by George Moore
I hate the peasant. I like the drama of intellect.
Yeats sniggered, and a cormorant came over the sea, and alighted upon a rock, with a fish for the chicks in the nest, Gill said to his children, who had come to tell him that supper was on the table. All our literary differences were laid to rest in the interest that we soon began to feel for the food. Only AE prefers his ideas to his food; Yeats pecked, and Edward gobbled, and, looking round this happy table, it seemed to me that we liked coming to Dalkey because Gill liked to have us about him. Our pleasure was dependent on the pleasure that our host felt in our company; as kind-tempered a man as ever lived, I said to myself, and listened with more indulgence to him than I had been able to show in the afternoon, when, stretched out on the sofa, he abandoned himself to memories of the days when a boy lepped out from behind a hedge and whispered polis! I asked: Was that the night you were arrested? and he told us of his trial and conviction, and we felt, despite the languor of the narrative, that he was telling us of what was most real and intense in his life. And I listened, noting how unselfish instincts rise to the surface and sink back again, making way for selfish instincts, and how this kindly tempered man had floated down the tide of casual ideas into the harbour of thirteen hundred a year. And all the way home on top of the tram we thought of Gill’s kindly sympathetic nature, revealed to me a few weeks later in an incident which I cannot do else than include. A rumour reached me that AE was sick and dangerously ill with a bad cold and cough which he did not seem able to shake off, and which — whoever brought me the news did not finish the sentence, for one does not like to mention the word consumption in Ireland.
If he starts out again on another bicycle tour, riding his old bicycle in all kinds of weathers, sleeping in any inn — you know how he neglects his food?
He must leave Ireland for a long holiday, I said, and went down to see Gill.
The shame of it, Gill, the application of the finest intelligence we have in Ireland to preaching economics in Connemara villages. Plunkett should do his own work. A great poet must needs be chosen, a great spirit! Were the moon to drop out of the sky the nights would be darker, but Dublin without AE would be like the sky without a sun in it. Gill, come out for a walk; this is a matter on which I must speak to you seriously.
It is indeed a serious matter, Gill answered. I will come out with you. We must get him out of the country. I know of nothing more serious than this cough and cold you speak of. How long do you say it has been upon him?
He has been ailing for the last six weeks, and now, in this beautiful month of July, he is lying in his bed without sufficient attendance. You know how careless he is. He will not send for a doctor, nor will he have a nurse.
We certainly must get him out of the country. I will devise some excuse to send him to Italy to report on — Gill mentioned some system of agriculture which had been tried successfully in Italy, and which might be reproduced successfully here. But no matter whether it can or not, it will serve as an excuse, and it will be easy for me to provide for the expenses of the journey. But he’ll never consent to go to Italy alone. Will you go with him?
Yes, I’ll go with him and look after him as best I can. Three months in Italy will throw me back with my work, but never mind, coûte que coûte, I will go to Italy. And you agree with me, that AE is the most important man in Ireland?
VI
SIENNA, ASSISI, AND Ravenna appeared in the imagination, and ourselves toiling up the narrow streets, talking of Raphael, and as we would return through France, we might well stop at Montauban to see Ingres at home — Raphael re-arisen after three centuries, a Raphael of finer perceptions. AE would have been delightful on this subject, but the journey to Italy was not upon the chart of our destinies; he recovered rapidly; Plunkett arranged that he was to edit The Homestead, and every Saturday evening he was in my house at dinner, talking about poetry, pictures, and W. B. Yeats, who came every morning to edit the dialogue I had written for Diarmuid and Grania, and to regret that I had not persevered with the French version, which Lady Gregory was to translate into English, Taidgh O’Donoghue into Irish, Lady Gregory back into English, and Yeats was to put style upon. This literary brewing used to remind AE of an American drink:
The bar-keeper present,
His two arms describing a crescent
(most readers know Bret Harte’s celebrated parody); and then, feeling that he had laughed too long at his old friend, his face would become suddenly grave, and he would quote long passages from Yeats’s early poems, the original and the amended versions, always preferring the original.
That’s just it, I answered. The words that he likes today he will weary of and alter a few days afterwards.
Forgetting, AE said, that words wear out like everything else. He once said to me that he would like to spend the rest of his life rewriting the poems that he had already written.
He is a very clever man, and the worst of it is that there is something to be said for the alterations, even the most trivial. Miss Gough pointed out to me the other day that he had altered Here is a drug that will put the Fianna to sleep into Here is a drug I have made sleepy. Of course it’s better, more like folk, but his alterations seem to drain the text of all vitality. An operatic text is what we should be writing together, for we are always agreed about the construction, and the musician would be free from his criticism.
AE was not quite sure that Yeats would not want a caoine, and would propose to the musician a journey to Arran.
But, AE, we shall require some music for the play. And in the silence that followed this remark the memory of some music I had heard long ago at Leeds, by Edward Elgar, came into my mind. If I knew Elgar, I’d write and ask him to send me a horn-call. Do you know, I think I will.
Mr Benson, I wrote, is going to produce Diarmuid and Grania, a drama written by Mr Yeats and myself on the great Irish legend. Finn’s horn is heard in the second act, and all my pleasure in the performance will be spoilt if a cornet-player tootles out whatever comes into his head, perhaps some vulgar phrase the audience has heard already in the streets. Beautiful phrases come into the mind while one is doing odd jobs, and if you do not look upon my request as an impertinence, and if you will provide yourself with a sheet of music-paper before you shave in the morning, and if you do not forget the pencil, you will be able to write down a horn-call, before you turn from the right to the left cheek, that will save my play from a moment of vulgarity.
Elgar sent me six horn-calls to choose from, and, in my letter thanking him for his courtesy, I told him of the scene in the third act, when Diarmuid, mortally wounded by the boar, asks Finn to fetch water from the spring. Finn brings it in his helmet, but, seeing that Grania and Finn stand looking at each other, Diarmuid refuses to drink. This, and the scene which follows, the making of the litter on which the body of Diarmuid is borne away to the funeral pyre, seem to me to crave a musical setting; and how impressive a death-march would come after Grania’s description of the burning of Diarmuid!
Elgar wrote, asking for the act, and it went to him by the next post, but without much hope that he would write the music, it being my way always to take disappointment by the forelock, thereby softening the blows of evil fortune. And without this precautionary dose of pessimism Elgar’s manuscript would not have given me anything like the pleasure that it did. I was so tired of thats and whichs, fors and buts, that I stood for a long time admiring the crotchets, the quavers, the lovely rests; and the long columns set apart for violins, columns for flutes, and further columns for oboes, fairly transported me. Elgar sent a letter with it saying that the manuscript was the only one in existence, and that if it were lost he could not supply me with another; so it was put hurriedly under lock and key, and the rest of my day was spent going up one mean street and down another, climbing small staircases, opening bedroom doors, and meeting disappointment everywhere. At last, a tenor from a cathedral choir was discovered, swearing from among the bedclothes that he could do musical copying
with any one in the world, and pledging his word of honour that he would be with me at ten o’clock next morning. He smelt like a corpse, but no matter, a score is a score, and Benson had to receive a copy of it within the next fortnight. The conductor at the Gaiety said he would like to copy the parts; in copying them he would learn the music, so I yielded to him Elgar’s score, begging of him not to lose it, at which he laughed; and some days afterwards he asked me to the music-room and called to his orchestra to follow. The parts were distributed, and the conductor took up his baton, and singing to the fiddles, the slow and melancholy march began, the conductor singing the entrance of every instrument, preserving an unruffled demeanour till the horn went quack. We will start that again, number seventeen. The horn again went quack, and I shall always remember how the player shook his head and looked at the conductor as if to say that the composer should have been warned that, in such long intervals, there is no depending on the horn. When it was over, the conductor turned to me, saying:
There’s your march. What do you think of it?
It will have to be played better than that before I can tell, a remark the orchestra did not like, and for which I felt sorry, but it is difficult to have the courage of one’s opinions on the spot, and, while walking home, I thought of the many fine things that I might have said; that Elgar had drawn all the wail of the caoine into the languorous rhythm of his march, and that he had been able to do this because he had not thought for a single instant of the external forms of native music, but had allowed the sentiment of the scene to inspire him. Out of the harmony a little melody floats, pathetic as an autumn leaf, and it seemed to me that Elgar must have seen the primeval forest as he wrote, and the tribe moving among the falling leaves — oak-leaves, hazel-leaves, for the world began with oak and hazel.
His mourners — Diarmuid’s mourners — were without doubt wistful folk with eyes as sad as the waters of western lakes, very like their descendants whom I found waiting for me in my dining-room. Irish speakers I knew them to be by their long upper lips, and it was almost unnecessary for them to tell me that they were the actors and actresses chosen for Dr Hyde’s play, The Twisting of the Rope.
We’ve never acted before, said a fine healthy country-woman, speaking with a rich brogue. But we can all speak Irish.
I suppose you can, as you’re going to act in an Irish play.
We mean that we are all native speakers except Miss O’Kennedy and Miss O’Sullivan, and they have learnt Irish as well as you’ve learnt French, she added, somewhat tartly.
I hope they’ve learnt it a great deal better, I answered, for I’ve never been able to learn that language.
What we mean is, said Taidgh O’Donoghue, that we can speak Irish fluently.
I was very anxious to know how long it would take to learn Irish perfectly, and if Miss O’Sullivan and Miss O’Kennedy knew it as well as English? We talked for about half an hour, and then they all stood up together.
I suppose the best thing we can do is to go home and learn our parts.
If I am to rehearse the play I would sooner that you learnt your parts with me at rehearsal. Again we engaged in conversation, and I learnt that they all made their living by teaching Irish; pupils were waiting for them at that moment, and that was why they could not stay to tea. They would, however, meet me tomorrow evening in the rooms of the Keating Branch of the Gaelic League. Dr Hyde was coming at the end of the week. And for three weeks I followed the Irish play in a translation made by Hyde himself, teaching every one his or her part, throwing all my energy into the production, giving it as much attention as the most conscientious régisseur ever gave to a play at the Français.
And while we were rehearsing The Twisting of the Rope, Mr Benson was rehearsing Diarmuid and Grania in Birmingham. A letter came from him one morning, telling me that he did not feel altogether sure that I would be satisfied with the casting of the part of Laban, and Yeats, who sometimes attended my rehearsals, said —
You had better go over to Birmingham and see if you can’t get another woman to play the part.
But our play doesn’t matter, Yeats; what matters is The Twisting of the Rope. We either want to make Irish the language of Ireland, or we don’t; and if we do, nothing else matters. Hyde is excellent in his part, and if I can get the rest straightened out, and if the play be well received, the Irish language will at last have gotten its chance.
Yeats did not take so exaggerated a view of the performance of Hyde’s play as I did.
I see that Benson says that the lady who is going to play Laban has a beautiful voice, and he suggests that you might write to Elgar, asking him if he would contribute a song to the first act.
The more music we get from Elgar the better. Now, Yeats, if you’ll go home and write some verses and let me go on with the rehearsal, we’ll send them to Elgar tonight.
Yeats said he would see what he could do, and, to my surprise, brought back that afternoon a very pretty unrhymed lyric, nothing, however, to do with the play. It was sent to Elgar, who sent back a very beautiful melody by return of post, and both went away to Benson and were forgotten until I went to the Gaiety Theatre with Yeats to a rehearsal of our play. The lady that played Laban sang the lyric very well, but Schubert’s Ave Maria could not have been more out of place; as for the acting — Benson was right, the lady was not a tragic actress; even if she had been she could not have acted the part, so much was her appearance against her. She looked more like a quiet nun than a Druidess, and, drawing aside Yeats, who was telling her how she should hold a wine-cup, I said:
It’s no use, Yeats; you’re only wasting time. The performance will be ridiculous.
Why didn’t you go to Birmingham, as I asked you?
Because Hyde’s play would have suffered. One can’t have one’s cake and eat it. Of course, it’s dreadfully disappointing; it is quite hopeless. I shall not go to see the play tonight.
I meant what I said, and was reading in my armchair about eight o’clock when Frank Fay called to tell me he was writing about the play, and would be better able to do so if I could lend him the manuscript.
I’ll try to find you one. And after searching for some time in my secretary’s room I came back with some loose sheets. This is the best I can do for you, I said, bidding him goodbye.
But aren’t you coming to the theatre?
No. I saw the play rehearsed this afternoon. Benson is very good as Diarmuid, and I like Mrs Benson. Rodney plays the part of Finn. He is one of the best actors in England, and Conan will please you.
Then why won’t you come?
The lady that plays Laban sings a ballad very beautifully in the first act; but —
You will come to see your play. You won’t sit here all night.... No, you’ll come.
For nothing in the world: I couldn’t bear it! All the same he succeeded in persuading me.
VII
BUT WHO IS Frank Fay? the reader asks. In the days of Diarmuid and Grania he was earning his living as a shorthand writer and typist in an accountant’s office, and when his day’s work was over he went to the National Library to read books on stage history. His brother Willie was a clerk in some gas-works, and painted scenery when his work was over, and both brothers, whenever the opportunity offered, were ready to arrange for the performances of sketches, farces, one-act plays in temperance halls. But Box and Cox did not satisfy their ambitions; and the enthusiasm which The Twisting of the Rope had evoked brought Willie Fay to my house one evening, to ask me if I would use my influence with the Gaelic League to send himself and his brother out, with a little stock company, to play an equal number of plays in English and Irish.
But do you know Irish sufficiently?
He admitted that neither of them had any Irish at all, and my brow clouded.
We must have a few plays in English; we wouldn’t always be sure of an Irish-speaking audience.
