Gluck

by Diana Souhami

  Dulac and Edith discussed the matter of Yeats’s reinterment in Ireland but agreed that no self-respecting Irish parson would bury a box without being certain that it contained the remains over which he performed the sacred rites, and that the Roquebrune sexton might palm them off with any old bones.6 They gave no word of their manoeuvres to George Yeats. ‘I entirely agree’, wrote Dulac to Edith (17 July 1947), ‘that it is infinitely better if she can be kept out of it and only told when everything is done. Even then she should be told what I proposed to tell everybody else: “That a more lasting monument to W.B.’s memory was erected by us etc etc …”.’

  Their plans were nearly complete when, on 6 January 1948, Dulac saw an article in The Times announcing that George Yeats intended bringing her husband’s remains back to Ireland for reburial at Drumcliff. ‘… It is very painful for me to have to write to you of this matter’, wrote Dulac to her that same day, ‘and I wish I could spare you the pain of it also, but that is now impossible.’ He then outlined the whole sorry saga of Edith and Gluck’s sojourn to Roquebrune, the ‘fosse commune’, the heaping of Yeats’s bones into the ossuary, the attempts at reparation of the blunder.

  I don’t know what you propose to do in the circumstances, but if you will allow me to make a suggestion, I think you might say to the Corporation that it is not possible in present conditions to make the transfer and leave it at that. But if you were obliged to give details, I should say that it was owing to the war that, the Cemetery at Roquebrune having been seriously disturbed, W.B’s remains had been dispersed. A monument could, however, always be erected in Drumcliffe and my stone could be sent there instead of to the South of France.

  Again I hope you will think that we have acted as we should in the interests of all concerned and especially in that of our friend.

  Dulac sent a copy of the letter to Edith with a covering note:

  … If she now spreads the news about, she will undoubtedly cut a very poor figure as we have definite proof that she could have done something during all these years; the grave was not touched for eighteen months from the Liberation and she had nearly 10 years in which to extend the concession. Eire was neutral all that time. And if there is a scandal … well! she will, as I said be in a very bad position and I think she has enough wits left not to do anything to bring it about. And remember, the Abbe has been told not to tell anybody except members of the family. However there is no use worrying until we hear from her.

  George Yeats’s response was blunt. The grave was for ten years not one. She had the receipts. There was no question of a ‘fosse commune’. She had contacted the French minister in Ireland who said it would be quite easy to get the remains and bring them back.7

  A police inspector was sent from Paris to Roquebrune and Biancheri went through his investigations again, and wrote again to Dulac (16 February 1948):

  According to the register of burials in the Roquebrune Town Hall the poet Butler William Yeats [sic] was buried on 28 January 1939 in a communal grave.… The grave was granted for five years, after which the bones were put in the ossuary. The register of funerals at Menton says the same as that at Roquebrune.

  Could there be a copying error or a possible confusion between a five and ten year grant? Examination of the document Mrs Yeats has, would provide a beginning to the solution to this problem. One fact is certain: the bones of the late poet were placed in the ossuary. There is no doubt whatsoever on this subject. Is it possible to find the bones of the poet Yeats in the ossuary? Yes! If we empty the entire contents of the ossuary and if we have details of distinctive characteristics which will enable us to reconstruct the skeleton after painstaking research carried out under the direction of a medical expert. These details would be based on the age of the deceased, his height, the circumference of his head, dental prosthesis, possible fractures, bones deformities, illnesses which might have affected his skeleton. The researches would be long, expensive, extremely difficult, but not impossible. The results would remain subject to the laws of probability. Absolute certainty is in my view impossible.

  Skulls were in one section of the ossuary, fibulae and tibulae in another. Biancheri was reiterating the same story. None the less the reburial of bones of uncertain ownership was to go ahead.

  For Gluck this was all too much. She had shown, for her, restraint in letting Edmund Dulac arrange things as he thought best. It was not in her nature to be passive while others got on with the action, nor would she stay silent while Ireland arranged a state funeral for, and a priest blessed, the bones of assorted Frenchmen. She wrote to George Yeats, against Edith’s wishes, and to avoid suspicion of Edith’s complicity, gave her own bank as her address:

  Dear Mrs Yeats

  In June 1947 I accompanied Edith Heald to the Cemetery at Roquebrune where, despite exhaustive search we were unable to find your husband’s grave. As Edith does not speak French with ease I made all the enquiries, firstly with the parish priest, the Abbe Biancheri, and after with M. Pierre Reynaut, Director of the Maison Roblot, undertakers at Menton. Both these men stated that your husband had been buried in a ‘fosse commune’, that the remains had been removed at the end of five years, and that these remains would be almost impossible to find, and that if found identity would be open to doubt.

  Naturally all this was so shocking that I made sure by reiteration and investigation that their information was correct and that no possible mistake was being made. I have since had all the details confirmed to me in writing.

  You will perhaps wonder why I have not written to you sooner. I placed the matter in other and more intimate hands as far as you were concerned, and so far I have preserved the utmost secrecy, but now that it has been published in The Times and other papers that you are contemplating exhumation and reburial in Ireland I felt I must write to you.

  I have no desire to make things worse than they are, but because of my knowledge of the exact circumstances at Roquebrune (my enquiries were the first in eight years) culminating in the terrible discovery that there was no grave, I cannot view this reburial with equanimity.

  Will you please, therefore, set my mind at rest by letting me know that in view of all the uncertainty you will reconsider any scheme for reburial.8

  Dulac, an irascible man, was furious at what he saw as Gluck’s interference in matters that should not concern her. He called her threatening and high-handed and accused her of putting Edith and himself in an awkward position

  I will now have to do my best to minimise the effect your letter has had upon George in order to save Edith from its possible consequences. I shall very naturally say that it is entirely your own effort and that neither Edith nor I had anything to do with its inspiration or its contents. Please let me know at once if I have Edith’s approval in doing so. If by misfortune I have not, and she tells me that she on the contrary approves of what you do, it will break our hearts but I shall very regretfully have to tell G. Y. that I have nothing more to do with this painful affair and leave it to you to handle in the way your own desires dictate.9

  He was expressing more than just exasperation at the embarrassing muddle over Yeats’s bones. He was angry, like many of Edith’s friends, at the way Gluck seemed to be eclipsing Edith and taking over her life. In a sense this anger was justified. Gluck opened Edith’s letters, listened to her telephone calls and answered questions that were put to Edith. In a sardonic way Dulac was acknowledging that Edith’s approval or otherwise would come from Gluck, that Edith’s decisions would be made by Gluck. It was the ‘YouWe’ problem but in a different manifestation, the fusion of identity but now with a woman of unequal power. For Gluck it was a troublesome situation too. She was protective of Edith who anyway sought her help over the issue. She had been distressed by the Nora business, the splitting of the bond between the two sisters, the implacable resentment this caused among Edith’s friends, which she was unable to mend. But she was also dominant and scrupulous about facts. The truth, or what she felt to be the truth, no matt
er how painful, embarrassing or inconvenient, was the code by which she tried to live. Were it not for her involvement with Edith, she would have told The Times right away about her Roquebrune sojourn, for the sake of fact, not scandal. Now she was in the complicity. But she could not let Dulac have the last word.

  She wrote to him saying that he had Edith’s permission to dissociate Edith from Gluck’s letter to George Yeats. He replied to Edith (8 March 1948) asking why Gluck was answering for her.

  It is from you that I wanted that permission, since it is you that are obviously concerned first and foremost in this affair … I never expected Gluck would abruptly brush everybody on one side to satisfy what can only be an irresponsible desire to interfere personally and rather crudely in an affair which does not in the least concern her.… Whatever happens you may rest assured you have all our sympathy and can count on our help. But it is sometimes difficult to help people against their own wishes. It is clear that if Gluck insists on being the ‘I who knows’ with whom everybody has to reckon, I had better not try to cope with this distressing business any longer.

  Helen Beauclerck added a postscript:

  My Kosh! Surely if Gluck loves you and wants you to be kept from gossip, quarrelling, horrors of all sorts, she will promise to do nothing more about it.… Surely she has her work, her talent – she need not put her energies into this sort of thing? Sorry if I am incoherent but I do feel so deeply about it and am so afraid …

  Gluck replied in a conciliatory enough tone, defending herself but saying it was George Yeats not Edith who was vulnerable, and hoping that no misunderstandings should occur between Edith and Dulac. He wrote to Edith (14 March 1948) with yet another attack on Gluck and in effect threatening to withdraw his friendship from Edith if Gluck involved herself any further in the bones business:

  … as you seem unable or unwilling to restrain her from spending on threats of useless and dangerous mischief energies she might far more profitably spend otherwise, I can only retire before her and hope for the best.… I shall inform the Abbe and anyone who may come into this affair that any further communications must be addressed to you. Gluck can deal with them as she thinks fit.

  But there was no way Edith would be disloyal to Gluck, nor had Gluck threatened anyone. She had simply tried to put pressure on George Yeats not to go ahead with all the paraphernalia of a State burial when the whereabouts of the remains of her husband were in such doubt. Edith tried to make peace all round: ‘I am sorry that you should have thought Gluck’s letter threatening, however faintly,’ she wrote to Dulac (17 March 1948),

  I do assure you that it was written with no such intention but in hope of putting things right as she was extremely distressed that our friendship might be shaken.… If you now retire as you say you will, I shall do nothing more until George has disclosed her intentions. In any case this now seems best for us all. I am having the stone brought here and will keep it until the position is clearer. The Abbe can hold the money for the concession until then.

  W.B. might not have disliked his no-grave but it would have distressed him to think it might diminish our friendship – and I do not see why it should. Love from Kosch.

  While these friends wrangled, the arrangements for the ‘reburial’ continued. It remained unclear whether Mrs Yeats had a receipt for a ten-year grave and, if she had, whose clerical error this was. It seems that neither the Abbe Biancheri nor Dulac ever saw her receipt. Nor is it clear who, if anyone, rifled through the ossuary and attempted the identification of Yeats’s bones. When it came to the ‘exhumation’ and transportation of the poet, Abbe Biancheri kept a circumspect if unconvincing distance and wrote of this to Dulac (31 March 1948):

  … about the 17th of March [1948] Monsieur Reynaut, the official in charge of undertaking at Menton, asked me to be present at the exhumation of the poet Yeats. But I had been called to the bedside of someone who was sick in a distant part of town and could not accept this invitation. The investigation and exhumation took place in the presence of the police, the Mayor of Roquebrune, a medical expert, a police inspector from Paris and Monsieur César Lautier, the official responsible for the upkeep of the graves. The bones of the poet Yeats were placed in a coffin. The coffin was placed in The Chapel of Rest. The remains of your friend will be sent to Sligo, either by the Irish government or accompanied by Mrs Yeats, his widow. No date seems to have been fixed. It is even possible that I shall not be informed of the departure date. I should not be surprised if my letter were opened before it reached its destination. In any case this is not important.

  It is difficult even tentatively to believe that the coffin destined for Sligo contained the right remains. However arduous, costly, detailed and time consuming the reconstruction of a skeleton might be, given the choice of so many bones, it had all, ostensibly, taken place in four weeks. For it had been the sixteenth of February 1948 when the Abbe Biancheri wrote to Edmund Dulac about the need to empty the ossuary and start gathering detailed medical evidence if authentic bones were to be identified, and it was the seventeenth of March 1948 when ‘Yeats’ was exhumed, put in a coffin and placed in the Chapel of Rest in the presence of high-ranking witnesses. French bureaucracy is not renowned for its speediness. Perhaps, or perhaps not, in four weeks all Yeats’s medical and dental records were assembled in Ireland, pathologists employed, the Roquebrune ossuary emptied and all findings analysed.

  In August 1948 the Irish naval corvette Macha left Cork harbour for Dublin where she was inspected by Ireland’s Minister for External Affairs, Mr Sean MacBride. She sailed to Gibraltar with an official of the Department of External Affairs on board, then on to Villefranche. The coffin lay in state in the town square of Roquebrune before being taken by road to meet the ship. Eleven days later the corvette reached Galway Bay. Mrs Yeats, her children and Jack Yeats, the poet’s brother, went aboard and the coffin was piped ashore. From Galway the funeral cortege made its way by road to Sligo where a military guard of honour waited outside the town hall. The Minister of External Affairs, the Mayor and Corporation of Sligo and a crowd of people including Edith and Gluck gathered in Drumcliff churchyard to watch the coffin placed under the stone inscribed with Yeats’s words ‘Under bare Ben Bulben’s head’.

  Edmund Dulac’s headstone, with an image of Pegasus ascending to the stars and inscribed simply with the words ‘William Butler Yeats 1865–1939’, was not sent out to Roquebrune until 1953, the year that Dulac died. The following summer Edith and Gluck again journeyed to Roquebrune, were met by the Abbe Biancheri and paid homage to the stone now resting on the ossuary wall.

  For Edith’s sake Gluck kept silent throughout her life on the events surrounding Yeats’s burial. She remained agitated though over her notes, letters and knowledge about it all. After her death her executors asked the Irish government if they would like to accept, as a gift, the correspondence telling of the saga so that they might deal with it as they saw fit. They declined the offer.

  SIXTEEN

  COSMIC INJUSTICE

  The saga of Yeats’s bones was only one of the moral issues that preoccupied Gluck in the postwar years. Questions of justice became all-important to her. She did a series of formal portraits of judges in their high robes of office. From February until July 1949 she worked at the painting, commissioned by Lord Goddard, of Lord Wilfrid Greene who retired that year as Master of the Rolls. For some of the sittings he went to her studio at the Chantry, for the rest she travelled up to the Royal Court of Justice in the Strand. More than with previous pictures the quality of paints and canvas distressed her. Colour seeped into the canvas and went dead, even when applied thickly. Edith said it was like painting on a sheet. And brush strokes done in the same colour but drawn in different directions left a suede effect. She found that black paint stayed tacky for three days and left a silvery sheen or a blue edge. Her paints frustrated her, they seemed unpredictable and not in her control. Her problems with this picture were to drive her into a decade of battling with the paint manufa
cturers over the quality of materials. Day by day, while working on it, she noted the shortcomings of her paints and canvas.

  Work at shadow side of face – forehead already gone dead and edge of wig.

  Dark side of face hell to do, like suede, light and dark brush strokes. Tacky too and goes dead as work. Ear awful.

  Work at light side of face. Dark side dead and quite silvery and shining like a sixpence on edge of wig …

  It was a contrast to the happy pictures of Christmas revelry and flowers done in 1936 when she was so in love with Nesta. But her technical struggles do not show in the finished work. ‘Wilfrid Arthur Lord Greene, Master of the Rolls 1937–1949’ as she called it, has none of the edge of caricature that stamped her thirties’ portraits. She matched the seriousness of the subject. She used light and dark as a metaphor for truth and justice, and, as ever, showed her loving care for detail: the markers in the pages of the books, the manicured nails, the starched collar. Goddard had asked her not to paint Wilfrid Greene in a wig – he thought it sapped character – but she treats it as a symbol of status.

  She finished the picture in June 1949, Edith gave a celebratory party and seventy-five Steyning residents called at the house to see it. Lord Goddard and Nancy and Wilfrid Greene went to lunch and declared themselves delighted with the painting. Goddard presented it to the Benchers of the Inner Temple and it was hung in their drawing room. ‘I suppose that differences of opinion are inevitable about all matters artistic’, wrote Lord Merriman, the Deputy Treasurer, to Lord Goddard (13 July 1949), ‘but I can only say that I have never known a case in which approval of the work has been so general’. ‘“Has Holbein come to life again?”’ remarked the librarian of the Bar library to Lord Greene. ‘I shan’t repeat any more eulogies – you will be getting too conceited. Very many thanks again and love to Miss Shackleton from both of us. Ever, Wilfrid’.1