First meetings with the soul of Dyahbolism

Title

Creator

Beerboom, Sir Max

Identifier

Lasting impression

Language

English

Source

Volume XII (Issue No. 11) November 1960

Year

1960

Subject

First person narrative

Poets

Yeats, W.B. (William Butler), 1865-1939

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

Lasting impression First Meetings with the Soul of "Dyahbolism” By Sir Max Beerboom Almost forty years ago I wrote, but didn’t publish, a few little essays about meetings with interesting con temporaries , of mine. One of these was about my first meet ings with W.B. Yeats. At that time Yeats had not begun to develop his great gifts in the manner in which he ulti mately did. Of the fullness and richness of his later self there was yet, for me, no token. At Charterhouse, one morn ing, a small boy construed thus a rather difficult line of Euri pides: “And a tear shall lead the blind man.” “Hm,” said his form master, “clever tear!” Thereat we all laughed. But ought we to have laughed? Granted, the translation was hopelessly inaccurate. But in itself was not the image beauti ful, and expressed in terms sim ple and sensuous, if not pas sionate? I am led to ask this because in after years, when first I read some of the poems of W, B. Yeats, those words came back to my memory, and seem to have been inspired by his own Muse. “And a tear shall lead the blind man”... how easily, how well (though I, and still think), might some poem of this distinguished and true poet end just like that! From the lone hills where Fergus strays 72 Panorama Down the long vales of Coonahan Comes a white wind through the unquiet ways, And a tear shall lead the blind man. But does not this levity jar on me? Yes, it does, I always want to be on the side of the angels. My wretchedly frequent failure to find definite mean ings in the faint and lovely things of Yeats — my percep tion of nothing but some sort of mood enclosed in a vacuum far away — has always worried me very much. I have repeated sternly and many times to my self what the initiate have told me: that through the mouth of Yeats the ancient and authentic voice of Ireland is uttered. Of ten I have taken my atlas from the shelf and looked up Ireland in search of revelation. And it has seemed to me that if Ire land were indeed what I there behold, thing in two dimensions, a design on paper, and if her counties were not pink and yel low and green, but all a silvery gray, and if her whole shape were very much more tenuous and graceful than it is, then might she be supposed to have some such voice as Yeats ut ters. But the fact is that Ire land, so far from being mpre rarefied, is grosser than she ap pears in my atlas. There may be in that land fairies and phan toms, and whispering reeds, and eternal twilight, and wan wo men—men, observe! There it is! From time immemorial Ireland has been harboring hu man beings. Poetry that hasn’t the human knot can no more be truly Celtic than it can be truly Saxon or Mongolian or Slav. One is taught to despise Tom Moore nowadays. But I cannot help feeling that in “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms” or “No longer, dear Ve sey, feel hurt and uneasy” the ancient spirit of Ireland was more authentically breathed than it is by Yeats. I struggle against this feeling. But in vain'. I often had the pleasure of meeting Yeats, and I liked him. But merely to like so remark able, so mystic and intense, a creature, to be not utterly un der his spell whenever one was in his presence, seemed to ar gue a lack in oneself and to im ply an insult to that presence. Thus the pleasure of meeting Yeats was not for me an un mixed one. I felt always rather uncomfortable, as though I had submitted myself to a mesme rist who somehow didn’t mes merize me. I hoped against hope that I should feel my vo lition slipping away from me — my cheap little indepen dence fading into a drowsy en chantment where visions would come thronging presently. Nothing of the sort happened. Perhaps because I had November 1960 73 formed no expectations, my first sight of Yeats was the deepest impression I had of him. That was in the winter of 1893. Aubrey Beardsley had done a poster for the Ave nue Theatre and had received two stalls for the first night of Dr. Todhunter’s play The Black Cat, and he had asked me to go with him. Before the main play there was to be a “curtain raiser”—The Land of Heart's Desire. Yeats was not more than a name to us then; nor were we sure that it beseemed us, as men of the world, to hurry over our din ner. We did so, however, and arrived in good time. The beautiful little play was acted in a very nerveless and inaudi ble manner, casting rather a gloom over the house. When at length the two curtains of the proscenium swept down and met in, the middle of the stage, the applause was fainter than it would be nowadays. There were, however, a few sporadic and compatriotic cries for “Author.” I saw a slight con vulsion of the curtains where they joined each other, and then I saw a long fissure, re vealing (as I for a moment supposed) unlit blackness be hind the curtains. But lo! there were two streaks of white in the upper portion of this blackness — a white streak of shirt front, and above that a white streak of face; and I was aware that what I had thought to be insubstantial murk was a dress suit, with the Author in it. And the streak of Au thor’s face was partly bisected by a lesser black streak, which was a lock of Author’s raven hair. It was all very eerie and memorable. IMIore than a year passed before this vision was ma terialized for me in private life. A new publication, entitled The Savoy, was afoot, with Arthur Symons for literary edi tor and Beardsley for art edi tor. The publisher was a strange and rather depressing person, a north-countryman, known to have been engaged in the sale of disreputable books. To celebrate the first numbers of the magazine, he invited the contributors to sup per in a room at the New Lyric Club. Besides Symons and Beardsley, there were present Yeats, Rudolf Dircks, myself, and one or two other writers, whom I forget. Also there was one lady: the publisher’s wife. She had not previously been heard of by anyone. She was a surprise. She was touching — dreadfully touching. It was so evident that she had been brought out from some far su burb for this occasion only. One knew that the dress she wore had been ordered special 74 Panorama ly; and one felt that it might never be worn again. She was small, buxom, and self-pos sessed. She did the honors. She dropped little remarks. It did not seem that she was nervous; one only knew that she was nervous. She knew that she did not matter, but she would not give in; she was brave and good. Perhaps, if I had not been so preoccupied by the pity of her, I would have been more susceptible to Yeat’s magic. I wished that I, not he, had been placed next to her at the table. I could have helped her more than he. The walls of the lit tle room in which we supped were lined with bamboo instead of wallpaper. “Quite original, is it not?” she said to Yeats. But Yeats had no reply ready for that; only a courteous, lu gubrious murmur. He had been staying in Paris, and was much engrossed in the cult of Diabolism, or Devil worship, which appeared to have a vogue there. He had made a profound study of it, and he evidently guessed that Beard sley, whom he met now for the first time, was a confirmed worshiper, in that time. So to Beardsley he talked, in deep, vibrant tones across the table, of the lore and rites of Diabol ism — “Dyahbolism” he called it, thereby making it sound the more fearful. I daresay that Beardsley, who always seemed to know by instinctive erudition all about everything, knew all about Dyahbolism. Anyhow, I could see that he, with that stony common sense which al ways came upmost when any one canvassed the fantastic in him, thought Dyahbolism ra ther silly. He was too polite not to go on saying at intervals, in his hard, quick voice, “Oh really? How perfectly entran cing!” and “Oh really? How perfectly sweet!” But had I been Yeats, I would have dropped the subject sooner than he did. At the other end of the ta ble, Arthur Symons was talk ing of some foreign city, carry ing in his waistcoat pocket, as it were, the genius loci, anon to be embalmed in Pateresque prose. I forget whether this time it was Rome or Seville or Moscow or what; but I re member that the hostess said she had never been there. I liked Symons’ feigning some surprise at this, and for saying that she really ought to go. Presently I heard him saying he thought the nomadic life was the best of all lives for an artist. Yeats, in a pause of his own music, heard this too, and seemed a little pained by it. Shaking back the lock from his brow, he turned to Symons and declared that an artist November 1960 75 worked best among his own folk and in the land of his fa thers. Symons seemed rather daunted, but he stuck to his point. He argued that new sights and sounds and odors braced the whole intelligence of a man and quickened his powers of creation. Yeats, gent ly but firmly, would have none of this. His own arguments may not have been better than Symon’s; but in voice and manner and countenance, Sy mons was not match for him at all. And it was with a hu mane impulse that the hostess interposed. “Mr. Symons,” she said, “is like myself. He likes a little change.” This bathos was so sharp that it was like an actual and visible chasm: one could have sworn to a glimpse of Symons’ heels, a faint cry, a thud. Yeats stood for an instant on the brink, stroking his chin enigmaticaly, and then turned to resume the dropped thread of Dyahbolism. I could not help wishing that he, not poor Symons, had been the victim. He would somehow have fallen on his feet; and his voice, is suing uninterruptedly from the depth of the chasm, would have been as impressive as ever. I have said that my first and merely visual impression of Yeats was my deepest. Do not suppose that at other times he did not impress me with a 76 feeling that I, had I been of finer clay, must have been more deeply impressed than I was. I always did feel that here was une ame auguste, if ever there was one. His benign aloofness from whatever company I saw him in, whether he was inspired with language or with silence, made everyone else seem ra ther cheap. Often, at great re ceptions in great houses, with colonnaded rooms full of beau tiful women in all their jewels, and of eminent men ribanded and starred, it must have seemed to the quietly observant. Nobody knew that the scene, had its final note of distinction in the sober purple soutane of Monsignor So-and-so, yonder. Monsignor So-and-so himself may happen to be as worldly as you will; but nominally, of ficially by hierarchic intention, he is apart from the rest. That is the secret of his effect. Something like that was for me the secret of Yeat’s effect any where. He, not indeed in any nominal or official way, but by reason of himself, was apart from the rest. That was his strength. He was not primarily of this world. But confound it! So soon as ever one has elaborated a theo ry, always there is some wretched flaw staring one in the face. Didn’t Yeats’ man agement of the Celtic Renas cence prove him a practical Panorama man? The birth may not have been effected. But there the indefatigable accoucheur was. Pamphlets, letters to newspa pers, lectures in America, speeches — that speech which I heard him deliver at the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin; that fighting speech of which George Moore has gasped in Ave some slight record for posterity. Yes, it made Moore gasp. Perhaps posterity will be equally stirred. At the Shelbourne Hotel it sounded very beautiful. But not dons of Trinity, nor any of the Catholics either, were any more offended by it than they would have been by a noc turne of Chopin. Mournfully, very beautifully, Yeats bombinated in the void, never for an instant in any vital relation to the audience. Moore likens him to Demosthenes. But I take it that Demosthenes sway ed Moore. My memory of that speech does somewhat patch the flaw in my theory. As years went by, the visual aspect of Yeats changed a lit tle. His face grew gradually fuller in outline, and the sharp angles of his figure were smoothed away. And his hands — those hands which in his silences lay folded downward across his breast, but left each other and came forth and, as it were, stroked the air to and fro while he talked — those very long, fine hands did seem to have lost something of their insubstantiality. His dignity and his charm were as they had always been. But I found it less easy to draw caricatures of him. He seemed to have be come subtly less like himself. Yes, Sir Each member of the third grade class was as signed the names of three foreign countries and told to indicate what we in this country import from each. One youngster reported on his assignment as follows: Belgium: Lace. Brazil: Nuts. Burma: Shave. * November 1960 77

pages

72-77

Media