, and a ship's carpenter made and mended my toy boats and I +thought that nobody could be so important as my grandfather. Perhaps, too, +it is only now that I can value those more gentle natures so unlike his +passion and violence. An old Sligo priest has told me how my +great-grandfather John Yeats always went into his kitchen rattling the +keys, so much did he fear finding some one doing wrong, and how when the +agent of the great landowner of his parish brought him from cottage to +cottage to bid the women send their children to the Protestant school and +all had promised till they came to one who cried, "child of mine will +never darken your door," he had said "thank you, my woman, you are the +first honest woman I have met to-day." My uncle, Mat Yeats, the Land +Agent, had once waited up every night for a week to catch some boys who +stole his apples and when he caught them had given them sixpence and told +them not to do it again. Perhaps it is only fancy or the softening touch +of the miniaturist that makes me discover in their faces some courtesy and +much gentleness. Two 18th century faces interest me the most, one that of +a great-great-grandfather, for both have under their powdered curling wigs +a half-feminine charm, and as I look at them I discover a something clumsy +and heavy in myself. Yet it was a Yeats who spoke the only eulogy that +turns my head. "We have ideas and no passions, but by marriage with a +Pollexfen we have given a tongue to the sea cliffs." + +Among the miniatures there is a larger picture, an admirable drawing by I +know not what master, that is too harsh and merry for its company. He was +a connection and close friend of my great-grandmother Corbet, and though +we spoke of him as "Uncle Beattie" in our childhood, no blood relation. My +great-grandmother who died at ninety-three had many memories of him. He +was the friend of Goldsmith & was accustomed to boast, clergyman though he +was, that he belonged to a hunt-club of which every member but himself had +been hanged or transported for treason, and that it was not possible to +ask him a question he could not reply to with a perfectly appropriate +blasphemy or indecency. + + +IV + +Because I had found it hard to attend to anything less interesting than my +thoughts, I was difficult to teach. Several of my uncles and aunts had +tried to teach me to read, and because they could not, and because I was +much older than children who read easily, had come to think, as I have +learnt since, that I had not all my faculties. But for an accident they +might have thought it for a long time. My father was staying in the house +and never went to church, and that gave me the courage to refuse to set +out one Sunday morning. I was often devout, my eyes filling with tears at +the thought of God and of my own sins, but I hated church. My grandmother +tried to teach me to put my toes first to the ground because I suppose I +stumped on my heels and that took my pleasure out of the way there. Later +on when I had learnt to read I took pleasure in the words of the hymn, but +never understood why the choir took three times as long as I did in +getting to the end; and the part of the service I liked, the sermon and +passages of the Apocalypse and Ecclesiastes, were no compensation for all +the repetitions and for the fatigue of so much standing. My father said if +I would not go to church he would teach me to read. I think now that he +wanted to make me go for my grandmother's sake and could think of no other +way. He was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at +my head, and next Sunday I decided to go to church. My father had, +however, got interested in teaching me, and only shifted the lesson to a +week-day till he had conquered my wandering mind. My first clear image of +him was fixed on my imagination, I believe, but a few days before the +first lesson. He had just arrived from London and was walking up and down +the nursery floor. He had a very black beard and hair, and one cheek +bulged out with a fig that was there to draw the pain out of a bad tooth. +One of the nurses (a nurse had come from London with my brothers and +sisters) said to the other that a live frog, she had heard, was best of +all. Then I was sent to a dame school kept by an old woman who stood us in +rows and had a long stick like a billiard cue to get at the back rows. My +father was still at Sligo when I came back from my first lesson and asked +me what I had been taught. I said I had been taught to sing, and he said, +"sing then" and I sang + + "Little drops of water, + Little grains of sand, + Make the mighty ocean, + And the pleasant land" + +high up in my head. So my father wrote to the old woman that I was never +to be taught to sing again, and afterwards other teachers were told the +same thing. Presently my eldest sister came on a long visit and she and I +went to a little two-storeyed house in a poor street where an old +gentlewoman taught us spelling and grammar. When we had learned our lesson +well, we were allowed to look at a sword presented to her father who had +led troops in India or China and to spell out a long complimentary +inscription on the silver scabbard. As we walked to her house or home +again we held a large umbrella before us, both gripping the handle and +guiding ourselves by looking out of a round hole gnawed in the cover by a +mouse. When I had got beyond books of one syllable, I began to spend my +time in a room called the Library, though there were no books in it that I +can remember except some old novels I never opened and a many volumed +encyclopaedia published towards the end of the 18th century. I read this +encyclopaedia a great deal and can remember a long passage considering +whether fossil wood despite its appearance might not be only a curiously +shaped stone. + +My father's unbelief had set me thinking about the evidences of religion +and I weighed the matter perpetually with great anxiety, for I did not +think I could live without religion. All my religious emotions were, I +think, connected with clouds and cloudy glimpses of luminous sky, perhaps +because of some bible picture of God's speaking to Abraham or the like. +At least I can remember the sight moving me to tears. One day I got a +decisive argument for belief. A cow was about to calve, and I went to the +field where the cow was with some farm-hands who carried a lantern, and +next day I heard that the cow had calved in the early morning. I asked +everybody how calves were born, and because nobody would tell me, made up +my mind that nobody knew. They were the gift of God, that much was +certain, but it was plain that nobody had ever dared to see them come, and +children must come in the same way. I made up my mind that when I was a +man I would wait up till calf or child had come. I was certain there would +be a cloud and a burst of light and God would bring the calf in the cloud +out of the light. That thought made me content until a boy of twelve or +thirteen, who had come on a visit for the day, sat beside me in a hay-loft +and explained all the mechanism of sex. He had learnt all about it from an +elder boy whose pathic he was (to use a term he would not have understood) +and his description, given, as I can see now, as if he were telling of any +other fact of physical life, made me miserable for weeks. After the first +impression wore off, I began to doubt if he had spoken truth, but one day +I discovered a passage in the encyclopaedia, though I only partly +understood its long words, that confirmed what he had said. I did not know +enough to be shocked at his relation to the elder boy, but it was the +first breaking of the dream of childhood. + +My realization of death came when my father and mother and my two brothers +and my two sisters were on a visit. I was in the Library when I heard feet +running past and heard somebody say in the passage that my younger +brother, Robert, had died. He had been ill for some days. A little later +my sister and I sat at the table, very happy, drawing ships with their +flags half-mast high. We must have heard or seen that the ships in the +harbour had their flags at half-mast. Next day at breakfast I heard people +telling how my mother and the servant had heard the banshee crying the +night before he died. It must have been after this that I told my +grandmother I did not want to go with her when she went to see old +bed-ridden people because they would soon die. + + +V + +At length when I was eight or nine an aunt said to me, "you are going to +London. Here you are somebody. There you will be nobody at all." I knew at +the time that her words were a blow at my father, not at me, but it was +some years before I knew her reason. She thought so able a man as my +father could have found out some way of painting more popular pictures if +he had set his mind to it and that it was wrong of him "to spend every +evening at his club." She had mistaken, for what she would have considered +a place of wantonness, Heatherley's Art School. + +My mother and brother and sister were at Sligo perhaps when I was sent to +England, for my father and I and a group of landscape painters lodged at +Burnham Beeches with an old Mr. and Mrs. Earle. My father was painting the +first big pond you come to if you have driven from Slough through Farnham +Royal. He began it in spring and painted all through the year, the picture +changing with the seasons, and gave it up unfinished when he had painted +the snow upon the heath-covered banks. He is never satisfied and can never +make himself say that any picture is finished. In the evening he heard me +my lessons or read me some novel of Fenimore Cooper's. I found delightful +adventures in the woods--one day a blind worm and an adder fighting in a +green hollow, and sometimes Mrs. Earle would be afraid to tidy the room +because I had put a bottle full of newts on the mantle-piece. Now and then +a boy from a farm on the other side of the road threw a pebble at my +window at daybreak, and he and I went fishing in the big second pond. Now +and then another farmer's boy and I shot sparrows with an old pepper box +revolver and the boy would roast them on a string. There was an old horse +one of the painters called the scaffolding, and sometimes a son of old +Earle's drove with me to Slough and once to Windsor, and at Windsor we +made our lunch of cold sausages bought from a public house. I did not know +what it was to be alone, for I could wander in pleasant alarm through the +enclosed parts, then very large, or round some pond imagining ships going +in and out among the reeds and thinking of Sligo or of strange seafaring +adventures in the fine ship I should launch when I grew up. I had always a +lesson to learn before night and that was a continual misery, for I could +very rarely, with so much to remember, set my thoughts upon it and then +only in fear. One day my father told me that a painter had said I was very +thick-skinned and did not mind what was said to me, and I could not +understand how anybody could be so unjust. It made me wretched to be idle +but one could not help it. I was once surprised and shocked. All but my +father and myself had been to London, and Kennedy and Farrar and Page, I +remember the names vaguely, arrived laughing and talking. One of them had +carried off a card of texts from the waiting room of the station and hung +it up on the wall. I thought "he has stolen it," but my father and all +made it a theme of merry conversation. + +Then I returned to Sligo for a few weeks as I was to do once or twice in +every year for years, and after that we settled in London. Perhaps my +mother and the other children had been there all the time, for I remember +my father now and again going to London. The first house we lived in was +close to Burne Jones's house at North End, but we moved after a year or +two to Bedford Park. At North End we had a pear tree in the garden and +plenty of pears, but the pears used to be full of maggots, and almost +opposite lived a school-master called O'Neill, and when a little boy told +me that the school-master's great-grandfather had been a king I did not +doubt it. I was sitting against the hedge and iron railing of some +villa-garden there, when I heard one boy say to another it was something +wrong with my liver that gave me such a dark complexion and that I could +not live more than a year. I said to myself a year is a very long time, +one can do such a lot of things in a year, and put it out of my head. When +my father gave me a holiday and later when I had a holiday from school I +took my schooner boat to the round pond, sailing it very commonly against +the two cutter yachts of an old naval officer. He would sometimes look at +the ducks and say, "I would like to take that fellow home for my dinner," +and he sang me a sailor's song about a coffin ship which left Sligo after +the great famine, that made me feel very important. The servants at Sligo +had told me the story. When she was moved from the berth she had lain in, +an unknown dead man's body had floated up, a very evil omen; and my +grandfather, who was Lloyds' agent, had condemned her, but she slipped out +in the night. The pond had its own legends; and a boy who had seen a +certain model steamer "burned to the water's edge" was greatly valued as a +friend. There was a little boy I was kind to because I knew his father had +done something disgraceful, though I did not know what. It was years +before I discovered that his father was but the maker of certain popular +statues, many of which are now in public places. I had heard my father's +friends speak of him. Sometimes my sister came with me, and we would look +into all the sweet shops & toy shops on our way home, especially into one +opposite Holland House because there was a cutter yacht made of sugar in +the window, and we drank at all the fountains. Once a stranger spoke to us +and bought us sweets and came with us almost to our door. We asked him to +come in and told him our father's name. He would not come in, but laughed +and said, "Oh, that is the painter who scrapes out every day what he +painted the day before." A poignant memory came upon me the other day +while I was passing the drinking-fountain near Holland Park, for there I +and my sister had spoken together of our longing for Sligo and our hatred +of London. I know we were both very close to tears and remember with +wonder, for I had never known anyone that cared for such momentoes, that I +longed for a sod of earth from some field I knew, something of Sligo to +hold in my hand. It was some old race instinct like that of a savage, for +we had been brought up to laugh at all display of emotion. Yet it was our +mother, who would have thought its display a vulgarity, who kept alive +that love. She would spend hours listening to stories or telling stories +of the pilots and fishing people of Rosses Point, or of her own Sligo +girlhood, and it was always assumed between her and us that Sligo was more +beautiful than other places. I can see now that she had great depth of +feeling, that she was her father's daughter. My memory of what she was +like in those days has grown very dim, but I think her sense of +personality, her desire of any life of her own, had disappeared in her +care for us and in much anxiety about money. I always see her sewing or +knitting in spectacles and wearing some plain dress. Yet ten years ago +when I was in San Francisco, an old cripple came to see me who had left +Sligo before her marriage; he came to tell me, he said, that my mother +"had been the most beautiful girl in Sligo." + + +[Illustration: _Mrs. Yeats from a drawing by J. B. Yeats made in 1867_] + + +The only lessons I had ever learned were those my father taught me, for he +terrified me by descriptions of my moral degradation and he humiliated me +by my likeness to disagreeable people; but presently I was sent to school +at Hammersmith. It was a Gothic building of yellow brick: a large hall +full of desks, some small class-rooms and a separate house for boarders, +all built perhaps in 1840 or 1850. I thought it an ancient building and +that it had belonged to the founder of the school, Lord Godolphin, who was +romantic to me because there was a novel about him. I never read the +novel, but I thought only romantic people were put in books. On one side, +there was a piano factory of yellow brick, upon two sides half finished +rows of little shops and villas all yellow brick, and on the fourth side, +outside the wall of our playing field, a brickfield of cinders and piles +of half-burned yellow bricks. All the names and faces of my school-fellows +have faded from me except one name without a face and the face and name of +one friend, mainly no doubt because it was all so long ago, but partly +because I only seem to remember things that have mixed themselves up with +scenes that have some quality to bring them again and again before the +memory. For some days, as I walked homeward along the Hammersmith Road, I +told myself that whatever I most cared for had been taken away. I had +found a small, green-covered book given to my father by a Dublin man of +science; it gave an account of the strange sea creatures the man of +science had discovered among the rocks at Howth or dredged out of Dublin +Bay. It had long been my favourite book; and when I read it I believed +that I was growing very wise, but now I should have no time for it nor for +my own thoughts. Every moment would be taken up learning or saying lessons +or walking between school and home four times a day, for I came home in +the middle of the day for dinner. But presently I forgot my trouble, +absorbed in two things I had never known, companionship and enmity. After +my first day's lesson, a circle of boys had got around me in a playing +field and asked me questions, "who's your father?" "what does he do?" "how +much money has he?" Presently a boy said something insulting. I had never +struck anybody or been struck, and now all in a minute, without any +intention upon my side, but as if I had been a doll moved by a string, I +was hitting at the boys within reach and being hit. After that I was +called names for being Irish, and had many fights and never, for years, +got the better of any one of them; for I was delicate and had no muscles. +Sometimes, however, I found means of retaliation, even of aggression. +There was a boy with a big stride, much feared by little boys, and finding +him alone in the playing field, I went up to him and said, "rise upon +Sugaun and sink upon Gad." "What does that mean?" he said. "Rise upon +hay-leg and sink upon straw," I answered and told him that in Ireland the +sergeant tied straw and hay to the ankles of a stupid recruit to show him +the difference between his legs. My ears were boxed, and when I complained +to my friends, they said I had brought it upon myself; and that I deserved +all I got. I probably dared myself to other feats of a like sort, for I +did not think English people intelligent or well-behaved unless they were +artists. Everyone I knew well in Sligo despised Nationalists and +Catholics, but all disliked England with a prejudice that had come down +perhaps from the days of the Irish Parliament. I knew stories to the +discredit of England, and took them all seriously. My mother had met some +English woman who did not like Dublin because the legs of the men were too +straight, and at Sligo, as everybody knew, an Englishman had once said to +a car-driver, "if you people were not so lazy, you would pull down the +mountain and spread it out over the sand and that would give you acres of +good fields." At Sligo there is a wide river mouth and at ebb tide most of +it is dry sand, but all Sligo knew that in some way I cannot remember it +was the spreading of the tide over the sand that left the narrow channel +fit for shipping. At any rate the carman had gone chuckling all over Sligo +with his tale. People would tell it to prove that Englishmen were always +grumbling. "They grumble about their dinners and everything--there was an +Englishman who wanted to pull down Knock-na-Rea" and so on. My mother had +shown them to me kissing at railway stations, and taught me to feel +disgust at their lack of reserve, and my father told how my grandfather, +William Yeats, who had died before I was born, when he came home to his +Rectory in County Down from an English visit, spoke of some man he had met +on a coach road who "Englishman-like" told him all his affairs. My father +explained that an Englishman generally believed that his private affairs +did him credit, while an Irishman, being poor and probably in debt, had no +such confidence. I, however, did not believe in this explanation. My Sligo +nurses, who had in all likelihood the Irish Catholic political hatred, had +never spoken well of any Englishman. + +Once when walking in the town of Sligo I had turned to look after an +English man and woman whose clothes attracted me. The man I remember had +gray clothes and knee-breeches and the woman a gray dress, and my nurse +had said contemptuously, "towrows." Perhaps before my time, there had been +some English song with the burden "tow row row," and everybody had told me +that English people ate skates and even dog-fish, and I myself had only +just arrived in England when I saw an old man put marmalade in his +porridge. I was divided from all those boys, not merely by the anecdotes +that are everywhere perhaps a chief expression of the distrust of races, +but because our mental images were different. I read their boys' books and +they excited me, but if I read of some English victory, I did not believe +that I read of my own people. They thought of Cressy and Agincourt and the +Union Jack and were all very patriotic, and I, without those memories of +Limerick and the Yellow Ford that would have strengthened an Irish +Catholic, thought of mountain and lake, of my grandfather and of ships. +Anti-Irish feeling was running high, for the Land League had been founded +and landlords had been shot, and I, who had no politics, was yet full of +pride, for it is romantic to live in a dangerous country. + +I daresay I thought the rough manners of a cheap school, as my grandfather +Yeats had those of a chance companion, typical of all England. At any rate +I had a harassed life & got many a black eye and had many outbursts of +grief and rage. Once a boy, the son of a great Bohemian glass-maker, and +who was older than the rest of us, and had been sent out of his country +because of a love affair, beat a boy for me because we were "both +foreigners." And a boy, who grew to be the school athlete and my chief +friend, beat a great many. His are the face and name that I remember--his +name was of Huguenot origin and his face like his gaunt and lithe body had +something of the American Indian in colour and lineament. + +I was very much afraid of the other boys, and that made me doubt myself +for the first time. When I had gathered pieces of wood in the corner for +my great ship, I was confident that I could keep calm among the storms and +die fighting when the great battle came. But now I was ashamed of my lack +of courage; for I wanted to be like my grandfather who thought so little +of danger that he had jumped overboard in the Bay of Biscay after an old +hat. I was very much afraid of physical pain, and one day when I had made +some noise in class, my friend the athlete was accused and I allowed him +to get two strokes of the cane before I gave myself up. He had held out +his hands without flinching and had not rubbed them on his sides +afterwards. I was not caned, but was made to stand up for the rest of the +lesson. I suffered very much afterwards when the thought came to me, but +he did not reproach me. + +I had been some years at school before I had my last fight. My friend, the +athlete, had given me many months of peace, but at last refused to beat +any more and said I must learn to box, and not go near the other boys till +I knew how. I went home with him every day and boxed in his room, and the +bouts had always the same ending. My excitability gave me an advantage at +first and I would drive him across the room, and then he would drive me +across and it would end very commonly with my nose bleeding. One day his +father, an elderly banker, brought us out into the garden and tried to +make us box in a cold-blooded, courteous way, but it was no use. At last +he said I might go near the boys again and I was no sooner inside the gate +of the playing field than a boy flung a handful of mud and cried out "mad +Irishman." I hit him several times on the face without being hit, till the +boys round said we should make friends. I held out my hand in fear; for I +knew if we went on I should be beaten, and he took it sullenly. I had so +poor a reputation as a fighter that it was a great disgrace to him, and +even the masters made fun of his swollen face; and though some little boys +came in a deputation to ask me to lick a boy they named, I had never +another fight with a school-fellow. We had a great many fights with the +street boys and the boys of a neighbouring charity school. We had always +the better because we were not allowed to fling stones, and that compelled +us to close or do our best to close. The monitors had been told to report +any boy who fought in the street, but they only reported those who flung +stones. I always ran at the athlete's heels, but I never hit anyone. My +father considered these fights absurd, and even that they were an English +absurdity, and so I could not get angry enough to like hitting and being +hit; and then too my friend drove the enemy before him. He had no doubts +or speculations to lighten his fist upon an enemy, that, being of low +behaviour, should be beaten as often as possible, and there were real +wrongs to avenge: one of our boys had been killed by the blow of a stone +hid in a snowball. Sometimes we on our side got into trouble with the +parents of boys. There was a quarrel between the athlete and an old German +who had a barber's shop we passed every day on our way home, and one day +he spat through the window and hit the German on his bald head--the +monitors had not forbidden spitting. The German ran after us, but when the +athlete squared up he went away. Now, though I knew it was not right to +spit at people, my admiration for my friend arose to a great height. I +spread his fame over the school, and next day there was a fine stir when +somebody saw the old German going up the gravel walk to the head-master's +room. Presently there was such a noise in the passage that even the master +had to listen. It was the head-master's red-haired brother turning the old +German out and shouting to the man-servant "see that he doesn't steal the +top-coats." We heard afterwards that he had asked the names of the two +boys who passed his window every day and been told the names of the two +head boys who passed also but were notoriously gentlemanly in their +manners. Yet my friend was timid also and that restored my confidence in +myself. He would often ask me to buy the sweets or the ginger-beer because +he was afraid sometimes when speaking to a stranger. + +I had one reputation that I valued. At first when I went to the +Hammersmith swimming-baths with the other boys, I was afraid to plunge in +until I had gone so far down the ladder that the water came up to my +thighs; but one day when I was alone I fell from the spring-board which +was five or six feet above the water. After that I would dive from a +greater height than the others and I practised swimming under water and +pretending not to be out of breath when I came up. And then if I ran a +race, I took care not to pant or show any sign of strain. And in this I +had an advantage even over the athlete; for though he could run faster and +was harder to tire than anybody else, he grew very pale and I was often +paid compliments. I used to run with my friend when he was training to +keep him in company. He would give me a long start and soon overtake me. + +I followed the career of a certain professional runner for months, buying +papers that would tell me if he had won or lost. I had seen him described +as "the bright particular star of American athletics," and the wonderful +phrase had thrown enchantment over him. Had he been called the particular +bright star, I should have cared nothing for him. I did not understand the +symptom for years after. I was nursing my own dream, my form of the common +school-boy dream, though I was no longer gathering the little pieces of +broken and rotting wood. Often, instead of learning my lesson, I covered +the white squares of the chessboard on my little table with pen and ink +pictures of myself, doing all kinds of courageous things. One day my +father said "there was a man in Nelson's ship at the battle of Trafalgar, +a ship's purser, whose hair turned white; what a sensitive temperament; +that man should have achieved something!" I was vexed and bewildered, and +am still bewildered and still vexed, finding it a poor and crazy thing +that we who have imagined so many noble persons cannot bring our flesh to +heel. + + +VI + +The head-master was a clergyman, a good-humoured, easy-going man, as +temperate, one had no doubt, in his religious life as in all else, and if +he ever lost sleep on our account, it was from a very proper anxiety as to +our gentility. I was in disgrace once because I went to school in some +brilliant blue homespun serge my mother had bought in Devonshire, and I +was told I must never wear it again. He had tried several times, though he +must have known it was hopeless, to persuade our parents to put us into +Eton clothes, and on certain days we were compelled to wear gloves. After +my first year, we were forbidden to play marbles because it was a form of +gambling and was played by nasty little boys, and a few months later told +not to cross our legs in class. It was a school for the sons of +professional men who had failed or were at the outset of their career, and +the boys held an indignation meeting when they discovered that a new boy +was an apothecary's son (I think at first I was his only friend,) and we +all pretended that our parents were richer than they were. I told a little +boy who had often seen my mother knitting or mending my clothes that she +only mended or knitted because she liked it, though I knew it was +necessity. + +It was like, I suppose, most schools of its type, an obscene, bullying +place, where a big boy would hit a small boy in the wind to see him double +up, and where certain boys, too young for any emotion of sex, would sing +the dirty songs of the street, but I daresay it suited me better than a +better school. I have heard the head-master say, "how has so-and-so done +in his Greek?" and the class-master reply, "very badly, but he is doing +well in his cricket," and the head-master has gone away saying "Oh, leave +him alone." I was unfitted for school work, and though I would often work +well for weeks together, I had to give the whole evening to one lesson if +I was to know it. My thoughts were a great excitement, but when I tried to +do anything with them, it was like trying to pack a balloon into a shed in +a high wind. I was always near the bottom of my class, and always making +excuses that but added to my timidity; but no master was rough with me. I +was known to collect moths and butterflies and to get into no worse +mischief than hiding now and again an old tailless white rat in my +coat-pocket or my desk. There was but one interruption of our quiet +habits, the brief engagement of an Irish master, a fine Greek scholar and +vehement teacher, but of fantastic speech. He would open the class by +saying, "there he goes, there he goes," or some like words as the +head-master passed by at the end of the hall. "Of course this school is no +good. How could it be with a clergyman for head-master?" And then perhaps +his eye would light on me, and he would make me stand up and tell me it +was a scandal I was so idle when all the world knew that any Irish boy was +cleverer than a whole class-room of English boys, a description I had to +pay for afterwards. Sometimes he would call up a little boy who had a +girl's face and kiss him upon both cheeks and talk of taking him to Greece +in the holidays, and presently we heard he had written to the boy's +parents about it, but long before the holidays he was dismissed. + + +VII + +Two pictures come into my memory. I have climbed to the top of a tree by +the edge of the playing field, and am looking at my school-fellows and am +as proud of myself as a March cock when it crows to its first sunrise. I +am saying to myself, "if when I grow up I am as clever among grown-up men +as I am among these boys, I shall be a famous man." I remind myself how +they think all the same things and cover the school walls at election +times with the opinions their fathers find in the newspapers. I remind +myself that I am an artist's son and must take some work as the whole end +of life and not think as the others do of becoming well off and living +pleasantly. The other picture is of a hotel sitting-room in the Strand, +where a man is hunched up over the fire. He is a cousin who has speculated +with another cousin's money and has fled from Ireland in danger of arrest. +My father has brought us to spend the evening with him, to distract him +from the remorse my father knows that he must be suffering. + + +VIII + +For years Bedford Park was a romantic excitement. At North End my father +had announced at breakfast that our glass chandelier was absurd and was to +be taken down, and a little later he described the village Norman Shaw was +building. I had thought he said, "there is to be a wall round and no +newspapers to be allowed in." And when I had told him how put out I was at +finding neither wall nor gate, he explained that he had merely described +what ought to be. We were to see De Morgan tiles, peacock-blue doors and +the pomegranate pattern and the tulip pattern of Morris, and to discover +that we had always hated doors painted with imitation grain and the roses +of mid-Victoria, and tiles covered with geometrical patterns that seemed +to have been shaken out of a muddy kaleidoscope. We went to live in a +house like those we had seen in pictures and even met people dressed like +people in the storybooks. The streets were not straight and dull as at +North End, but wound about where there was a big tree or for the mere +pleasure of winding, and there were wood palings instead of iron railings. +The newness of everything, the empty houses where we played at +hide-and-seek, and the strangeness of it all, made us feel that we were +living among toys. We could imagine people living happy lives as we +thought people did long ago when the poor were picturesque and the master +of a house would tell of strange adventures over the sea. Only the better +houses had been built. The commercial builder had not begun to copy and to +cheapen, and besides we only knew the most beautiful houses, the houses of +artists. My two sisters and my brother and myself had dancing lessons in a +low, red-brick and tiled house that drove away dreams, long cherished, of +some day living in a house made exactly like a ship's cabin. The +dining-room table, where Sinbad the sailor might have sat, was painted +peacock-blue, and the woodwork was all peacock-blue and upstairs there was +a window niche so big and high up, there was a flight of steps to go up +and down by and a table in the niche. The two sisters of the master of the +house, a well-known pre-Raphaelite painter, were our teachers, and they +and their old mother were dressed in peacock-blue and in dresses so simply +cut that they seemed a part of every story. Once when I had been looking +with delight at the old woman, my father who had begun to be influenced by +French art, muttered, "imagine dressing up your old mother like that." + + +[Illustration: _John Butler Yeats from a watercolour drawing by himself_] + + +My father's friends were painters who had been influenced by the +pre-Raphaelite movement but had lost their confidence. Wilson, Page, +Nettleship, Potter are the names I remember, and at North End, I remember +them most clearly. I often heard one and another say that Rossetti had +never mastered his materials, and though Nettleship had already turned +lion-painter, my father talked constantly of the designs of his youth, +especially of "God creating Evil," which Browning praised in a letter my +father had seen "as the most sublime conception in ancient or modern +Art." In those early days, that he might not be tempted from his work by +society, he had made a rent in the tail of his coat; and I have heard my +mother tell how she had once sewn it up, but before he came again he had +pulled out all the stitches. Potter's exquisite "Dormouse," now in the +Tate Gallery, hung in our house for years. His dearest friend was a pretty +model who was, when my memory begins, working for some position in a +board-school. I can remember her sitting at the side of the throne in the +North End Studio, a book in her hand and my father hearing her say a Latin +lesson. Her face was the typical mild, oval face of the painting of that +time, and may indeed have helped in the moulding of an ideal of beauty. I +found it the other day drawn in pencil on a blank leaf of a volume of the +"Earthly Paradise." It was at Bedford Park that I had heard Farrar, whom I +had first known at Burnham Beeches, tell of Potter's death and burial. +Potter had been very poor and had died from the effects of +semi-starvation. He had lived so long on bread and tea that his stomach +withered--I am sure that was the word used, and when his relations found +out and gave him good food, it was too late. Farrar had been at the +funeral and had stood behind some well-to-do people who were close about +the grave and saw one point to the model, who had followed the hearse on +foot and was now crying at a distance, and say, "that is the woman who had +all his money." She had often begged him to allow her to pay his debts, +but he would not have it. Probably his rich friends blamed his poor +friends, and they the rich, and I daresay, nobody had known enough to help +him. Besides, he had a strange form of dissipation, I had heard someone +say; he was devoted to children, and would become interested in some +child--his "Dormouse" is a portrait of a child--and spend his money on its +education. My sister remembers seeing him paint with a dark glove on his +right hand, and his saying that he had used so much varnish the reflection +of the hand would have teased him but for the glove. "I will soon have to +paint my face some dark colour," he added. I have no memory, however, but +of noticing that he sat at the easel, whereas my father always stands and +walks up and down, and that there was dark blue, a colour that always +affects me, in the background of his picture. There is a public gallery of +Wilson's work in his native Aberdeen and my sisters have a number of his +landscapes--wood-scenes for the most part--painted with phlegm and +melancholy, the romantic movement drawing to its latest phase. + + +IX + +My father read out to me, for the first time, when I was eight or nine +years old. Between Sligo and Rosses Point, there is a tongue of land +covered with coarse grass that runs out into the sea or the mud according +to the state of the tide. It is the place where dead horses are buried. +Sitting there, my father read me "The Lays of Ancient Rome." It was the +first poetry that had moved me after the stable-boy's "Orange Rhymes." +Later on he read me "Ivanhoe" and "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," and they +are still vivid in the memory. I re-read "Ivanhoe" the other day, but it +has all vanished except Gurth, the swineherd, at the outset and Friar Tuck +and his venison pasty, the two scenes that laid hold of me in childhood. +"The Lay of the Last Minstrel" gave me a wish to turn magician that +competed for years with the dream of being killed upon the sea-shore. When +I first went to school, he tried to keep me from reading boys' papers, +because a paper, by its very nature, as he explained to me, had to be made +for the average boy or man and so could not but thwart one's growth. He +took away my paper and I had not courage to say that I was but reading and +delighting in a prose re-telling of the Iliad. But after a few months, my +father said he had been too anxious and became less urgent about my +lessons and less violent if I had learnt them badly, and he ceased to +notice what I read. From that on I shared the excitement which ran through +all my fellows on Wednesday afternoons when the boys' papers were +published, and I read endless stories I have forgotten as completely as +Grimm's Fairy Tales that I read at Sligo, and all of Hans Andersen except +the Ugly Duckling which my mother had read to me and to my sisters. I +remember vaguely that I liked Hans Andersen better than Grimm because he +was less homely, but even he never gave me the knights and dragons and +beautiful ladies that I longed for. I have remembered nothing that I read, +but only those things that I heard or saw. When I was ten or twelve my +father took me to see Irving play Hamlet, and did not understand why I +preferred Irving to Ellen Terry, who was, I can now see, the idol of +himself and his friends. I could not think of her, as I could of Irving's +Hamlet, as but myself, and I was not old enough to care for feminine charm +and beauty. For many years Hamlet was an image of heroic self-possession +for the poses of youth and childhood to copy, a combatant of the battle +within myself. My father had read me the story of the little boy murdered +by the Jews in Chaucer and the tale of Sir Topaz, explaining the hard +words, and though both excited me, I had liked Sir Topaz best and been +disappointed that it left off in the middle. As I grew older, he would +tell me plots of Balzac's novels, using incident or character as an +illustration for some profound criticism of life. Now that I have read all +the Comedie Humaine, certain pages have an unnatural emphasis, straining +and overbalancing the outline, and I remember how in some suburban street, +he told me of Lucien de Rubempre, or of the duel after the betrayal of his +master, and how the wounded Lucien had muttered "so much the worse" when +he heard someone say that he was not dead. + +I now can but share with a friend my thoughts and my emotions, and there +is a continual discovery of difference, but in those days, before I had +found myself, we could share adventures. When friends plan and do +together, their minds become one mind and the last secret disappears. I +was useless at games. I cannot remember that I ever kicked a goal or made +a run, but I was a mine of knowledge when I and the athlete and those two +notoriously gentlemanly boys--theirs was the name that I remember without +a face--set out for Richmond Park, for Coomb Wood or Twyford Abbey to look +for butterflies and moths and beetles. Sometimes to-day I meet people at +lunch or dinner whose address will sound familiar and I remember of a +sudden how a game-keeper chased me from the plantation behind their house, +and how I have turned over the cow-dung in their paddock in the search for +some rare beetle believed to haunt the spot. The athlete was our watchman +and our safety. He would suggest, should we meet a carriage on the drive, +that we take off our hats and walk on as though about to pay a call. And +once when we were sighted by a game-keeper at Coomb Wood, he persuaded the +eldest of the brothers to pretend to be a school-master taking his boys +for a walk, and the keeper, instead of swearing and threatening the law, +was sad and argumentative. No matter how charming the place, (and there is +a little stream in a hollow where Wimbledon Common flows into Coomb Wood +that is pleasant in the memory,) I knew that those other boys saw +something I did not see. I was a stranger there. There was something in +their way of saying the names of places that made me feel this. + + +X + +When I arrived at the Clarence Basin, Liverpool, (the dock Clarence Mangan +had his first name from) on my way to Sligo for my holidays I was among +Sligo people. When I was a little boy, an old woman who had come to +Liverpool with crates of fowl, made me miserable by throwing her arms +around me the moment I had alighted from my cab and telling the sailor who +carried my luggage that she had held me in her arms when I was a baby. The +sailor may have known me almost as well, for I was often at Sligo quay to +sail my boat; and I came and went once or twice in every year upon the ss. +_Sligo_ or the ss. _Liverpool_ which belonged to a company that had for +directors my grandfather and his partner William Middleton. I was always +pleased if it was the _Liverpool_, for she had been built to run the +blockade during the war of North and South. + +I waited for this voyage always with excitement and boasted to other boys +about it, and when I was a little boy had walked with my feet apart as I +had seen sailors walk. I used to be sea-sick, but I must have hidden this +from the other boys and partly even from myself; for, as I look back, I +remember very little about it, while I remember stories I was told by the +captain or by his first mate, and the look of the great cliffs of Donegal +& Tory Island men coming alongside with lobsters, talking Irish and, if it +was night, blowing on a burning sod to draw our attention. The captain, an +old man with square shoulders and a fringe of grey hair round his face, +would tell his first mate, a very admiring man, of fights he had had on +shore at Liverpool; and perhaps it was of him I was thinking when I was +very small and asked my grandmother if God was as strong as sailors. Once, +at any rate, he had been nearly wrecked; the _Liverpool_ had been all but +blown upon the Mull of Galloway with her shaft broken, and the captain had +said to his mate, "mind and jump when she strikes, for we don't want to be +killed by the falling spars;" and when the mate answered, "my God, I +cannot swim," he had said, "who could keep afloat for five minutes in a +sea like that?" He would often say his mate was the most timid of men and +that "a girl along the quays could laugh him out of anything." My +grandfather had more than once given the mate a ship of his own, but he +had always thrown up his berth to sail with his old captain where he felt +safe. Once he had been put in charge of a ship in a dry dock in Liverpool, +but a boy was drowned in Sligo, and before the news could reach him he +wired to his wife, "ghost, come at once, or I will throw up berth." He had +been wrecked a number of times and maybe that had broken his nerve or +maybe he had a sensitiveness that would in another class have given him +taste & culture. I once forgot a copy of "Count Robert of Paris" on a +deck-seat, and when I found it again, it was all covered with the prints +of his dirty thumb. He had once seen the coach-a-baur or death coach. It +came along the road, he said, till it was hidden by a cottage and it never +came out on the other side of the cottage. Once I smelled new-mown hay +when we were quite a long way from land, and once when I was watching the +sea-parrots (as the sailors call the puffin) I noticed they had different +ways of tucking their heads under their wings, or I fancied it and said to +the captain "they have different characters." Sometimes my father came +too, and the sailors when they saw him coming would say "there is John +Yeats and we shall have a storm," for he was considered unlucky. + +I no longer cared for little shut-in-places, for a coppice against the +stable-yard at Merville where my grandfather lived or against the gable at +Seaview where Aunt Micky lived, and I began to climb the mountains, +sometimes with the stable-boy for companion, and to look up their stories +in the county history. I fished for trout with a worm in the mountain +streams and went out herring-fishing at night: and because my grandfather +had said the English were in the right to eat skates, I carried a large +skate all the six miles or so from Rosses Point, but my grandfather did +not eat it. + +One night just as the equinoctial gales were coming when I was sailing +home in the coastguard's boat a boy told me a beetle of solid gold, +strayed maybe from Poe's "gold bug," had been seen by somebody in Scotland +and I do not think that either of us doubted his news. Indeed, so many +stories did I hear from sailors along the wharf, or round the fo'castle +fire of the little steamer that ran between Sligo and Rosses, or from boys +out fishing that the world was full of monsters and marvels. The foreign +sailors wearing ear-rings did not tell me stories, but like the fishing +boys, I gazed at them in wonder and admiration. When I look at my +brother's picture, "Memory Harbour," houses and anchored ship and distant +lighthouse all set close together as in some old map, I recognize in the +blue-coated man with the mass of white shirt the pilot I went fishing +with, and I am full of disquiet and of excitement, and I am melancholy +because I have not made more and better verses. I have walked on Sinbad's +yellow shore and never shall another hit my fancy. + +I had still my red pony, and once my father came with me riding too, and +was very exacting. He was indignant and threatening because he did not +think I rode well. "You must do everything well," he said, "that the +Pollexfens respect, though you must do other things also." He used to say +the same about my lessons, and tell me to be good at mathematics. I can +see now that he had a sense of inferiority among those energetic, +successful people. He himself, some Pollexfen told me, though he rode very +badly, would go hunting upon anything and take any ditch. His father, the +County Down Rector, though a courtly man and a scholar, had been so +dandified a horseman that I had heard of his splitting three riding +breeches before he had settled into his saddle for a day's hunting, and of +his first rector exclaiming, "I had hoped for a curate but they have sent +me a jockey." + +Left to myself, I rode without ambition though getting many falls, and +more often to Rathbroughan where my great-uncle Mat lived, than to any +place else. His children and I used to sail our toy-boats in the river +before his house, arming them with toy-cannon, touch-paper at all the +touch-holes, always hoping but always in vain that they would not twist +about in the eddies but fire their cannon at one another. I must have gone +to Sligo sometimes in the Christmas holidays, for I can remember riding my +red pony to a hunt. He balked at the first jump, to my relief, and when a +crowd of boys began to beat him, I would not allow it. They all jeered at +me for being afraid. I found a gap and when I was alone in a field tried +another ditch, but the pony would not jump that either; so I tied him to a +tree and lay down among the ferns and looked up into the sky. On my way +home I met the hunt again and noticed that everybody avoided the dogs, and +because I wanted to find out why they did so I rode to where the dogs had +gathered in the middle of the lane and stood my pony amongst them, and +everybody began to shout at me. + +Sometimes I would ride to Castle Dargan, where lived a brawling squireen, +married to one of my Middleton cousins, and once I went thither on a visit +with my cousin George Middleton. It was, I dare say, the last household +where I could have found the reckless Ireland of a hundred years ago in +final degradation. But I liked the place for the romance of its two ruined +castles facing one another across a little lake, Castle Dargan and Castle +Fury. The squireen lived in a small house whither his family had moved +from their castle some time in the 18th century, and two old Miss Furys, +who let lodgings in Sligo, were the last remnants of the breed of the +other ruin. Once in every year he drove to Sligo for the two old women, +that they might look upon the ancestral stones and remember their +gentility, and he would put his wildest horses into the shafts to enjoy +their terror. + +He himself, with a reeling imagination, knew not what he could be at to +find a spur for the heavy hours. The first day I came there, he gave my +cousin a revolver, (we were upon the high road,) and to show it off, or +his own shooting, he shot a passing chicken; and half an hour later, when +he had brought us to the lake's edge under his castle, now but the broken +corner of a tower with a winding stair, he fired at or over an old +countryman who was walking on the far edge of the lake. The next day I +heard him settling the matter with the old countryman over a bottle of +whiskey, and both were in good humour. Once he had asked a timid aunt of +mine if she would like to see his last new pet, and thereupon had marched +a race-horse in through the hall door and round the dining-room table. And +once she came down to a bare table because he had thought it a good joke +to open the window and let his harriers eat the breakfast. There was a +current story, too, of his shooting, in the pride of his marksmanship, at +his own door with a Martini-Henry rifle till he had shot the knocker off. +At last he quarrelled with my great-uncle William Middleton, and to avenge +himself gathered a rabble of wild country-lads and mounted them and +himself upon the most broken-down rascally horses he could lay hands on +and marched them through Sligo under a land-league banner. After that, +having neither friends nor money, he made off to Australia or to Canada. +I fished for pike at Castle Dargan and shot at birds with a muzzle-loading +pistol until somebody shot a rabbit and I heard it squeal. From that on I +would kill nothing but the dumb fish. + + +XI + +We left Bedford Park for a long thatched house at Howth, Co. Dublin. The +land war was now at its height and our Kildare land, that had been in the +family for many generations, was slipping from us. Rents had fallen more +and more, we had to sell to pay some charge or mortgage, but my father and +his tenants parted without ill-will. During the worst times an old tenant +had under his roof my father's shooting-dog and gave it better care than +the annual payment earned. He had set apart for its comfort the best place +at the fire; and if some man were in the place when the dog walked into +the house, the man must needs make room for the dog. And a good while +after the sale, I can remember my father being called upon to settle some +dispute between this old man and his sons. + +I was now fifteen; and as he did not want to leave his painting my father +told me to go to Harcourt Street and put myself to school. I found a bleak +18th century house and a small playing-field full of mud and pebbles, +fenced by an iron railing from a wide 18th century street, but opposite a +long hoarding and a squalid, ornamental railway station. Here, as I soon +found, nobody gave a thought to decorum. We worked in a din of voices. We +began the morning with prayers, but when class began the head-master, if +he was in the humour, would laugh at Church and Clergy. "Let them say what +they like," he would say, "but the earth does go round the sun." On the +other hand there was no bullying and I had not thought it possible that +boys could work so hard. Cricket and football, the collection of moths and +butterflies, though not forbidden, were discouraged. They were for idle +boys. I did not know, as I used to, the mass of my school-fellows; for we +had little life in common outside the class-rooms. I had begun to think of +my school-work as an interruption of my natural history studies, but even +had I never opened a book not in the school course, I could not have +learned a quarter of my night's work. I had always done Euclid easily, +making the problems out while the other boys were blundering at the +blackboard, and it had often carried me from the bottom to the top of my +class; but these boys had the same natural gift and instead of being in +the fourth or fifth book were in the modern books at the end of the +primer; and in place of a dozen lines of Virgil with a dictionary, I was +expected to learn with the help of a crib a hundred and fifty lines. The +other boys were able to learn the translation off, and to remember what +words of Latin and English corresponded with one another, but I, who it +may be had tried to find out what happened in the parts we had not read, +made ridiculous mistakes; and what could I, who never worked when I was +not interested, do with a history lesson that was but a column of seventy +dates? I was worst of all at literature, for we read Shakespeare for his +grammar exclusively. + +One day I had a lucky thought. A great many lessons were run through in +the last hour of the day, things we had learnt or should have learnt by +heart over night, and after not having known one of them for weeks, I cut +off that hour without anybody's leave. I asked the mathematical master to +give me a sum to work and nobody said a word. My father often interfered, +and always with disaster, to teach me my Latin lesson. "But I have also my +geography," I would say. "Geography," he would reply, "should never be +taught. It is not a training for the mind. You will pick up all that you +need, in your general reading." And if it was a history lesson, he would +say just the same, and "Euclid," he would say, "is too easy. It comes +naturally to the literary imagination. The old idea, that it is a good +training for the mind, was long ago refuted." I would know my Latin lesson +so that it was a nine days' wonder, and for weeks after would be told it +was scandalous to be so clever and so idle. No one knew that I had learnt +it in the terror that alone could check my wandering mind. I must have +told on him at some time or other for I remember the head-master saying, +"I am going to give you an imposition because I cannot get at your father +to give him one." Sometimes we had essays to write; & though I never got a +prize, for the essays were judged by hand-writing and spelling I caused a +measure of scandal. I would be called up before some master and asked if I +really believed such things, and that would make me angry for I had +written what I had believed all my life, what my father had told me, or a +memory of the conversation of his friends. There were other beliefs, but +they were held by people one did not know, people who were vulgar or +stupid. I was asked to write an essay on "men may rise on stepping-stones +of their dead selves to higher things." My father read the subject to my +mother, who had no interest in such matters. "That is the way," he said, +"boys are made insincere and false to themselves. Ideals make the blood +thin, and take the human nature out of people." He walked up and down the +room in eloquent indignation, and told me not to write on such a subject +at all, but upon Shakespeare's lines "to thine own self be true, and it +must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man." +At another time, he would denounce the idea of duty, and "imagine," he +would say, "how the right sort of woman would despise a dutiful husband;" +and he would tell us how much my mother would scorn such a thing. Maybe +there were people among whom such ideas were natural, but they were the +people with whom one does not dine. All he said was, I now believe right, +but he should have taken me away from school. He would have taught me +nothing but Greek and Latin, and I would now be a properly educated man, +and would not have to look in useless longing at books that have been, +through the poor mechanism of translation, the builders of my soul, nor +faced authority with the timidity born of excuse and evasion. Evasion and +excuse were in the event as wise as the house-building instinct of the +beaver. + + +XII + +My London schoolfellow, the athlete, spent a summer with us, but the +friendship of boyhood, founded upon action and adventure, was drawing to +an end. He was still my superior in all physical activity and climbed to +places among the rocks that even now are uncomfortable memories, but I had +begun to criticize him. One morning I proposed a journey to Lambay Island, +and was contemptuous because he said we should miss our mid-day meal. We +hoisted a sail on our small boat and ran quickly over the nine miles and +saw on the shore a tame sea-gull, while a couple of boys, the sons of a +coastguard, ran into the water in their clothes to pull us to land, as we +had read of savage people doing. We spent an hour upon the sunny shore and +I said, "I would like to live here always, and perhaps some day I will." I +was always discovering places where I would like to spend my whole life. +We started to row home, and when dinner-time had passed for about an hour, +the athlete lay down on the bottom of the boat doubled up with the gripes. +I mocked at him and at his fellow-countrymen whose stomachs struck the +hour as if they were clocks. + +Our natural history, too, began to pull us apart. I planned some day to +write a book about the changes through a twelve-month among the creatures +of some hole in the rock, and had some theory of my own, which I cannot +remember, as to the colour of sea-anemones: and after much hesitation, +trouble and bewilderment, was hot for argument in refutation of Adam and +Noah and the Seven Days. I had read Darwin and Wallace, Huxley and +Haeckel, and would spend hours on a holiday plaguing a pious geologist, +who, when not at some job in Guinness's brewery, came with a hammer to +look for fossils in the Howth Cliffs. "You know," I would say, "that such +and such human remains cannot be less, because of the strata they were +found in, than fifty thousand years old." "Oh!" he would answer, "they are +an isolated instance." And once when I pressed hard my case against +Ussher's chronology, he begged me not to speak of the subject again. "If I +believed what you do," he said, "I could not live a moral life." But I +could not even argue with the athlete who still collected his butterflies +for the adventure's sake, and with no curiosity but for their names. I +began to judge his intelligence, and to tell him that his natural history +had as little to do with science as his collection of postage stamps. Even +during my school days in London, influenced perhaps by my father, I had +looked down upon the postage stamps. + + +XIII + +Our house for the first year or so was on the top of a cliff, so that in +stormy weather the spray would sometimes soak my bed at night, for I had +taken the glass out of the window, sash and all. A literary passion for +the open air was to last me for a few years. Then for another year or two, +we had a house overlooking the harbour where the one great sight was the +going and coming of the fishing fleet. We had one regular servant, a +fisherman's wife, and the occasional help of a big, red-faced girl who ate +a whole pot of jam while my mother was at church and accused me of it. +Some such arrangement lasted until long after the time I write of, and +until my father going into the kitchen by chance found a girl, who had +been engaged during a passing need, in tears at the thought of leaving our +other servant, and promised that they should never be parted. I have no +doubt that we lived at the harbour for my mother's sake. She had, when we +were children, refused to take us to a seaside place because she heard it +possessed a bathing box, but she loved the activities of a fishing +village. When I think of her, I almost always see her talking over a cup +of tea in the kitchen with our servant, the fisherman's wife, on the only +themes outside our house that seemed of interest--the fishing people of +Howth, or the pilots and fishing people of Rosses Point. She read no +books, but she and the fisherman's wife would tell each other stories that +Homer might have told, pleased with any moment of sudden intensity and +laughing together over any point of satire. There is an essay called +"Village Ghosts" in my "Celtic Twilight" which is but a record of one such +afternoon, and many a fine tale has been lost because it had not occurred +to me soon enough to keep notes. My father was always praising her to my +sisters and to me, because she pretended to nothing she did not feel. She +would write him letters telling of her delight in the tumbling clouds, but +she did not care for pictures, and never went to an exhibition even to see +a picture of his, nor to his studio to see the day's work, neither now nor +when they were first married. I remember all this very clearly and little +after until her mind had gone in a stroke of paralysis and she had found, +liberated at last from financial worry, perfect happiness feeding the +birds at a London window. She had always, my father would say, intensity, +and that was his chief word of praise; and once he added to the praise "no +spendthrift ever had a poet for a son, though a miser might." + + +XIV + +The great event of a boy's life is the awakening of sex. He will bathe +many times a day, or get up at dawn and having stripped leap to and fro +over a stick laid upon two chairs and hardly know, and never admit, that +he had begun to take pleasure in his own nakedness, nor will he +understand the change until some dream discovers it. He may never +understand at all the greater change in his mind. + +It all came upon me when I was close upon seventeen like the bursting of a +shell. Somnambulistic country-girls, when it is upon them, throw plates +about or pull them with long hairs in simulation of the polter-geist, or +become mediums for some genuine spirit-mischief, surrendering to their +desire of the marvellous. As I look backward, I seem to discover that my +passions, my loves and my despairs, instead of being my enemies, a +disturbance and an attack, became so beautiful that I must be constantly +alone to give them my whole attention. I notice that, for the first time +as I run through my memory, what I saw when alone is more vivid than what +I did or saw in company. + +A herd had shown me a cave some hundred and fifty feet below the cliff +path and a couple of hundred above the sea, and told me how an evicted +tenant called Macrom, dead some fifteen years, had lived there many years, +and shown me a rusty nail in the rock which had served perhaps to hold up +some wooden protection from wind and weather. Here I stored a tin of cocoa +and some biscuits, and instead of going to my bed, would slip out on warm +nights and sleep in the cave on the excuse of catching moths. One had to +pass over a rocky ledge, safe enough for anyone with a fair head, yet +seeming, if looked at from above, narrow and sloping; and a remonstrance +from a stranger who had seen me climbing along it doubled my delight in +the adventure. When however, upon a bank holiday, I found lovers in my +cave, I was not content with it again till I heard of alarm among the +fishing boats, because the ghost of Macrom had been seen a little before +the dawn, stooping over his fire in the cave-mouth. I had been trying to +cook eggs, as I had read in some book, by burying them in the earth under +a fire of sticks. + +At other times, I would sleep among the rhododendrons and rocks in the +wilder part of the grounds of Howth Castle. After a while my father said I +must stay in-doors half the night, meaning that I should get some sleep in +my bed; but I, knowing that I would be too sleepy and comfortable to get +up again, used to sit over the kitchen fire till half the night was gone. +Exaggerated accounts spread through the school, and sometimes when I did +not know a lesson some master would banter me. My interest in science +began to fade away, and presently I said to myself, "it has all been a +misunderstanding." I remembered how soon I tired of my specimens, and how +little I knew after all my years of collecting, and I came to believe that +I had gone through so much labour because of a text, heard for the first +time in St. John's Church in Sligo. I wanted to be certain of my own +wisdom by copying Solomon, who had knowledge of hyssop and of tree. I +still carried my green net but I began to play at being a sage, a magician +or a poet. I had many idols, and now as I climbed along the narrow ledge I +was Manfred on his glacier, and now I thought of Prince Athanase and his +solitary lamp, but I soon chose Alastor for my chief of men and longed to +share his melancholy, and maybe at last to disappear from everybody's +sight as he disappeared drifting in a boat along some slow-moving river +between great trees. When I thought of women they were modelled on those +in my favourite poets and loved in brief tragedy, or, like the girl in +"The Revolt of Islam," accompanied their lovers through all manner of wild +places, lawless women without homes and without children. + + +XV + +My father's influence upon my thoughts was at its height. We went to +Dublin by train every morning, breakfasting in his studio. He had taken a +large room with a beautiful 18th century mantle-piece in a York Street +tenement house, and at breakfast he read passages from the poets, and +always from the play or poem at its most passionate moment. He never read +me a passage because of its speculative interest, and indeed did not care +at all for poetry where there was generalisation or abstraction however +impassioned. He would read out the first speeches of the Prometheus +Unbound, but never the ecstatic lyricism of that famous fourth act; and +another day the scene where Coriolanus comes to the house of Aufidius and +tells the impudent servants that his home is under the canopy. I have seen +Coriolanus played a number of times since then, and read it more than +once, but that scene is more vivid than the rest, and it is my father's +voice that I hear and not Irving's or Benson's. He did not care even for a +fine lyric passage unless one felt some actual man behind its elaboration +of beauty, and he was always looking for the lineaments of some desirable, +familiar life. When the spirits sang their scorn of Manfred I was to judge +by Manfred's answer "O sweet and melancholy voices" that they could not, +even in anger, put off their spiritual sweetness. He thought Keats a +greater poet than Shelley, because less abstract, but did not read him, +caring little, I think, for any of that most beautiful poetry which has +come in modern times from the influence of painting. All must be an +idealisation of speech, and at some moment of passionate action or +somnambulistic reverie. I remember his saying that all contemplative men +were in a conspiracy to overrate their state of life, and that all writers +were of them, excepting the great poets. Looking backwards, it seems to me +that I saw his mind in fragments, which had always hidden connections I +only now begin to discover. He disliked the Victorian poetry of ideas, and +Wordsworth but for certain passages or whole poems. He described one +morning over his breakfast how in the shape of the head of a Wordsworthian +scholar, an old and greatly respected clergyman whose portrait he was +painting, he had discovered all the animal instincts of a prizefighter. He +despised the formal beauty of Raphael, that calm which is not an ordered +passion but an hypocrisy, and attacked Raphael's life for its love of +pleasure and its self-indulgence. In literature he was always +pre-Raphaelite, and carried into literature principles that, while the +Academy was still unbroken, had made the first attack upon academic form. +He no longer read me anything for its story, and all our discussion was of +style. + + +XVI + +I began to make blunders when I paid calls or visits, and a woman I had +known and liked as a child told me I had changed for the worse. I had +wanted to be wise and eloquent, an essay on the younger Ampere had helped +me to this ambition, and when I was alone I exaggerated my blunders and +was miserable. I had begun to write poetry in imitation of Shelley and of +Edmund Spenser, play after play--for my father exalted dramatic poetry +above all other kinds--and I invented fantastic and incoherent plots. My +lines but seldom scanned, for I could not understand the prosody in the +books, although there were many lines that taken by themselves had music. +I spoke them slowly as I wrote and only discovered when I read them to +somebody else that there was no common music, no prosody. There were, +however, moments of observation; for, even when I caught moths no longer, +I still noticed all that passed; how the little moths came out at sunset, +and how after that there were only a few big moths till dawn brought +little moths again; and what birds cried out at night as if in their +sleep. + + +XVII + +At Sligo, where I still went for my holidays, I stayed with my uncle, +George Pollexfen, who had come from Ballina to fill the place of my +grandfather, who had retired. My grandfather had no longer his big house, +his partner William Middleton was dead, and there had been legal trouble. +He was no longer the rich man he had been, and his sons and daughters were +married and scattered. He had a tall, bare house overlooking the harbour, +and had nothing to do but work himself into a rage if he saw a mudlighter +mismanaged or judged from the smoke of a steamer that she was burning +cheap coal, and to superintend the making of his tomb. There was a +Middleton tomb and a long list of Middletons on the wall, and an almost +empty place for Pollexfen names, but he had said, because there was a +Middleton there he did not like, "I am not going to lie with those old +bones;" and already one saw his name in large gilt letters on the stone +fence of the new tomb. He ended his walk at St. John's churchyard almost +daily, for he liked everything neat and compendious as upon shipboard, and +if he had not looked after the tomb himself the builder might have added +some useless ornament. He had, however, all his old skill and nerve. I was +going to Rosses Point on the little trading steamer and saw him take the +wheel from the helmsman and steer her through a gap in the channel wall, +and across the sand, an unheard-of-course, and at the journey's end bring +her alongside her wharf at Rosses without the accustomed zigzagging or +pulling on a rope but in a single movement. He took snuff when he had a +cold, but had never smoked or taken alcohol; and when in his eightieth +year his doctor advised a stimulant, he replied, "no, no, I am not going +to form a bad habit." + +My brother had partly taken my place in my grandmother's affections. He +had lived permanently in her house for some years now, and went to a Sligo +school where he was always bottom of his class. My grandmother did not +mind that, for she said, "he is too kind-hearted to pass the other boys." +He spent his free hours going here and there with crowds of little boys, +sons of pilots and sailors, as their well-liked leader, arranging donkey +races or driving donkeys tandem, an occupation which requires all one's +intellect because of their obstinacy. Besides he had begun to amuse +everybody with his drawings; and in half the pictures he paints to-day I +recognise faces that I have met at Rosses or the Sligo quays. It is long +since he has lived there, but his memory seems as accurate as the sight of +the eye. + +George Pollexfen was as patient as his father was impetuous, and did all +by habit. A well-to-do, elderly man, he lived with no more comfort than +when he had set out as a young man. He had a little house and one old +general servant and a man to look after his horse, and every year he gave +up some activity and found that there was one more food that disagreed +with him. A hypochondriac, he passed from winter to summer through a +series of woollens that had always to be weighed; for in April or May or +whatever the date was he had to be sure he carried the exact number of +ounces he had carried upon that date since boyhood. He lived in +despondency, finding in the most cheerful news reasons of discouragement, +and sighing every twenty-second of June over the shortening of the days. +Once in later years, when I met him in Dublin sweating in a midsummer +noon, I brought him into the hall of the Kildare Street Library, a cool +and shady place, without lightening his spirits; for he but said in a +melancholy voice, "how very cold this place must be in winter time." +Sometimes when I had pitted my cheerfulness against his gloom over the +breakfast table, maintaining that neither his talent nor his memory nor +his health were running to the dregs, he would rout me with the sentence, +"how very old I shall be in twenty years." Yet this inactive man, in whom +the sap of life seemed to be dried away, had a mind full of pictures. +Nothing had ever happened to him except a love affair, not I think very +passionate, that had gone wrong, and a voyage when a young man. My +grandfather had sent him in a schooner to a port in Spain where the +shipping agents were two Spaniards called O'Neill, descendants of Hugh +O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who had fled from Ireland in the reign of James +I; and their Irish trade was a last remnant of the Spanish trade that had +once made Galway wealthy. For some years he and they had corresponded, for +they cherished the memory of their origin. In some Connaught burying +ground, he had chanced upon the funeral of a child with but one mourner, a +distinguished foreign-looking man. It was an Austrian count burying the +last of an Irish family, long nobles of Austria, who were always carried +to that half-ruined burying ground. + +My uncle had almost given up hunting and was soon to give it up +altogether, and he had once ridden steeple-chases and been, his +horse-trainer said, the best rider in Connaught. He had certainly great +knowledge of horses, for I have been told, several counties away, that at +Ballina he cured horses by conjuring. He had, however, merely great skill +in diagnosis, for the day was still far off when he was to give his nights +to astrology and ceremonial magic. His servant, Mary Battle, who had been +with him since he was a young man, had the second sight and that, maybe, +inclined him to strange studies. He would tell how more than once when he +had brought home a guest without giving her notice he had found the +dinner-table set for two, and one morning she was about to bring him a +clean shirt, but stopped saying there was blood on the shirt-front and +that she must bring him another. On his way to his office he fell, +crossing over a little wall, and cut himself and bled on to the linen +where she had seen the blood. In the evening, she told how surprised she +had been to find when she looked again that the shirt she had thought +bloody was quite clean. She could neither read nor write and her mind, +which answered his gloom with its merriment, was rammed with every sort of +old history and strange belief. Much of my "Celtic Twilight" is but her +daily speech. + +My uncle had the respect of the common people as few Sligo men have had +it; he would have thought a stronger emotion an intrusion on his privacy. +He gave to all men the respect due to their station or their worth with an +added measure of ceremony, and kept among his workmen a discipline that +had about it something of a regiment or a ship, knowing nothing of any but +personal authority. If a carter, let us say, was in fault, he would not +dismiss him, but send for him and take his whip away and hang it upon the +wall; and having reduced the offender, as it were, to the ranks for +certain months, would restore him to his post and his whip. This man of +diligence and of method, who had no enterprise but in contemplation, and +claimed that his wealth, considerable for Ireland, came from a brother's +or partner's talent, was the confidant of my boyish freaks and reveries. +When I said to him, echoing some book I had read, that one never knew a +countryside till one knew it at night, (though nothing would have kept him +from his bed a moment beyond the hour) he was pleased; for he loved +natural things and had learnt two cries of the lapwing, one that drew them +to where he stood and one that made them fly away. And he approved, and +arranged my meals conveniently, when I told him I was going to walk round +Lough Gill and sleep in a wood. I did not tell him all my object, for I +was nursing a new ambition. My father had read to me some passage out of +"Walden," and I planned to live some day in a cottage on a little island +called Innisfree, and Innisfree was opposite Slish Wood where I meant to +sleep. + +I thought that having conquered bodily desire and the inclination of my +mind towards women and love, I should live, as Thoreau lived, seeking +wisdom. There was a story in the county history of a tree that had once +grown upon that island guarded by some terrible monster and borne the food +of the gods. A young girl pined for the fruit and told her lover to kill +the monster and carry the fruit away. He did as he had been told, but +tasted the fruit; and when he reached the mainland where she had waited +for him, was dying of its powerful virtue. And from sorrow and from +remorse she too ate of it and died. I do not remember whether I chose the +island because of its beauty or for the story's sake, but I was twenty-two +or three before I gave up the dream. + +I set out from Sligo about six in the evening, walking slowly, for it was +an evening of great beauty; but though I was well into Slish Wood by +bed-time, I could not sleep, not from the discomfort of the dry rock I had +chosen for my bed, but from my fear of the wood-ranger. Somebody had told +me, though I do not think it could have been true, that he went his round +at some unknown hour. I kept going over what I should say if I was found +and could not think of anything he would believe. However, I could watch +my island in the early dawn and notice the order of the cries of the +birds. + +I came home next day unimaginably tired & sleepy, having walked some +thirty miles partly over rough and boggy ground. For months afterwards, +if I alluded to my walk, my uncle's general servant (not Mary Battle, who +was slowly recovering from an illness and would not have taken the +liberty) would go into fits of laughter. She believed I had spend the +night in a different fashion and had invented the excuse to deceive my +uncle, and would say to my great embarrassment, for I was as prudish as an +old maid, "and you had good right to be fatigued." + +Once when staying with my uncle at Rosses Point where he went for certain +months of the year, I called upon a cousin towards midnight and asked him +to get his yacht out, for I wanted to find what sea birds began to stir +before dawn. He was indignant and refused; but his elder sister had +overheard me and came to the head of the stairs and forbade him to stir, +and that so vexed him that he shouted to the kitchen for his sea-boots. He +came with me in great gloom for he had people's respect, he declared, and +nobody so far had said that he was mad as they said I was, and we got a +very sleepy boy out of his bed in the village and set up sail. We put a +trawl out, as he thought it would restore his character if he caught some +fish, but the wind fell and we were becalmed. I rolled myself in the +main-sail and went to sleep for I could sleep anywhere in those days. I +was awakened towards dawn to see my cousin and the boy turning out their +pockets for money and to rummage in my own pockets. A boat was rowing in +from Roughley with fish and they wanted to buy some and would pretend they +had caught it, but all our pockets were empty. It was for the poem that +became fifteen years afterwards "The Shadowy Waters" that I had wanted the +birds' cries, and it had been full of observation had I been able to write +it when I first planned it. I had found again the windy light that moved +me when a child. I persuaded myself that I had a passion for the dawn, and +this passion, though mainly histrionic like a child's play, an ambitious +game, had moments of sincerity. Years afterwards when I had finished "The +Wanderings of Oisin," dissatisfied with its yellow and its dull green, +with all that overcharged colour inherited from the romantic movement, I +deliberately reshaped my style, deliberately sought out an impression as +of cold light and tumbling clouds. I cast off traditional metaphors and +loosened my rhythm, and recognizing that all the criticism of life known +to me was alien and English, became as emotional as possible but with an +emotion which I described to myself as cold. It is a natural conviction +for a painter's son to believe that there may be a landscape symbolical +of some spiritual condition that awakens a hunger such as cats feel for +valerian. + + +XVIII + +I was writing a long play on a fable suggested by one of my father's early +designs. A king's daughter loves a god seen in the luminous sky above her +garden in childhood, and to be worthy of him and put away mortality, +becomes without pity & commits crimes, and at last, having made her way to +the throne by murder, awaits the hour among her courtiers. One by one they +become chilly and drop dead, for, unseen by all but her, her god is +walking through the hall. At last he is at her throne's foot and she, her +mind in the garden once again, dies babbling like a child. + + +XIX + +Once when I was sailing with my cousin, the boy who was our crew talked of +a music-hall at a neighbouring seaport, and how the girls there gave +themselves to men, and his language was as extravagant as though he +praised that courtezan after whom they named a city or the queen of Sheba +herself. Another day he wanted my cousin to sail some fifty miles along +the coast and put in near some cottages where he had heard there were +girls "and we would have a great welcome before us." He pleaded with +excitement (I imagine that his eyes shone) but hardly hoped to persuade +us, and perhaps but played with fabulous images of life and of sex. A +young jockey and horse-trainer, who had trained some horses for my uncle, +once talked to me of wicked England while we cooked a turkey for our +Christmas dinner making it twist about on a string in front of his +harness-room fire. He had met two lords in England where he had gone +racing, who "always exchanged wives when they went to the Continent for a +holiday." He himself had once been led into temptation and was going home +with a woman, but having touched his scapular by chance, saw in a moment +an angel waving white wings in the air. Presently I was to meet him no +more and my uncle said he had done something disgraceful about a horse. + + +XX + +I was climbing up a hill at Howth when I heard wheels behind me and a +pony-carriage drew up beside me. A pretty girl was driving alone and +without a hat. She told me her name and said we had friends in common and +asked me to ride beside her. After that I saw a great deal of her and was +soon in love. I did not tell her I was in love, however, because she was +engaged. She had chosen me for her confidant and I learned all about her +quarrels with her lover. Several times he broke the engagement off, and +she would fall ill, and friends would make peace. Sometimes she would +write to him three times a day, but she could not do without a confidant. +She was a wild creature, a fine mimic and given to bursts of religion. I +have known her to weep at a sermon, call herself a sinful woman, and mimic +it after. I wrote her some bad poems and had more than one sleepless night +through anger with her betrothed. + + +XXI + +At Ballisodare an event happened that brought me back to the superstitions +of my childhood. I do not know when it was, for the events of this period +have as little sequence as those of childhood. I was staying with cousins +at Avena house, a young man a few years older and a girl of my own age and +perhaps her sister who was a good deal older. My girl cousin had often +told me of strange sights she had seen at Ballisodare or Rosses. An old +woman three or four feet in height and leaning on a stick had once come to +the window and looked in at her, and sometimes she would meet people on +the road who would say "how is so-and-so," naming some member of her +family, and she would know, though she could not explain how, that they +were not people of this world. Once she had lost her way in a familiar +field, and when she found it again the silver mounting on a walking-stick +belonging to her brother which she carried had vanished. An old woman in +the village said afterwards "you have good friends amongst them, and the +silver was taken instead of you." + +Though it was all years ago, what I am going to tell now must be accurate, +for no great while ago she wrote out her unprompted memory of it all and +it was the same as mine. She was sitting under an old-fashioned mirror +reading and I was reading in another part of the room. Suddenly I heard a +sound as if somebody was throwing a shower of peas at the mirror. I got +her to go into the next room and rap with her knuckles on the other side +of the wall to see if the sound could come from there, and while I was +alone a great thump came close to my head upon the wainscot and on a +different wall of the room. Later in the day a servant heard a heavy +footstep going through the empty house, and that night, when I and my two +cousins went for a walk, she saw the ground under some trees all in a +blaze of light. I saw nothing, but presently we crossed the river and went +along its edge where, they say, there was a village destroyed, I think in +the wars of the 17th century, and near an old grave-yard. Suddenly we all +saw light moving over the river where there is a great rush of waters. It +was like a very brilliant torch. A moment later the girl saw a man coming +towards us who disappeared in the water. I kept asking myself if I could +be deceived. Perhaps after all, though it seemed impossible, somebody was +walking in the water with a torch. But we could see a small light low down +on Knock-na-rea seven miles off, and it began to move upward over the +mountain slope. I timed it on my watch and in five minutes it reached the +summit, and I, who had often climbed the mountain, knew that no human +footstep was so speedy. + +From that on I wandered about raths and faery hills and questioned old +women and old men and, when I was tired out or unhappy, began to long for +some such end as True Thomas found. I did not believe with my intellect +that you could be carried away body and soul, but I believed with my +emotions and the belief of the country people made that easy. Once when I +had crawled into the stone passage in some rath of the third Rosses, the +pilot who had come with me called down the passage: "are you all right, +sir?" + +And one night as I came near the village of Rosses on the road from Sligo, +a fire blazed up on a green bank at my right side seven or eight feet +above me, and another fire suddenly answered from Knock-na-rea. I hurried +on doubting, and yet hardly doubting in my heart that I saw again the +fires that I had seen by the river at Ballisodare. I began occasionally +telling people that one should believe whatever had been believed in all +countries and periods, and only reject any part of it after much evidence, +instead of starting all over afresh and only believing what one could +prove. But I was always ready to deny or turn into a joke what was for all +that my secret fanaticism. When I had read Darwin and Huxley and believed +as they did, I had wanted, because an established authority was upon my +side, to argue with everybody. + + +XXII + +I no longer went to the Harcourt Street school and we had moved from Howth +to Rathgar. I was at the Arts schools in Kildare Street, but my father, +who came to the school now and then, was my teacher. The masters left me +alone, for they liked a very smooth surface and a very neat outline, and +indeed understood nothing but neatness and smoothness. A drawing of the +Discobolus, after my father had touched it, making the shoulder stand out +with swift and broken lines, had no meaning for them; and for the most +part I exaggerated all that my father did. Sometimes indeed, out of +rivalry to some student near, I too would try to be smooth and neat. One +day I helped the student next me, who certainly had no artistic gifts, to +make a drawing of some plaster fruit. In his gratitude he told me his +history. "I don't care for art," he said. "I am a good billiard player, +one of the best in Dublin; but my guardian said I must take a profession, +so I asked my friends to tell me where I would not have to pass an +examination, and here I am." It may be that I myself was there for no +better reason. My father had wanted me to go to Trinity College and, when +I would not, had said, "my father and grandfather and great-grandfather +have been there." I did not tell him my reason was that I did not believe +my classics or my mathematics good enough for any examination. + +I had for fellow-student an unhappy "village genius" sent to Dublin by +some charitable Connaught landlord. He painted religious pictures upon +sheets nailed to the wall of his bedroom, a "Last Judgment" among the +rest. Then there was a wild young man who would come to school of a +morning with a daisy-chain hung round his neck; and George Russel, "AE," +the poet, and mystic. He did not paint the model as we tried to, for some +other image rose always before his eyes (a St. John in the Desert I +remember,) and already he spoke to us of his visions. His conversation, so +lucid and vehement to-day, was all but incomprehensible, though now and +again some phrase would be understood and repeated. One day he announced +that he was leaving the Art schools because his will was weak and the arts +or any other emotional pursuit could but weaken it further. + +Presently I went to the modelling class to be with certain elder students +who had authority among us. Among these were John Hughes and Oliver +Sheppard, well-known now as Irish sculptors. The day I first went into the +studio where they worked, I stood still upon the threshold in amazement. A +pretty gentle-looking girl was modelling in the middle of the room, and +all the men were swearing at her for getting in their light with the most +violent and fantastic oaths, and calling her every sort of name, and +through it all she worked in undisturbed diligence. Presently the man +nearest me saw my face and called out, "she is stone deaf, so we always +swear at her and call her names when she gets in our light." In reality I +soon found that everyone was kind to her, carrying her drawing-boards and +the like, and putting her into the tram at the day's end. We had no +scholarship, no critical knowledge of the history of painting, and no +settled standards. A student would show his fellows some French +illustrated paper that we might all admire, now some statue by Rodin or +Dalou and now some declamatory Parisian monument, and if I did not happen +to have discussed the matter with my father I would admire with no more +discrimination than the rest. That pretentious monument to Gambetta made a +great stir among us. No influence touched us but that of France, where one +or two of the older students had been already and all hoped to go. Of +England I alone knew anything. Our ablest student had learnt Italian to +read Dante, but had never heard of Tennyson or Browning, and it was I who +carried into the school some knowledge of English poetry, especially of +Browning who had begun to move me by his air of wisdom. I do not believe +that I worked well, for I wrote a great deal and that tired me, and the +work I was set to bored me. When alone and uninfluenced, I longed for +pattern, for pre-Raphaelitism, for an art allied to poetry, and returned +again and again to our National Gallery to gaze at Turner's Golden Bough. +Yet I was too timid, had I known how, to break away from my father's style +and the style of those about me. I was always hoping that my father would +return to the style of his youth, and make pictures out of certain +designs now lost, that one could still find in his portfolios. There was +one of an old hunchback in vague medieval dress, going through some +underground place where there are beds with people in the beds; a girl +half rising from one has seized his hand and is kissing it. I have +forgotten its story, but the strange old man and the intensity in the +girl's figure are vivid as in my childhood. There is some passage, I +believe in the Bible, about a man who saved a city and went away and was +never heard of again and here he was in another design, an old ragged +beggar in the market-place laughing at his own statue. But my father would +say: "I must paint what I see in front of me. Of course I shall really +paint something different because my nature will come in unconsciously." +Sometimes I would try to argue with him, for I had come to think the +philosophy of his fellow-artists and himself a misunderstanding created by +Victorian science, and science I had grown to hate with a monkish hate; +but no good came of it, and in a moment I would unsay what I had said and +pretend that I did not really believe it. My father was painting many fine +portraits, Dublin leaders of the bar, college notabilities, or chance +comers whom he would paint for nothing if he liked their heads; but all +displeased me. In my heart I thought that only beautiful things should be +painted, and that only ancient things and the stuff of dreams were +beautiful. And I almost quarrelled with my father when he made a large +water-colour, one of his finest pictures and now lost, of a consumptive +beggar girl. And a picture at the Hibernian Academy of cocottes with +yellow faces sitting before a cafe by some follower of Manet's made me +miserable for days, but I was happy when partly through my father's +planning some Whistlers were brought over and exhibited, and did not agree +when my father said: "imagine making your old mother an arrangement in +gray!" I did not care for mere reality and believed that creation should +be conscious, and yet I could only imitate my father. I could not compose +anything but a portrait and even to-day I constantly see people as a +portrait painter, posing them in the mind's eye before such and such a +background. Meanwhile I was still very much of a child, sometimes drawing +with an elaborate frenzy, simulating what I believed of inspiration and +sometimes walking with an artificial stride in memory of Hamlet and +stopping at shop windows to look at my tie gathered into a loose +sailor-knot and to regret that it could not be always blown out by the +wind like Byron's tie in the picture. I had as many ideas as I have now, +only I did not know how to choose from among them those that belonged to +my life. + + +XXIII + +We lived in a villa where the red bricks were made pretentious and vulgar +with streaks of slate colour, and there seemed to be enemies everywhere. +At one side indeed there was a friendly architect, but on the other some +stupid stout woman and her family. I had a study with a window opposite +some window of hers, & one night when I was writing I heard voices full of +derision and saw the stout woman and her family standing in the window. I +have a way of acting what I write and speaking it aloud without knowing +what I am doing. Perhaps I was on my hands and knees, or looking down over +the back of a chair talking into what I imagined an abyss. Another day a +woman asked me to direct her on her way and while I was hesitating, being +so suddenly called out of my thought, a woman from some neighbouring house +came by. She said I was a poet and my questioner turned away +contemptuously. Upon the other hand, the policeman and tramway conductor +thought my absence of mind sufficiently explained when our servant told +them I was a poet. "Oh well," said the policeman, who had been asking why +I went indifferently through clean and muddy places, "if it is only the +poetry that is working in his head!" I imagine I looked gaunt and +emaciated, for the little boys at the neighbouring cross-road used to say +when I passed by: "Oh, here is King Death again." One morning when my +father was on the way to his studio, he met his landlord who had a big +grocer's shop and they had this conversation: "will you tell me, sir, if +you think Tennyson should have been given that peerage?" "one's only doubt +is if he should have accepted it: it was a finer thing to be Alfred +Tennyson." There was a silence, and then: "well, all the people I know +think he should not have got it." Then, spitefully: "what's the good of +poetry?" "Oh, it gives our minds a great deal of pleasure." "But wouldn't +it have given your mind more pleasure if he had written an improving +book?" "Oh, in that case I should not have read it." My father returned in +the evening delighted with his story, but I could not understand how he +could take such opinions lightly and not have seriously argued with the +man. None of these people had ever seen any poet but an old white-haired +man who had written volumes of easy, too-honied verse, and run through his +money and gone clean out of his mind. He was a common figure in the +streets and lived in some shabby neighbourhood of tenement houses where +there were hens and chickens among the cobble stones. Every morning he +carried home a loaf and gave half of it to the hens and chickens, the +birds, or to some dog or starving cat. He was known to live in one room +with a nail in the middle of the ceiling from which innumerable cords were +stretched to other nails in the walls. In this way he kept up the illusion +that he was living under canvas in some Arabian desert. I could not escape +like this old man from house and neighbourhood, but hated both, hearing +every whisper, noticing every passing glance. When my grandfather came for +a few days to see a doctor, I was shocked to see him in our house. My +father read out to him in the evening Clark Russell's "Wreck of the +Grosvenor;" but the doctor forbade it, for my grandfather got up in the +middle of the night and acted through the mutiny, as I acted my verse, +saying the while, "yes, yes, that is the way it would all happen." + + +XXIV + +From our first arrival in Dublin, my father had brought me from time to +time to see Edward Dowden. He and my father had been college friends and +were trying, perhaps, to take up again their old friendship. Sometimes we +were asked to breakfast, and afterwards my father would tell me to read +out one of my poems. Dowden was wise in his encouragement, never +overpraising and never unsympathetic, and he would sometimes lend me +books. The orderly, prosperous house where all was in good taste, where +poetry was rightly valued, made Dublin tolerable for a while, and for +perhaps a couple of years he was an image of romance. My father would not +share my enthusiasm and soon, I noticed, grew impatient at these meetings. +He would sometimes say that he had wanted Dowden when they were young to +give himself to creative art, and would talk of what he considered +Dowden's failure in life. I know now that he was finding in his friend +what he himself had been saved from by the conversation of the +pre-Raphaelites. "He will not trust his nature," he would say, or "he is +too much influenced by his inferiors," or he would praise "Renunciants," +one of Dowden's poems, to prove what Dowden might have written. I was not +influenced for I had imagined a past worthy of that dark, romantic face. I +took literally his verses, touched here and there with Swinburnian +rhetoric, and believed that he had loved, unhappily and illicitly; and +when through the practice of my art I discovered that certain images about +the love of woman were the properties of a school, I but changed my fancy +and thought of him as very wise. + +I was constantly troubled about philosophic questions. I would say to my +fellow students at the Art school, "poetry and sculpture exist to keep our +passions alive;" and somebody would say, "we would be much better without +our passions." Or I would have a week's anxiety over the problem: do the +arts make us happier, or more sensitive and therefore more unhappy. And I +would say to Hughes or Sheppard, "if I cannot be certain they make us +happier I will never write again." If I spoke of these things to Dowden he +would put the question away with good-humoured irony: he seemed to +condescend to everybody and everything and was now my sage. I was about to +learn that if a man is to write lyric poetry he must be shaped by nature +and art to some one out of half-a-dozen traditional poses, and be lover or +saint, sage or sensualist, or mere mocker of all life; and that none but +that stroke of luckless luck can open before him the accumulated +expression of the world. And this thought before it could be knowledge was +an instinct. + +I was vexed when my father called Dowden's irony timidity, but after many +years his impression has not changed for he wrote to me but a few months +ago, "it was like talking to a priest. One had to be careful not to remind +him of his sacrifice." Once after breakfast Dowden read us some chapters +of the unpublished "Life of Shelley," and I who had made the "Prometheus +Unbound" my sacred book was delighted with all he read. I was chilled, +however, when he explained that he had lost his liking for Shelley and +would not have written it but for an old promise to the Shelley family. +When it was published, Matthew Arnold made sport of certain +conventionalities and extravagances that were, my father and I had come to +see, the violence or clumsiness of a conscientious man hiding from himself +a lack of sympathy. He had abandoned too, or was about to abandon, what +was to have been his master-work, "The Life of Goethe," though in his +youth a lecture course at Alexandra College that spoke too openly of +Goethe's loves had brought upon him the displeasure of our Protestant +Archbishop of Dublin. Only Wordsworth, he said, kept, more than all, his +early love. + +Though my faith was shaken, it was only when he urged me to read George +Eliot that I became angry and disillusioned & worked myself into a quarrel +or half-quarrel. I had read all Victor Hugo's romances and a couple of +Balzac's and was in no mind to like her. She seemed to have a distrust or +a distaste for all in life that gives one a springing foot. Then too she +knew so well how to enforce her distaste by the authority of her +mid-Victorian science or by some habit of mind of its breeding, that I, +who had not escaped the fascination of what I loathed, doubted while the +book lay open whatsoever my instinct knew of splendour. She disturbed me +and alarmed me, but when I spoke of her to my father, he threw her aside +with a phrase, "Oh, she was an ugly woman who hated handsome men and +handsome women;" and he began to praise "Wuthering Heights." + +Only the other day, when I got Dowden's letters, did I discover for how +many years the friendship between Dowden and my father had been an +antagonism. My father had written from Fitzroy Road in the sixties that +the brotherhood, by which he meant the poet Edwin Ellis, Nettleship and +himself, "abhorred Wordsworth;" and Dowden, not remembering that another +week would bring a different mood and abhorrence, had written a pained and +solemn letter. My father had answered that Dowden believed too much in the +intellect and that all valuable education was but a stirring up of the +emotions and had added that this did not mean excitability. "In the +completely emotional man," he wrote, "the least awakening of feeling is a +harmony in which every chord of every feeling vibrates. Excitement is the +feature of an insufficiently emotional nature, the harsh vibrating +discourse of but one or two chords." Living in a free world accustomed to +the gay exaggeration of the talk of equals, of men who talk and write to +discover truth and not for popular instruction, he had already, when both +men were in their twenties, decided it is plain that Dowden was a +Provincial. + + +XXV + +It was only when I began to study psychical research and mystical +philosophy that I broke away from my father's influence. He had been a +follower of John Stuart Mill and had grown to manhood with the scientific +movement. In this he had never been of Rossetti's party who said that it +mattered to nobody whether the sun went round the earth or the earth round +the sun. But through this new research, this reaction from popular +science, I had begun to feel that I had allies for my secret thought. Once +when I was in Dowden's drawing-room a servant announced my late +head-master. I must have got pale or red, for Dowden, with some ironical, +friendly remark, brought me into another room and there I stayed until the +visitor was gone. A few months later, when I met the head-master again I +had more courage. We chanced upon one another in the street and he said, +"I want you to use your influence with so-and-so, for he is giving all his +time to some sort of mysticism and he will fail in his examination." I +was in great alarm, but I managed to say something about the children of +this world being wiser than the children of light. He went off with a +brusque "good morning." I do not think that even at that age I would have +been so grandiloquent but for my alarm. He had, however, aroused all my +indignation. + +My new allies and my old had alike sustained me. "Intermediate +examinations," which I had always refused, meant money for pupil and for +teacher, and that alone. My father had brought me up never when at school +to think of the future or of any practical result. I have even known him +to say, "when I was young, the definition of a gentleman was a man not +wholly occupied in getting on." And yet this master wanted to withdraw my +friend from the pursuit of the most important of all the truths. My +friend, now in his last year at school, was a show boy, and had beaten all +Ireland again and again, but now he and I were reading Baron Reichenbach +on Odic Force and manuals published by the Theosophical Society. We spent +a good deal of time in the Kildare Street Museum passing our hands over +the glass cases, feeling or believing we felt the Odic Force flowing from +the big crystals. We also found pins blindfolded and read papers on our +discoveries to the Hermetic Society that met near the roof in York +Street. I had, when we first made our society, proposed for our +consideration that whatever the great poets had affirmed in their finest +moments was the nearest we could come to an authoritative religion, and +that their mythology, their spirits of water and wind were but literal +truth. I had read "Prometheus Unbound" with this thought in mind and +wanted help to carry my study through all literature. I was soon to vex my +father by defining truth as "the dramatically appropriate utterance of the +highest man." And if I had been asked to define the "highest" man, I would +have said perhaps, "we can but find him as Homer found Odysseus when he +was looking for a theme." + +My friend had written to some missionary society to send him to the South +Seas, when I offered him Renan's "Life of Christ" and a copy of "Esoteric +Buddhism." He refused both, but a few days later while reading for an +examination in Kildare Street Library, he asked in an idle moment for +"Esoteric Buddhism" and came out an esoteric Buddhist. He wrote to the +missionaries withdrawing his letter and offered himself to the +Theosophical Society as a _chela_. He was vexed now at my lack of zeal, +for I had stayed somewhere between the books, held there perhaps by my +father's scepticism. I said, and he thought it was a great joke though I +was serious, that even if I were certain in my own mind, I did not know "a +single person with a talent for conviction." For a time he made me ashamed +of my world and its lack of zeal, and I wondered if his world (his father +was a notorious Orange leader) where everything was a matter of belief was +not better than mine. He himself proposed the immediate conversion of the +other show boy, a clever little fellow, now a Dublin mathematician and +still under five feet. I found him a day later in much depression. I said, +"did he refuse to listen to you?" "Not at all," was the answer, "for I had +only been talking for a quarter of an hour when he said he believed." +Certainly those minds, parched by many examinations, were thirsty. + +Sometimes a professor of Oriental Languages at Trinity College, a Persian, +came to our Society and talked of the magicians of the East. When he was a +little boy, he had seen a vision in a pool of ink, a multitude of spirits +singing in Arabic, "woe unto those that do not believe in us." And we +persuaded a Brahmin philosopher to come from London and stay for a few +days with the only one among us who had rooms of his own. It was my first +meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed +at once logical and boundless. Consciousness, he taught, does not merely +spread out its surface but has, in vision and in contemplation, another +motion and can change in height and in depth. A handsome young man with +the typical face of Christ, he chaffed me good-humouredly because he said +I came at breakfast and began some question that was interrupted by the +first caller, waited in silence till ten or eleven at night when the last +caller had gone, and finished my question. + + +XXVI + +I thought a great deal about the system of education from which I had +suffered, and believing that everybody had a philosophical defence for all +they did, I desired greatly to meet some school-master that I might +question him. For a moment it seemed as if I should have my desire. I had +been invited to read out a poem called "The Island of Statues," an +arcadian play in imitation of Edmund Spenser, to a gathering of critics +who were to decide whether it was worthy of publication in the College +magazine. The magazine had already published a lyric of mine, the first +ever printed, and people began to know my name. We met in the rooms of Mr. +C. H. Oldham, now professor of Political Economy at our new University; +and though Professor Bury, then a very young man, was to be the deciding +voice, Mr. Oldham had asked quite a large audience. When the reading was +over and the poem had been approved I was left alone, why I cannot +remember, with a young man who was, I had been told, a school-master. I +was silent, gathering my courage, and he also was silent; and presently I +said without anything to lead up to it, "I know you will defend the +ordinary system of education by saying that it strengthens the will, but I +am convinced that it only seems to do so because it weakens the impulses." +Then I stopped, overtaken by shyness. He made no answer but smiled and +looked surprised as though I had said, "you will say they are Persian +attire; but let them be changed." + + +XXVII + +I had begun to frequent a club founded by Mr. Oldham, and not from natural +liking, but from a secret ambition. I wished to become self-possessed, to +be able to play with hostile minds as Hamlet played, to look in the lion's +face, as it were, with unquivering eyelash. In Ireland harsh argument +which had gone out of fashion in England was still the manner of our +conversation, and at this club Unionist and Nationalist could interrupt +one another and insult one another without the formal and traditional +restraint of public speech. Sometimes they would change the subject & +discuss Socialism, or a philosophical question, merely to discover their +old passions under a new shape. I spoke easily and I thought well till +some one was rude and then I would become silent or exaggerate my opinion +to absurdity, or hesitate and grow confused, or be carried away myself by +some party passion. I would spend hours afterwards going over my words and +putting the wrong ones right. Discovering that I was only self-possessed +with people I knew intimately, I would often go to a strange house where I +knew I would spend a wretched hour for schooling sake. I did not discover +that Hamlet had his self-possession from no schooling but from +indifference and passion conquering sweetness, and that less heroic minds +can but hope it from old age. + + +XXVIII + +I had very little money and one day the toll-taker at the metal bridge +over the Liffey and a gossip of his laughed when I refused the halfpenny +and said "no, I will go round by O'Connell Bridge." When I called for the +first time at a house in Leinster Road several middle-aged women were +playing cards and suggested my taking a hand and gave me a glass of +sherry. The sherry went to my head and I was impoverished for days by the +loss of sixpence. My hostess was Ellen O'Leary, who kept house for her +brother John O'Leary the Fenian, the handsomest old man I had ever seen. +He had been condemned to twenty years penal servitude but had been set +free after five on condition that he did not return to Ireland for fifteen +years. He had said to the government, "I will not return if Germany makes +war on you, but I will return if France does." He and his old sister lived +exactly opposite the Orange leader for whom he had a great respect. His +sister stirred my affection at first for no better reason than her +likeness of face and figure to the matron of my London school, a friendly +person, but when I came to know her I found sister and brother alike were +of Plutarch's people. She told me of her brother's life, how in his youth +as now in his age, he would spend his afternoons searching for rare books +among second-hand book-shops, how the Fenian organizer James Stephens had +found him there and asked for his help. "I do not think you have any +chance of success," he had said, "but if you never ask me to enroll +anybody else I will join, it will be very good for the morals of the +country." She told me how it grew to be a formidable movement, and of the +arrests that followed (I believe that her own sweetheart had somehow +fallen among the wreckage,) of sentences of death pronounced upon false +evidence amid a public panic, and told it all without bitterness. No +fanaticism could thrive amid such gentleness. She never found it hard to +believe that an opponent had as high a motive as her own and needed upon +her difficult road no spur of hate. + +Her brother seemed very unlike on a first hearing for he had some violent +oaths, "Good God in Heaven" being one of them; and if he disliked anything +one said or did, he spoke all his thought, but in a little one heard his +justice match her charity. "Never has there been a cause so bad," he would +say, "that it has not been defended by good men for good reasons." Nor +would he overvalue any man because they shared opinions; and when he lent +me the poems of Davis and the Young Irelanders, of whom I had known +nothing, he did not, although the poems of Davis had made him a patriot, +claim that they were very good poetry. + +His room was full of books, always second-hand copies that had often been +ugly and badly printed when new and had not grown to my unhistoric mind +more pleasing from the dirt of some old Dublin book-shop. Great numbers +were Irish, and for the first time I began to read histories and verses +that a Catholic Irishman knows from boyhood. He seemed to consider +politics almost wholly as a moral discipline, and seldom said of any +proposed course of action that it was practical or otherwise. When he +spoke to me of his prison life he spoke of all with seeming freedom, but +presently one noticed that he never spoke of hardship and if one asked him +why, he would say, "I was in the hands of my enemies, why should I +complain?" I have heard since that the governor of his jail found out that +he had endured some unnecessary discomfort for months and had asked why he +did not speak of it. "I did not come here to complain," was the answer. He +had the moral genius that moves all young people and moves them the more +if they are repelled by those who have strict opinions and yet have lived +commonplace lives. I had begun, as would any other of my training, to say +violent and paradoxical things to shock provincial sobriety, and Dowden's +ironical calm had come to seem but a professional pose. But here was +something as spontaneous as the life of an artist. Sometimes he would say +things that would have sounded well in some heroic Elizabethan play. It +became my delight to rouse him to these outbursts for I was the poet in +the presence of his theme. Once when I was defending an Irish politician +who had made a great outcry because he was treated as a common felon, by +showing that he did it for the cause's sake, he said, "there are things +that a man must not do even to save a nation." He would speak a sentence +like that in ignorance of its passionate value, and would forget it the +moment after. + +I met at his house friends of later life, Katharine Tynan who still lived +upon her father's farm, and Dr. Hyde, still a college student who took +snuff like those Mayo county people, whose stories and songs he was +writing down. "Davitt wants followers by the thousand," O'Leary would say, +"I only want half-a-dozen." One constant caller looked at me with much +hostility, John F. Taylor, an obscure great orator. The other day in +Dublin I overheard a man murmuring to another one of his speeches as I +might some Elizabethan lyric that is in my very bones. It was delivered at +some Dublin debate, some College society perhaps. The Lord Chancellor had +spoken with balanced unemotional sentences now self-complacent, now in +derision. Taylor began hesitating and stopping for words, but after +speaking very badly for a little, straightened his figure and spoke as out +of a dream: "I am carried to another age, a nobler court, and another Lord +Chancellor is speaking. I am at the court of the first Pharaoh." Thereupon +he put into the mouth of that Egyptian all his audience had listened to, +but now it was spoken to the children of Israel. "If you have any +spirituality as you boast, why not use our great empire to spread it +through the world, why still cling to that beggarly nationality of yours? +what are its history and its works weighed with those of Egypt." Then his +voice changed and sank: "I see a man at the edge of the crowd; he is +standing listening there, but he will not obey;" and then with his voice +rising to a cry, "had he obeyed he would never have come down the mountain +carrying in his arms the tables of the Law in the language of the outlaw." + +He had been in a linen-draper's shop for a while, had educated himself and +put himself to college, and was now, as a lawyer, famous for hopeless +cases where unsure judgment could not make things worse, and eloquence, +power of cross-examination and learning might amend all. Conversation with +him was always argument, and for an obstinate opponent he had such phrases +as, "have you your head in a bag, sir?" and I seemed his particular +aversion. As with many of the self-made men of that generation, Carlyle +was his chief literary enthusiasm, supporting him, as he believed, in his +contempt for the complexities and refinements he had not found in his hard +life, and I belonged to a generation that had begun to call Carlyle +rhetorician and demagogue. I had once seen what I had believed to be an +enraged bull in a field and had walked up to it as a test of courage to +discover, just as panic fell upon me, that it was merely an irritable cow. +I braved Taylor again and again, but always found him worse than my +expectation. I would say, quoting Mill, "oratory is heard, poetry is +overheard." And he would answer, his voice full of contempt, that there +was always an audience; and yet, in his moments of lofty speech, he +himself was alone no matter what the crowd. + +At other times his science or his Catholic orthodoxy, I never could +discover which, would become enraged with my supernaturalism. I can but +once remember escaping him unabashed and unconquered. I said with +deliberate exaggeration at some evening party at O'Leary's "five out of +every six people have seen a ghost;" and Taylor fell into my net with +"well, I will ask everybody here." I managed that the first answer should +come from a man who had heard a voice he believed to be that of his dead +brother, and the second from a doctor's wife who had lived in a haunted +house and met a man with his throat cut, whose throat as he drifted along +the garden-walk "had opened and closed like the mouth of a fish." Taylor +threw up his head like an angry horse, but asked no further question, and +did not return to the subject that evening. If he had gone on he would +have heard from everybody some like story though not all at first hand, +and Miss O'Leary would have told him what happened at the death of one of +the MacManus brothers, well known in the politics of Young Ireland. One +brother was watching by the bed where the other lay dying and saw a +strange hawk-like bird fly through the open window and alight upon the +breast of the dying man. He did not dare to drive it away and it remained +there, as it seemed, looking into his brother's eyes until death came, and +then it flew out of the window. I think, though I am not sure, that she +had the story from the watcher himself. + +It was understood that Taylor's temper kept him from public life, though +he may have been the greatest orator of his time, partly because no leader +would accept him, and still more because, in the words of one of his +Dublin enemies, "he had never joined any party and as soon as one joined +him he seceded." With O'Leary he was always, even when they differed, as +they often did, gentle and deferential, but once only, and that was years +afterwards, did I think that he was about to include me among his friends. +We met by chance in a London street and he stopped me with an abrupt +movement: "Yeats," he said, "I have been thinking. If you and ... (naming +another aversion,) were born in a small Italian principality in the Middle +Ages, he would have friends at court and you would be in exile with a +price on your head." He went off without another word, and the next time +we met he was no less offensive than before. He, imprisoned in himself, +and not the always unperturbed O'Leary, comes before me as the tragic +figure of my youth. The same passion for all moral and physical splendour +that drew him to O'Leary would make him beg leave to wear, for some few +days, a friend's ring or pin, and gave him a heart that every pretty woman +set on fire. I doubt if he was happy in his loves; for those his powerful +intellect had fascinated were, I believe, repelled by his coarse red hair, +his gaunt ungainly body, his stiff movements as of a Dutch doll, his badly +rolled, shabby umbrella. And yet with women, as with O'Leary, he was +gentle, deferential, almost diffident. + +A Young Ireland Society met in the lecture hall of a workman's club in +York Street with O'Leary for president, and there four or five university +students and myself and occasionally Taylor spoke on Irish history or +literature. When Taylor spoke, it was a great event, and his delivery in +the course of a speech or lecture of some political verse by Thomas Davis +gave me a conviction of how great might be the effect of verse spoken by +a man almost rhythm-drunk at some moment of intensity, the apex of long +mounting thought. Verses that seemed when one saw them upon the page flat +and empty caught from that voice, whose beauty was half in its harsh +strangeness, nobility and style. My father had always read verse with an +equal intensity and a greater subtlety, but this art was public and his +private, and it is Taylor's voice that rings in my ears and awakens my +longing when I have heard some player speak lines, "so naturally," as a +famous player said to me, "that nobody can find out that it is verse at +all." I made a good many speeches, more I believe as a training for +self-possession than from desire of speech. + +Once our debates roused a passion that came to the newspapers and the +streets. There was an excitable man who had fought for the Pope against +the Italian patriots and who always rode a white horse in our Nationalist +processions. He got on badly with O'Leary who had told him that +"attempting to oppress others was a poor preparation for liberating your +own country." O'Leary had written some letter to the press condemning the +"Irish-American Dynamite Party" as it was called, and defining the limits +of "honourable warfare." At the next meeting, the papal soldier rose in +the middle of the discussion on some other matter and moved a vote of +censure on O'Leary. "I myself" he said "do not approve of bombs, but I do +not think that any Irishman should be discouraged." O'Leary ruled him out +of order. He refused to obey and remained standing. Those round him began +to threaten. He swung the chair he had been sitting on round his head and +defied everybody. However he was seized from all sides and thrown out, and +a special meeting called to expel him. He wrote letters to the papers and +addressed a crowd somewhere. "No Young Ireland Society," he protested, +"could expel a man whose grandfather had been hanged in 1798." When the +night of the special meeting came his expulsion was moved, but before the +vote could be taken an excited man announced that there was a crowd in the +street, that the papal soldier was making a speech, that in a moment we +should be attacked. Three or four of us ran and put our backs to the door +while others carried on the debate. It was an inner door with narrow glass +windows at each side and through these we could see the street-door and +the crowd in the street. Presently a man asked us through the crack in the +door if we would as a favour "leave the crowd to the workman's club +upstairs." In a couple of minutes there was a great noise of sticks and +broken glass, and after that our landlord came to find out who was to pay +for the hall-lamp. + + +XXIX + +From these debates, from O'Leary's conversation, and from the Irish books +he lent or gave me has come all I have set my hand to since. I had begun +to know a great deal about the Irish poets who had written in English. I +read with excitement books I should find unreadable to-day, and found +romance in lives that had neither wit nor adventure. I did not deceive +myself, I knew how often they wrote a cold and abstract language, and yet +I who had never wanted to see the houses where Keats and Shelley lived +would ask everybody what sort of place Inchedony was, because Callanan had +named after it a bad poem in the manner of "Childe Harold." Walking home +from a debate, I remember saying to some college student "Ireland cannot +put from her the habits learned from her old military civilization and +from a church that prays in Latin. Those popular poets have not touched +her heart, her poetry when it comes will be distinguished and lonely." +O'Leary had once said to me, "neither Ireland nor England knows the good +from the bad in any art, but Ireland unlike England does not hate the good +when it is pointed out to her." I began to plot and scheme how one might +seal with the right image the soft wax before it began to harden. I had +noticed that Irish Catholics among whom had been born so many political +martyrs had not the good taste, the household courtesy and decency of the +Protestant Ireland I had known, and yet Protestant Ireland had begun to +think of nothing but getting on. I thought we might bring the halves +together if we had a national literature that made Ireland beautiful in +the memory, and yet had been freed from provincialism by an exacting +criticism, an European pose. It was because of this dream when we returned +to London that I made with pastels upon the ceiling of my study a map of +Sligo decorated like some old map with a ship and an elaborate compass and +wrote, a little against the grain, a couple of Sligo stories, one a vague +echo of "Grettir the Strong," which my father had read to me in childhood, +and finished with better heart my "Wanderings of Oisin," and began after +ridding my style of romantic colour "The Countess Cathleen." I saw that +our people did not read, but that they listened patiently (how many long +political speeches have they listened to?) and saw that there must be a +theatre, and if I could find the right musicians, words set to music. I +foresaw a great deal that we are doing now, though never the appetite of +our new middle-class for "realism," nor the greatness of the opposition, +nor the slowness of the victory. Davis had done so much in the four years +of his working life, I had thought all needful pamphleteering and +speech-making could be run through at the day's end, not knowing that +taste is so much more deeply rooted than opinion that even if one had +school and newspaper to help, one could scarcely stir it under two +generations. Then too, bred up in a studio where all things are discussed +and where I had even been told that indiscretion and energy are +inseparable, I knew nothing of the conservatism or of the suspicions of +piety. I had planned a drama like that of Greece, and romances that were, +it may be, half Hugo and half de la Motte Fouque, to bring into the town +the memories and visions of the country and to spread everywhere the +history and legends of mediaeval Ireland and to fill Ireland once more +with sacred places. I even planned out, and in some detail, (for those +mysterious lights and voices were never long forgotten,) another +Samothrace, a new Eleusis. I believed, so great was my faith, or so +deceptive the precedent of Young Ireland, that I should find men of genius +everywhere. I had not the conviction, as it may seem, that a people can be +compelled to write what one pleases, for that could but end in rhetoric or +in some educational movement but believed I had divined the soul of the +people and had set my shoes upon a road that would be crowded presently. + + +XXX + +Someone at the Young Ireland Society gave me a newspaper that I might read +some article or letter. I began idly reading verses describing the shore +of Ireland as seen by a returning, dying emigrant. My eyes filled with +tears and yet I knew the verses were badly written--vague, abstract words +such as one finds in a newspaper. I looked at the end and saw the name of +some political exile who had died but a few days after his return to +Ireland. They had moved me because they contained the actual thoughts of a +man at a passionate moment of life, and when I met my father I was full of +the discovery. We should write out our own thoughts in as nearly as +possible the language we thought them in, as though in a letter to an +intimate friend. We should not disguise them in any way; for our lives +give them force as the lives of people in plays give force to their words. +Personal utterance, which had almost ceased in English literature, could +be as fine an escape from rhetoric and abstraction as drama itself. My +father was indignant, almost violent, and would hear of nothing but drama. +"Personal utterance was only egotism." I knew it was not, but as yet did +not know how to explain the difference. I tried from that on to write out +of my emotions exactly as they came to me in life, not changing them to +make them more beautiful, and to rid my syntax of all inversions and my +vocabulary of literary words, and that made it hard to write at all. It +meant rejecting the words or the constructions that had been used over and +over because they flow most easily into rhyme and measure. Then, too, how +hard it was to be sincere, not to make the emotion more beautiful and more +violent or the circumstance more romantic. "If I can be sincere and make +my language natural, and without becoming discursive, like a novelist, and +so indiscreet and prosaic," I said to myself, "I shall, if good luck or +bad luck make my life interesting, be a great poet; for it will be no +longer a matter of literature at all." Yet when I re-read those early +poems which gave me so much trouble, I find little but romantic +convention, unconscious drama. It is so many years before one can believe +enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is. + + +XXXI + +Perhaps a year before we returned to London, a Catholic friend brought me +to a spiritualistic seance at the house of a young man who had been lately +arrested under a suspicion of Fenianism, but had been released for lack +of evidence. He and his friends had been sitting weekly about a table in +the hope of spiritual manifestation and one had developed mediumship. A +drawer full of books had leaped out of the table when no one was touching +it, a picture had moved upon the wall. There were some half dozen of us, +and our host began by making passes until the medium fell asleep sitting +upright in his chair. Then the lights were turned out, and we sat waiting +in the dim light of a fire. Presently my shoulders began to twitch and my +hands. I could easily have stopped them, but I had never heard of such a +thing and I was curious. After a few minutes the movement became violent +and I stopped it. I sat motionless for a while and then my whole body +moved like a suddenly unrolled watch-spring, and I was thrown backward on +the wall. I again stilled the movement and sat at the table. Everybody +began to say I was a medium, and that if I would not resist some wonderful +thing would happen. I remembered that my father had told me that Balzac +had once desired to take opium for the experience sake, but would not +because he dreaded the surrender of his will. We were now holding each +other's hands and presently my right hand banged the knuckles of the woman +next to me upon the table. She laughed, and the medium, speaking for the +first time, and with difficulty, out of his mesmeric sleep, said, "tell +her there is great danger." He stood up and began walking round me, making +movements with his hands as though he were pushing something away. I was +now struggling vainly with this force which compelled me to movements I +had not willed, and my movements had become so violent that the table was +broken. I tried to pray, and because I could not remember a prayer, +repeated in a loud voice + + Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit + Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste + Brought death into the world and all our woe... + Sing, heavenly muse. + +My Catholic friend had left the table and was saying a Pater Noster and +Ave Maria in the corner. Presently all became still and so dark that I +could not see anybody. I described it to somebody next day as like going +out of a noisy political meeting on to a quiet country road. I said to +myself, "I am now in a trance but I no longer have any desire to resist." +But when I turned my eyes to the fireplace I could see a faint gleam of +light, so I thought "no, I am not in a trance." Then I saw shapes faintly +appearing in the darkness & thought, "they are spirits;" but they were +only the spiritualists and my friend at her prayers. The medium said in a +faint voice, "we are through the bad spirits." I said, "will they ever +come again, do you think?" and he said, "no, never again, I think," and in +my boyish vanity I thought it was I who had banished them. For years +afterwards I would not go to a seance or turn a table and would often ask +myself what was that violent impulse that had run through my nerves? was +it a part of myself--something always to be a danger perhaps; or had it +come from without, as it seemed? + + +XXXII + +I had published my first book of poems by subscription, O'Leary finding +many subscribers, and a book of stories, when I heard that my grandmother +was dead and went to Sligo for the funeral. She had asked to see me but by +some mistake I was not sent for. She had heard that I was much about with +a beautiful, admired woman and feared that I did not speak of marriage +because I was poor, and wanted to say to me "women care nothing about +money." My grandfather was dying also and only survived her a few weeks. I +went to see him and wondered at his handsome face now sickness had refined +it, and noticed that he foretold the changes in the weather by +indications of the light and of the temperature that could not have told +me anything. As I sat there my old childish fear returned and I was glad +to get away. I stayed with my uncle whose house was opposite where my +grandfather lived, and walking home with him one day we met the doctor. +The doctor said there was no hope and that my grandfather should be told, +but my uncle would not allow it. He said "it would make a man mad to know +he was dying." In vain the doctor pleaded that he had never known a man +not made calmer by the knowledge. I listened sad and angry, but my uncle +always took a low view of human nature, his very tolerance which was +exceedingly great came from his hoping nothing of anybody. Before he had +given way my grandfather lifted up his arms and cried out "there she is," +and fell backward dead. Before he was dead, old servants of that house +where there had never been noise or disorder began their small pilferings, +and after his death there was a quarrel over the disposition of certain +mantle-piece ornaments of no value. + + +XXXIII + +For some months now I have lived with my own youth and childhood, not +always writing indeed but thinking of it almost every day, and I am +sorrowful and disturbed. It is not that I have accomplished too few of my +plans, for I am not ambitious; but when I think of all the books I have +read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have +given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all +life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for +something that never happens. + + +Printed in the United States of America. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Reveries over Childhood and Youth, by +William Butler Yeats + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 33348.txt or 33348.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/3/4/33348/ + +Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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