by George Moore
Yeats has reflected himself in the pirate, I said. All he cares for is a piece of literature. The man behind it matters nothing to him. But am I not just as wicked as he? Worse, indeed, for Edward is my oldest friend and I do not defend him. Whereupon the manuscript fell from my hand, and I sat for a long time thinking; and then, getting up, I wandered out of my room and hung over the banisters, looking down into the central hall, asking myself what Yeats and Edward were saying to each other, and thinking that their talk must be strained and difficult, thinking too that my duty was to go down to them and bring their bitter interview to an end.
And I resolved to say that I could see no reason why the play should not be acted. But half-way down the stairs my conscience forbade so flagrant a lie. Yeats would not believe me. And what good would it do to allow Edward to bring over actors and actresses for the performance of such a play? It’s kinder to tell him the truth. In the middle of the hall I stopped again. But if I tell him the truth the Irish Literary Theatre will come to an end.
Well, Edward, I’ve read your play ... but the alterations you’ve made aren’t very considerable, and I can’t help thinking that the play requires something more done to it.
You’ve read my play very quickly. Are you sure you’ve read it?
I’ve read all the passages that you’ve altered.
I had only glanced through them, but I could not tell him that a glance was sufficient.
If there were time, you might alter it yourself. You see, the time is short — only two months; and I watched Edward. For a long time he said nothing, but sat like a man striving with himself, and I pitied him, knowing how much of his life was in his play.
I give you the play, he said, starting to his feet. Do with it as you like; turn it inside out, upside down. I’ll make you a present of it!
But, Edward, if you don’t wish me to alter your play —
Ireland has always been divided, and I’ve preached unity. Now I’m going to practise it. I give you the play.
But what do you mean by giving us the play? Yeats said.
Do with it what you like. I’m not going to break up the Irish Literary Theatre. Do with my play what you like, and he rushed away.
I’m afraid, Yeats, his feelings are very much hurt.
And my heart went out to the poor man sitting alone in his tower, brooding over his failure. I expected Yeats to say something sympathetic, but all he said was: We couldn’t produce such a play as that. It was perhaps the wisest thing he could say under the circumstances. For what use is there in sentimentalising over the lamb whose throat is going to be cut in the slaughter-house?
The sooner the alterations are made the better.
And I asked Yeats to come over tomorrow.
You see, you’ll have to help me with this adaptation, for I know nothing of Ireland.
It is a pleasure to be with him, especially when one meets him for the purpose of literary discussion; he is a real man of letters, with an intelligence as keen as a knife, and a knife was required to cut the knots into which Edward had tied his play, for very few could be loosened. The only fault I found with Yeats in this collaboration was the weariness into which he sank suddenly, saying that after a couple of hours he felt a little faint, and would require half an hour’s rest.
We returned to the play after lunch, and continued until nearly seven o’clock, too long a day for Yeats, who was not so strong then as he is now, and Lady Gregory wrote to me, saying that I must be careful not to overwork him, and that it would be well not to let him go more than two hours without food — a glass of milk, or, better still, a cup of beef-tea in the afternoon, and half an hour after lunch he was to have a glass of sherry and a biscuit. These refreshments were brought up by Gantley, Edward’s octogenarian butler, and every time I heard his foot upon the stairs I offered up a little prayer that Edward was away in his tower, for, of course, I realised that the tray would bring home to him in a very real and cruel way the fact that his play was being changed and rewritten under his very roof, and that he was providing sherry and biscuits in order to enable Yeats to strike out, or, worse still, to rewrite his favourite passages. It was very pathetic; and while pitying and admiring Edward for his altruism, I could not help thinking of two children threading a bluebottle. True that the bluebottle’s plight is worse than Edward’s, for the insect does not know why it is being experimented upon, but Edward knew he was sacrificing himself for his country, and the idea of sacrifice begets a great exaltation of mind, is in fact, a sort of anaesthetic; and sustained by this belief we, Yeats and I, worked on through the day, Yeats tarrying as late as seven o’clock in order to finish a scene, Edward asking him to stay to dinner, a kindness that proved our undoing, for we lacked tact, discussing before Edward the alterations we were going to make. He sat immersed in deep gloom, saying he did not like our adaptation of the first act, and when we told him the alterations we were going to make in the second, he said:
But you surely aren’t going to alter that? Why do you do this? Good heavens! I wouldn’t advise you —
Yeats looked at him sternly, as a schoolmaster looks at a small boy, and next morning Edward told me that he was going to Dublin, adding that I had better come with him. On my mentioning that I expected Yeats that afternoon, he said that he would write, telling him of his decision, and a note came from Lady Gregory in the course of the afternoon, saying that she was leaving Coole. Would it be convenient to Edward to allow Yeats to stay at Tillyra for a few days by himself? He would like to continue the composition of The Shadowy Waters in Galway.
Lady Gregory’s request seemed to me an extraordinary one to make in the present circumstances, and it seemed still more extraordinary that Edward should have granted it, and without a moment’s hesitation, as if Yeats’s literary arrogance had already dropped out of his memory. Such self-effacement as this was clearly a matter for psychological inquiry, and I turned Edward over in my mind many times before I discovered that his self-effacement should be attributed to patriotism rather than to natural amiability. He believed Yeats to be Ireland’s poet, and to refuse to shelter him might rob Ireland of a masterpiece, a responsibility which he did not care to face.
Extraordinary! I said to myself, and as in a vision I saw Ireland as a god demanding human sacrifices, and everybody, or nearly everybody, crying: Take me, Ireland, take me; I am unworthy, but accept me as a burnt-offering. Ever since I have been in the country I have heard people speaking of working for Ireland. But how can one work for Ireland without working for oneself? What do they mean? They do not know themselves, but go on vainly sacrificing all personal achievement, humiliating themselves before Ireland as if the country were a god. A race inveterately religious I suppose it must be! And these sacrifices continue generation after generation. Something in the land itself inspires them. And I began to tremble lest the terrible Cathleen ni Houlihan might overtake me. She had come out of that arid plain, out of the mist, to tempt me, to soothe me into forgetfulness that it is the plain duty of every Irishman to disassociate himself from all memories of Ireland — Ireland being a fatal disease, fatal to Englishmen and doubly fatal to Irishmen. Ireland is in my family. My grand-uncle lay in prison condemned to death for treason; my father wasted his life in the desert of national politics. It is said that the custom of every fell disease is to skip a generation, and up to the present it had seemed that I conformed to the rule. But did I? If I did not, some great calamity awaited me, and I remembered that the middle-aged may not change their point of view. To do so is decadence.
XII
A ROOM HAD been hired at the Shelbourne Hotel, and the mornings were spent writing The Bending of the Bough It could be finished in the next three weeks if I fortuned upon somebody who could explain the various sections and parties in Irish politics, all striving for mastery at that time; somebody acquainted enough with the country to unravel the Lord Castletown incident, and expound the Healy problem, the O’Brien problem, the Redmond problem, and the great many
other political problems with which the play is beset.
There is little use in writing when there is no clear vision in the mind; the pen stops of its own accord, and I often rose from my chair and walked about the room, my feet at last finding their way through the hotel, and down the street as far as the Kildare Street Club, to ask Edward if he would tell me. He would tell me nothing. His present to the Irish Literary Theatre was his play, and I was free to alter it as I pleased, putting the last act first and the first act last, but he would not help me to alter it; and it was impossible not to feel that it was reasonable for him to refuse.
What do you think of the title — The Bending of the Bough?
The Tale of a Town is a better title. And after some heated words we left the Club one evening together. You must sign the play, he said, turning suddenly.
I sign the play! I answered, all my literary vanity ablaze. No; but I’ll put adapted from.
I’ll have no adaptations; I’ll have nothing to do with your version; and he wrenched himself free from me, leaving me to go my way, thinking that here was nothing for it but to sign a work that was not mine. I, too, am sacrificing to Cathleen ni Houlihan; one sacrifice brings many. And to escape from the hag whom I could see wrapped in a faded shawl, her legs in grey worsted stockings, her feet in brogues, I packed my trunk and went away by the mail-boat laughing at myself, and at the same time not quite sure that she was not still at my heels. Cathleen follows her sons across the seas; and she did not seem to be very far away in the morning in Victoria Street, while Edward’s play was before me. After writing some lines of vituperation quite in the Irish style, I would lay down the pen and cry: Cathleen, art thou satisfied with me? And it seemed an exquisite joke to voice Ireland’s woes, until one day I stopped in Ebury Street, abashed; for it was not a victory for our soldiers that I desired to read in the paper just bought from the boy who had rushed past me, yelling News from the Front, but one for the Boers. The war was forgotten, and I walked on slowly, frightened lest this sudden and inexplicable movement of soul should be something more than a merely accidental mental vacillation.
It may be no more, and it may be that I am changing, I whispered under my breath; and then, charging myself with faint-heartedness and superstition, I walked on, trying to believe that I should be myself again next morning.
It was a bad sign to lie awake all night, thinking of what happened in Ebury Street the evening before, and asking if I really did desire that the Boers should win the fight and keep their country; and it was a worse sign to read without interest headlines announcing a forward movement of our troops. On turning over the pages, a rumour (it was given as a rumour) that the Boers were retreating northward caught my eye; the paper was thrown aside, and an hour was spent wondering why the paper had been tossed aside so negligently. Was it because I had become, without knowing it, Pro-Boer? That was it, for next morning, on reading that five hundred of our troops had been taken prisoners, I was swept away by a great joy, and it was a long time before I could recover sufficient calm of mind to ask myself the reason of all this sympathy for illiterate farmers speaking a Dutch dialect in which no book had yet been written; a people without any sentiment of art, without a past, without folklore, and therefore, in some respect, a less reputable people than the Irish. I had seen some finely designed swords in the Dublin Museum, forged, without doubt, in the late Bronze Age, and Coffey had shown me the splendid bits that the ancient Irish put into their horses’ jaws. There was the monkish Book of Kells, a beautiful thing in a way; the Cross of Cong was made in Roscommon, and by an Irish artist; it bears the name of its maker, an Irish name, so there can be no doubt as to its nationality. There are some fine legends, the rudiments of a literature that had not been carried into culture, the Irish not being a thinking race ... perhaps.
After that I must have fallen into a deep lethargy. On awakening, I remembered the autumn evening in Edward’s park, when Cathleen ni Houlihan rose out of the plain that lies at the foot of the Burran Mountains, and came, foot-sore and weary, up through the beech-grove to me. I had not the heart to repulse her, so hapless did she seem; nor did I remember the danger of listening to her till I had stood before Edward telling him the story of the meeting in the park.
It is dangerous, I had said to him, to listen to Cathleen even for a moment; she has brought no good luck or good health to any one.
The morning paper was picked up from the hearthrug, and the news of the capture of our troops read again and again, the same thrill of joy coming into my heart. The Englishman that was in me (he that wrote Esther Waters) had been overtaken and captured by the Irishman. Strange, for all my life had been lived in England. When I went to Ireland I always experienced a sense of being a stranger in my own country, and, like many another Irishman, had come to think that I was immune from the disease that overtakes all Irishmen sooner or later — that moment in Edward’s park was enough for me, and ever since the disease had been multiplying in secret: the incident in Ebury Street was only a symptom.... A moment after I was asking myself if the microbe were sown that evening in Edward’s park, or if the introduction of it could be traced back to the afternoon in Victoria Street, when Edward and Yeats had called to ask me to join in their attempt to give a National Literary Theatre to Ireland. It might be traced further back still, to the evening in the Temple when Edward had told me that he would like to write his plays in Irish; and there arose up in me the memory of that midnight when I wandered among the courts and halls, dreaming of Ireland, of the story of wild country life that I might write.
It was then that I caught the disease, I said; a sort of spiritual consumption; it was then that the microbe first got into my soul and ate away most of it without my being aware of its presence, or of the ravages caused by it, until the greater part of me collapsed in Ebury Street.
And what was still more serious was that out of the wreck and rubble of my former self a new self had arisen. It could not be that the old self that had worshipped pride, strength, courage, and egoism should now crave for justice and righteousness, and should pause to consider humility and obedience as virtues, and might be moved to advocate chastity tomorrow. Such a thing could not be. A new self had grown up within me, or had taken possession of me. It is hard to analyse a spiritual transformation; one knows little about oneself; life is mysterious. Only this can I say for certain, that I learnt then that ideas are as necessary to us as our skins; and, like one that has been flayed, I sat wondering whether new ideas would clothe me again, until a piece of burning coal falling from the grate into the fender awoke me from my reverie. When I had put it back among the live embers, I said: My past life crumbles away like that piece of coal; in a few moments it will be all gone from me, and my new self will then be alone in me, and powerful enough to lead me into a new life. Into what life will it lead me? Into what Christianity?
I wandered across the room to consult the looking-glass, curious to know if the great spiritual changes that were happening in me were recognisable upon my face; but the mirror does not give back characteristic expression, and to find out whether the expression of my face had changed I should have to consult my portrait-painters: Steer, Tonks, and Sickert would be able to tell me. And that night at Steer’s, after a passionate protest against the wickedness and the stupidity of the Boer War delivered across his dining-table, I got up and walked round the room, feeling myself to be unlike the portraits they had painted of me, every one of which had been done before the war. The external appearance no doubt remained, but the acquisition of a moral conscience must have modified it. As I was about to launch my question on the company, I caught sight of the little black eyes that Steer screws up when he looks at anything; all the other features are insignificant; the eyes are all that one notices, and the full, sleek outlines of the face. His shoulders slope a little, like mine, and the body is long, and the large feet shuffle down the street in goloshes if the weather be wet, and in the studio in carpet slippers. Long white hands droop f
rom his cuffs — hands that I remember carrying canvases from one easel to another. Tonks is lank and long in every limb, and one remembers him as a herring-gutted fellow, with a high bridge on his nose; and one remembers him much more for the true, honest heart that always goes with his appearance. I could see that he sympathised with the Boer women and children dying in concentration camps, and that Steer was thinking of the pictures he had brought home from the country. It was shameful that any one should be able to think of pictures at such a time, but Steer takes no interest in morals; his world is an external world; and I abandoned myself somewhat cowardly to his pictures till the end of the evening, thinking all the while that Tonks would understand my perplexities better, and that the time to speak to him would be when we walked home together.
