'Hail and farewell!'

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PAULINE FORE MOFFITT
LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY

L/yu^^y

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Price 6s. each

MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE

THE LAKE

A NOVEL

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21, Bedfobd Stkeet, W.C.

'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

* HAIL AND FAREWELL !^

A TRILOGY

I. AVE

II. SALVE [In prepa/ration
III. VALE [In preparation

HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

AV E

BY

GEORGE MOORE

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1911

Copyright, London, 1911, by WilUam Heinemann,
and Washington, U.S.A., by D. Appleton and Co.

OVERTURE

JN 1894 Edward Martyn and I were living
in the Temple, I in a garret in King's
Bench Walk, he in a garret in Pump
Court. At this time I was very poor
and had to work for my living, and all
the hours of the day were spent writing some chapter
of Esther Waters or of Modern Painting; and after
dinner I often returned to my work. But towards
midnight a wish to go out to speak to somebody
would come upon me : Edward returned about that
time from his club, and I used to go to Pump Court,
sure of finding him seated in his high, canonical
chair, sheltered by a screen, reading his book, his
glass of grog beside him, his long clay pipe in his
hand ; and we used to talk literature and drama
until two or three in the morning.

^ I wish I knew enough Irish to write my plays in
Irish,' he said one night, speaking out of himself
suddenly.

' You'd like to write your plays in Irish !' I ex-
claimed. ' I thought nobody did anything in Irish
except bring turf from the bog and say prayers.'

Edward did not answer, and when I pressed him
he said :

' You've always lived in France and England, and
don't know Ireland.*

2 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

' But I do. Don't I remember the boatmen speak-
ing to each other in Irish on Lough Carra ? And
Father James Browne preaching in Irish in Carnacun ?
But I've never heard of anybody wanting to write in
it . . . and plays^ too !'

' Everjrthing is different now ; a new literature is
springing up.'

an Irish?'

My interest was stirred^ and my brain fluttered
with ideas regarding the relation of the poem to the
language in which it is bom.

'A new language to enwomb new thoughts/ I
cried out to Edward.

On the subject of nationality in art one can talk
a long whilCj and it was past one o'clock when I
groped my way down the rough-timbered staircase,
lit by dusty lanterns, and wandered from Pump
Court into the cloister, loitering by the wig-maker's
shop in the dim corner, so like what London must
have been once, some hundreds of years after the
Templars. . . . There was their church ! And,
standing before the carven porch, I thought what a
happy accident it was that Edward Martyn and my-
self had drifted into the Temple, the last vestige of
old London — ' combining,' as someone has said, ' the
silence of the cloister with the licence of the brothel '
— Edward attracted by the church of the Templars,
I by the fleeting mistress, so it pleased me to
think.

* One is making for the southern gate, hoping that
the aged porter will pull the string and let her pass
out without molesting her with observations.'

But to bring him forth she had to knock at the door

AVE 3

with the handle of her umbrella, and, when the door
closed behind her, there seemed to be nothing in the
Temple but silence and moonlight: a round moon
sailing westward let fall a cold ray along the muddy
foreshore and along the river, revealing some barges
moored in mid-stream.

' The tide is out,' I said, and I wondered at the
spots and gleams of light, amid the shrubs in the
garden, till I began to wonder at my own wonder-
ment, for, after all, this was not the first time the
moon had sailed over Lambeth. Even so the spec-
tacle of the moonlit gardens and the river excited me
to the point of making me forget my bed; and,
watching the white torch of Jupiter and the red
ember of Mars, I began to think of the soul which
Edward Martyn had told me I had lost in Paris and
in London, and if it were true that whoever cast off
tradition is like a tree transplanted into uncongenial
soil. Tourgueni^ff was of that opinion : ' Russia can
do without any one of us, but none of us can do with-
out Russia ' — one of his sentimental homilies grown
wearisome from constant repetition, true, perhaps, of
Russia, but utterly untrue of Ireland. Far more
true would it be to say that an Irishman must fly from
Ireland if he would be himself. Englishmen, Scotch-
men, Jews, do well in Ireland — Irishmen never ; even
the patriot has to leave Ireland to get a hearing.
We must leave Ireland ; and I did well to listen in
Montmartre. All the same, a remembrance of
Edward Martjrn's conversation could not be stifled.
Had I not myself written, only half conscious of the
truth, that art must be parochial in the beginning to
become cosmopohtan in the end } And isn't a great

4 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

deal of the savour of a poem owing to the language
it is written in ? If Dante had continued his comedy
in Latin ! He wrote two cantos in Latin. Or was it
two stanzas ?

' So Ireland is awaking at last out of the great
sleep of Catholicism !' And I walked about the
King's Bench Walk, thinking what a wonderful
thing it would be to write a book in a new language
or in an old language revived and sharpened to
literary usage for the first time. We men of letters
are always sad when we hear of a mode of literary
expression not available to us, or a subject we cannot
treat. After discussing the Humbert case for some
time, Dujardin and a friend fell to talking of what
a wonderful subject it would have been for Balzac,
and I listened to them in sad silence. ' Moore is
sad,' Dujardin said. ' He is always sad when he
hears a subject which he may never hope to
write.'

'The Humbert case being involved in such a

mass of French jurisprudence that ' And they

laughed at me.

But in the Temple, in Edward's rooms, I had
heard that a new literature was springing up in my
own parish, and forthwith began to doubt if the
liberty my father's death had given me was an
unmixed blessing.

* The talent I brought into the world might have
produced rarer fruit if it had been cultivated less
sedulously. Ballinrobe or the Nouvelle Athenes —
which ?'

The bitterness of my meditation was relieved,
somewhat, on remembering that those who had

AVE 5

remained in Ireland had written nothing of any
worth — miserable stuff, no novel of any seriousness,
only broad farce. Lever and Lover and a rudiment,
a peasant whose works I had once looked into, and
whose name it was impossible to remember. ^ Strange
that Ireland should have produced so little literature,
for there is a pathos in Ireland, in its people, in its
landscapes, and in its ruins.'

And that night I roamed in imagination from
castle to castle, following them from hillside to hill-
side, along the edges of the lake, going up a staircase
built between the thickness of the walls, and on to
the ramparts, remembering that Castle Carra must
have been a great place some four or five hundred
years ago. Only the centre of the castle remains ;"
the headland is covered with ruins, overgrown with
thorn and hazel ; but great men must have gone
forth from Castle Carra; and Castle Island and
Castle Hag were defended with battle-axe and
sword, and these were wielded as tremendously,
from island to island, and along the shores of my
lake, as ever they were under the walls of Troy.
But of what use are such deeds if there be no
chroniclers to relate them ? Heroes are dependent
upon chroniclers, and Ireland never produced any,
only a few rather foolish bards, no one who could
rank with Froissart ; and I thought of my friend up
in Pump Court writing by a window, deep set in a
castle wall, a history of his times. That was just
the sort of thing he might do, and do very well, for
he is painstaking. An heroic tale of robbers issuing
from the keep of Castle Carra and returning with
cattle and a beautiful woman would be more than

6 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

he could accomplish. I had heard of Grania for the
first time that nighty and she might be written
about ; but not by me, for only what my eye has
seen, and my heart has felt, interests me. A book
about the turbulent life of Castle Carra would be
merely inventions, cela ne serait que du chiqu6 ; I
should be following in the tracks of other marchands
de camelote, Scott and Stevenson, and their like.
But modem Ireland ! What of it as a subject for
artistic treatment ?

And noiselessly, like a ghost, modern Ireland
glided into my thoughts, ruinous as ancient Ireland,
more so, for she is clothed not only with the ruins of
the thirteenth century, but with the ruins of every
succeeding century. In Ireland we have ruins of
several centuries standing side by side, from the
fifth to the eighteenth. By the ruins of Castle Carra
stand the ruins of a modern house, to which the
chieftains of Castle Carra retired when brigandage
declined ; and the life that was lived there is evinced
by the great stone fox standing in the middle
of the courtyard — was evinced, for within the last
few years the fox and the two hounds of gigantic
stature on either side of the gateway have been
overthrown.

When I was a small child I used to go with my
mother and governess to Castle Carra for goat's milk,
and we picnicked in the great banqueting-hall over-
grown with ivy. ' If ever the novel I am dreaming
is written, Ruin and Weed shall be its title — ruined
castles in a weedy country. In Ireland men and
women die without realizing any of the qualities they
bring into the world,' and I remembered those I had

AVE 7

known long ago, dimly, and in fragments, as one
remembers pictures — the colour of a young woman's
hair, an old woman's stoop, a man's bulk ; and then
a group of peasants trooped past me — Mulhair
recognized by his stubbly chin, Pat Plunket by his
voice. Carabine by his eyes — and these were followed
by recollection of an old servant, Appleby, his
unstarched collar and the frock-coat too large for him
which he wore always, and his covert dislike of the
other servants in the house, especially the old house-
maids.

All these people have gone to their rest ; they are
all happily forgotten, no one ever thinks of them ;
but to me they are clearer than they were in
life, because the present changes so quickly that
we are not aware of our life at the moment of living
it. But the past never changes ; it is like a long
picture-gallery. Many of the pictures are covered
with grey cloths, as is usual in picture-galleries ; but
we can uncover any picture we wish to see, and not
infrequently a cloth will fall as if by magic, revealing
a forgotten one, and it is often as clear in outline
and as fresh in paint as a Van der Meer.

That night in the Temple I met a memory as
tender in colour and outline as the Van der Meer in
the National Gallery. It was at the end of a long
summer's day, five-and-twenty years ago, that I first
saw her among some ruins in the Dublin mountains,
and in her reappearance she seemed so startlingly
like Ireland that I felt she formed part of the book
I was dreaming, and that nothing of the circum-
stances in which I found her could be changed or
altered. My thoughts fastened on to her, carrying

8 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

me out of the Temple^ back to Ireland, to the time
when the ravages of the Land League had recalled
me from the Nouvelle Athenes — a magnificent, young
Montmartrian, with a blonde beard a la Capoul,
trousers hanging wide over the foot, and a hat so
small that my sister had once mistaken it for her
riding- hat.

And still in my Montmartrian clothes I had come
back from the West with a story in my head, which
could only be written in some poetical spot, prob-
ably in one of the old houses among the Dublin
mountains, built there in the eighteenth century.
And I had set out to look for one a hot day in
July, when the trees in Merrion Square seemed like
painted trees, so still were they in the grey silence ;
the sparrows had ceased to twitter ; the carmen spat
without speaking, too weary to solicit my fare ; and
the horses continued to doze on the bridles. ' Even
the red brick,' I said, ^ seems to weary in the heat.
Too hot a day for walking, but I must walk if I'm to
sleep to-night.'

My way led through Stephen's Green, and the
long decay of Dublin that began with the Union
engaged my thoughts, and I fared sighing for the
old-time mansions that had been turned into colleges
and presbyteries. There were lodging-houses in
Harcourt Street, and beyond Harcourt Street the
town dwindled, first into small shops, then into
shabby-genteel villas; at Terenure, I was among
cottages, and within sight of purple hills, and when
the Dodder was crossed, at the end of the village
street, a great wall began, high as a prison wall ;
it might well have been mistaken for one, but the

AVE 9

trees told it was a park wall, and the great orna-
mental gateway was a pleasant object. It came
into sight suddenly — a great pointed edifice finely
designed, and after admiring it I wandered on, cross-
ing an old grey bridge. 'The Dodder again,' I
said. The beautiful green country unfolded, a little
melancholy for lack of light and shade, ' for lack,' I
added, ' of a ray to gild the fields. A beautiful country
falling into ruin. The beauty of neglect — yet there
is none in thrift.' My eyes followed the long herds
wandering knee-deep in succulent herbage, and I
remembered that every other country I had seen was
spoilt more or less by human beings, but this
country was nearly empty, only an occasional herds-
man to remind me of myself in this drift of ruined
suburb, with a wistful line of mountains enclosing it,
and one road curving among the hills, and every-
where high walls — parks, in the centre of which
stand stately eighteenth-century mansions. 'How
the eighteenth century sought privacy,' I said, and
walked on dreaming of the lives that were lived
in these sequestered domains.

'No road ever wound so beautifully,' I cried,
' and there are no cottages, only an occasional ruin
to make the road attractive. How much more
attractive it is now, redeemed from its humanities —
large families flowing over doorways, probably in and
out of cesspools.' I had seen such cottages in the
West, and had wished them in ruins, for ruins are
wistful, especially when a foxglove finds root-hold in
the crannies, and tall grasses flourish round the door-
way, and withdrawing my eyes from the pretty
cottage, I admired the spotted shade, and the road

10 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

itself, now twisting abruptly, now winding leisurely
up the hill, among woods ascending on my left and
descending on my right. But what seemed most
wonderful of all was the view that accompanied the
road — glimpses of a great plain showing between
comely trees shooting out of the hillside — a dim
green plain, divided by hedges, traversed by long
herds, and enclosed, if I remember rightly, by a line
of low grey hills, far, ever so far, away.

'AH the same, the road ascends very steeply,' I
growled, beginning to doubt the veracity of the
agent who had informed me that a house existed in
the neighbourhood. ' In the neighbourhood,' I re-
peated, for the word appeared singularly inappro-
priate. ' In the solitude,' he should have said.

A little higher up in the hills a chance herdsman
offered me some goat's milk ; but it was like drink-
ing Camembert cheese, and the least epicurean
amongst us would prefer his milk and cheese
separate. He had no other, and, in answer to my
questions regarding a house to let, said there was
one a mile up the road : Mount Venus.

' Mount Venus ! Who may have given it that
name ?'

The question brought all his stupidity into his face,
and after a short talk with him about his goats, I
said I must be getting on to Mount Venus ... if it
be no more than a mile.

Nothing in Ireland lasts long except the miles, and
the last mile to Mount Venus is the longest mile in
Ireland ; and the road is the steepest. It wound
past another ruined cottage, and then a gateway
appeared — heavy wrought-iron gates hanging between

AVE 11

great stone pillars, the drive ascending through lonely
grass-lands with no house in view, for the house lay
on the thither side of the hill, a grove of beech-trees
reserving it as a surprise for the visitor. A more
beautiful grove I have never seen, some two hundred
years old, and the house as old as it — a long house
built with picturesque chimney-stacks, well placed at
each end, a resolute house, emphatic as an oath,
with great steps before the door, and each made out
of a single stone, a house at which one knocks
timidly, lest mastiffs should rush out, eager for the
strangling.

But no fierce voices answered my knocking, only a
vague echo.

' Maybe I'll find somebody in the back premises,*
and wandering through a gateway, I found myself
among many ruins of barns and byres, and the ruin
of what had once been a haggard; and I asked
myself what were those strange ruins, and not
finding any explanation, passed on, thinking the
great stones had probably been used for the crushing
of apples. ' Cider-presses ?' and I sought a Uving
thing. No cow in the byre, nor pony in the stable,
nor dog in the kennel, nor pig in the sty, nor gaimt
Irish fowl stalking about the kitchen-door — the door
which seemed to be the kitchen-door. An empty
dovecot hung on the wall above it. ' Mount Venus
without doves,' I said, and sought for a pair on the
sagging roofs. To my knocking no answer came,
and, disappointed, I wandered back to the front of
the house. ' At all events the view is open to me,'
and I descended the hillside towards the loveliest
prospect that ever greeted mortal eyes.

12 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

At the end of the great yew hedge, hundreds of
years old, the comely outline of Howth floated
between sea and sky, spiritual, it seemed, on that
grey day, as a poem by Shelley. One thought, too,
of certain early pictures by Corot. The line of the
shore was certainly drawn as beautifully as if he had
drawn it, and the plain about the sea, filled with
Dublin City, appeared in the distance a mere murky
mass, with here and there a building, indicated,
faintly, with Corot' s beauty of touch. Nearer still
the suburbs came trickling into the fields, the very
fields through which I had passed, those in which I
had seen herds of cattle feeding.

Then came a glimpse of a walled garden at the
end of the yew hedge, a little lower down the
shelving hillside, and, pulling a thorn-bush out of the
gateway, I passed into a little wilderness of vagrant
grasses and goats. A scheme for the restoration of
Mount Venus started up in my mind ; about two
thousand pounds would have to be spent, but for
that money I should live in the most beautiful place
in the world. The Temple Church cannot compare
with Chartres, nor Mount Venus with Windsor; a
trifle, no doubt, in the world of art; but what a
delicious trifle ! . . . My dream died suddenly in
the reflection that one country-house is generally
enough for an Irish landlord, and I walked thinking
if there were one among my friends who would
restore Mount Venus sufficiently for the summer
months, long enough for me to write my book, and
to acquire a permanent memory of a beautiful thing
which the earth was claiming rapidly, and which, in
a few years, would have passed away.

AVE 13

By standing on some loose stones it was possible
to look into the first-floor rooms, and I could see
marble chimney-pieces set in a long room, up and
down which I could walk while arranging my ideas ;
and when ideas failed me I could wander to the
window and suckle my imagination on the view.
' This is the house I'm in search of, and there seems
to be sufficient furniture for my wants. I'll return
to-morrow. . . . But my pleasure will be lost if
I've to wait till to-morrow. Somebody must be
here. I'll try again.' The silence that answered
my knocking strengthened my determination to see
Mount Venus that night, and I returned to the
empty yard, and peeped and pried through all the
outhouses, discovering at last a pail of newly-peeled
potatoes. ^ There must be somebody about,* and I
waited, peeling the potatoes that remained unpeeled
to pass the time.

'I'm afraid Fm wasting your potatoes,' I said to
the woman who appeared in the doorway — a peasant
woman wearing a rough, dark grey petticoat and heavy
boots, men's boots (they were almost the first thing I
noticed) — ^just the woman whom I expected would
come, the caretaker. She looked surprised when I
told her of my knocking, and said she could not
understand how it was she had not heard me, for she
had been there all the time. She spoke with her
head turned aside, showing a thin well-cut face with
a shapely forehead, iron-grey hair, a nose, long and
thin, with fine nostrils, and a mouth a pretty line, I
think . . . but that is all I can say about her, for
when I try to remember more I seem to lose sight
of her. . . .

14 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

* You've come to see the house ?*

She stopped and looked at me.

' Is there any reason why I shouldn't see it ?*

' NOj there's no reason why you shouldn't ; only I
thought nobody would ever come to see it again.
If you'll wait a minute I'll fetch the key.*

'She doesn't speak like a caretaker/ I thought,
now more than ever anxious to go over the house
with her.

' Is it a lease of the house you'd like, or do you
wish only to hire it for the season, sir V

'Only for the season,' I said. 'It is to be let
furnished ?'

' There's not much furniture, but sufficient '

' So long as there are beds, and a table to write
upon, and a few chairs.'

'Yes, there's that, and more than that,' she an-
swered, smiling. 'This is the kitchen,' and she
showed me into a vast stone room ; and the passages
leading from the kitchen were wide and high, and
built in stone. The walls seemed of great thickness,
and when we came to the staircase, she said : ' Mind
yoxx don't slip. The stairs are very slippery, but can
easily be put right. The stone-mason will only have
to run his chisel over them.'

' I'm more interested in the rooms in which I'm to
live myself ... if I take the house.'

' These are the drawing-rooms,' she said, and drew
my attention to the chimney-piece.

' It's very beautiful,' I answered, turning from the
parti-coloured marbles to the pictures. All the
ordinary subjects of pictorial art lined the walls, but
I passed on without noticing any, so poor and pro-

AVE 15

vincial was the painting, until I came suddenly upon
the portrait of a young girl. The painting was not
less anonymous, but her natural gracefulness trans-
pired in classical folds as she stood leaning on her
bow, a Diana of the 'forties, looking across the
greensward waiting to hear if the arrow had reached
its mark.

^ Into what kind of old age has she drifted ?* I
asked myself, and the recollection of the thin clear-
cut eager face brought me back again to the portrait,
and forgetful of the woman I had found in the
out-house peeling potatoes for her dinner, I studied
the face, certain that I had seen it before. But
where ?

' Several generations seem to be on these walls.
Do you know anything about the people who lived
in this house ? It was built about two hundred
years ago, I should say. Who built it? Do you
know its history ?'

The woman did not answer, and we wandered into
another room, and, noticing her face was turned from
me, I said :

' I should like to hear something about the girl
whose portrait I've been looking at ? There's nothing
to conceal ? No story '

'There's nothing in her story that anyone need
be ashamed of. But why do you ask?' And the
manner in which she put the question still further
excited my curiosity.

' Because it seems to me that I've seen the face
before.'

' Yes,' she answered, ' you have. The portrait in
the next room is my portrait ... as I was forty

16 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

years ago. But I didn't think that anyone would
see the likeness.'

' Your portrait !' I answered abruptly. ' Yes, I can
see the likeness.' And I heard her say under her
breath that she had been through a great deal of
trouble, and her face was again turned from me as
we walked into another room.

' But do you wish to take the house, sir ? If
not '

' In some ways it would suit me well enough, but it's
a long way to bring up food here. I'll write and
let you know. And your portrait I shall always
remember,' I added, thinking to please her. But
seeing that my remark failed to do so, I spoke of the
dry well, and she told me there was another well :
an excellent spring, only the cattle went there to
drink; but it would be easy to put an iron fence
round it.

' And now, if you'll excuse me. It's my dinner-
time.'

I let her go and wandered whither she had advised
me — to the cromlech, one of the grandest in Ireland.
It could not fail to interest me, she had said, and I
could not fail to find it if I followed the path round
the hill. I would come to some ilex-trees, and at the
end of them, in the bee#h dell, I should find the
altar.

And there I found a great rock laid upon three
upright stones ; one had fallen lately. In the
words of a passing shepherd, the altar ' was out of
repair.'

' Even Druid altars do not survive the nineteenth
century in Ireland,' I answered, and still lingering

AVE 17

under the ilex-trees, for they were her trees, I
thought of her in that time long ago, in the 'forties,
when an artist came to Mount Venus to paint her
portrait. ^A man of some talent, too,' I said to
myself, ^ for he painted her in a beautiful attitude.
Or was it she who gave him the attitude, leaning
on her bow ? Was it she who settled the folds
about her limbs, and decided the turn of her head,
the eyes looking across the greensward towards the
target ? Had she fled with somebody whom she
had loved dearly and been deserted and cast away
on that hillside ? Does the house belong to her ?
Or is she the caretaker ? Does she live there with
a servant? Or alone, cooking her own dinner?'
None of my questions had she answered, and I
invented story after story for her, all the way back
to Dublin, through the grey evening in which no
star appeared, only a red moon rising up through
the woods like a fire in the branches.

My single meeting with this woman happened
twenty-five years ago, and it is more than likely she
is now dead, and the ruins among which she lived
are probably a quarry whence the peasants go to
fetch stones to build their cottages ; and the beech-
trees have been cut down, and sold for eighteen-
pence apiece by the herdsmen. Mount Venus has
passed away, never to be revived again. But
enough of its story is remembered to fill a corner of
the book I am dreaming; no more than that, for
the book I am dreaming is a man's book, and it
should be made of the life that lingered in Mayo
till the end of the 'sixties : landlords, their retainers
and serfs.

18 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

At these words, in the middle of the Temple, a
scene rose up before me of a pack of harriers — or
shall I say wild dogs? — running into a hare on a
bleak hillside, and far away, showing faintly on a
pale line of melancholy mountains, a horse rising up
in the act of jumping. And on and on came horse
and rider, over stone wall after stone wall, till
stopped by a wall so high that no horse could jump
it, so I thought. The gate of the park was miles
away, so the hounds had time, not only to devour
the hare they had killed, but to eat many a rabbit.
Surrounding the furze, they drove the rabbits this way
and that, the whole pack working in concert, as wild
dogs might, and the whip, all the while, talking to a
group of countrymen, until the hunt began to appear.

' I must be getting to my hounds now,' and picking
up the snaffle-rein, he drove the pony at the wall,
who, to the admiration of the group, rose at it, kick-
ing it with her hind hooves, landing in style among
the hounds quarrelling over bits of skin and bone.
The wild huntsman blew his horn, and gathering
his hounds round him, said to me, before putting his
pony again at the wall :

' A great little pony, isn't she ? And what's half
a dozen of rabbits between twenty-two couple of
hounds. It'll only give them an appetite, though
they've always that. Bedad if they weren't the
most intelligent hounds in the country it's dead long
ago they'd be of hunger. Do you know of an old
jackass ?' he said, turning to a countryman. ' If you
do you might have a shilling for bringing him. You
can have the skin back if you like to come for it.*

By this time all the field were up, the master.

AVE 19

florid and elderly, and a quarrel began between him
and the huntsman, whom he threatened to sack in
the morning for not being up with the hounds.

' Wasn't there six foot of a wall between us ? And
they as hungry as hawks ?'

'But if the pony was able to lep the wall, why
didn't you ride her at it at once ?'

' And so I did, your honour/

And the countrymen were called and they
testified.

'Well, Pat, you must be up in time to get the
next hare from them, for if you don't, it's myself and
Johnny Malone that will be drinking our punch on
empty bellies, which isn't good for any man.'

And away went the master in search of his dinner
over the grey plain, under rolhng clouds threatening
rain, the hounds trying the patches of furze for
another hare, and the field — a dozen huntsmen with
a lady amongst them — waiting, talking to each other
about their horses. I could see Pat pressing his
wonderful pony forward, on the alert for stragglers,
assuring Bell-Ringer with a terrific crack of his whip
that he was not likely to find a hare where he was
looking for one, and must get into the furze instantly ;
and then I caught a glimpse of the ragged peasantry
following the hunt over the plains of Ballyglass, just
as they used to follow it, a fierce wind thrilling in
their shaggy chests, and they speaking Irish to each
other, calling to the master in Enghsh.

' A place must be found,' I said to myself, ' in my
story for that pack of hounds, for its master, for its
whip, and for the marvellous pony, and for a race-
meeting, whether at Ballinrobe or Breaghwy or

20 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

Castlebar.' Castlebar for preference. The horde of
peasantry would look well amid the line of hills en-
closing the plain : old men in knee-breeches and tall
hats, young men in trousers, cattle-dealers in great
overcoats reaching to their heels, wearing broad-
brimmed hats, everybody with a broad Irish grin on
his face, and everybody with his blackthorn. Of a
sudden I could see a crowd gathered to watch a
bucking chestnut, a sixteen-hands horse with a small
boy in pink upon his back. Now the horse hunches
himself up till he seems like a hillock ; his head is
down between his legs, his hind legs are in the air,
but he doesn't rid himself of his burden. He plunges
forward, he rises — up, coming down again, his head
between his legs ; and the boy, still unstirred, recalls
the ancient dream of the Centaur.

' Bedad ! he's the greatest rider in Ireland,* a
crowd of tinkers and peasants are saying, the tinkers
hurrying up to see the sport, retiring hurriedly as
the horse plunges in their direction, running great
danger of being kicked.

So did I remember the scene as I walked about
the Temple that moonlit night, the very words of
the tinkers chiming in my head after so many years :
^ Isn't he a devil ?' cries one ; ' it's in the circus he
ought to be.' ^ Mickey was near off that time,' cries
another, and while the great fight waged between
horse and jockey, my father rode up, crying to the
crowd to disperse, threatening that if the course
was not cleared in a few minutes he would ride in
amongst them, and he on a great bay stallion.

' I'll ride in amongst you ; you'll get kicked, you'll
get kicked.*

AVE 21

Even at this distance of time I can feel the very
pang of fear which I endured^ lest the horse my
father was riding should kick some peasant and kill
him, for, even in those feudal days, a peasant's life
was considered of some value, and the horse my
father rode quivered with excitement and impatience.

^Get back! Get back or there'll be no racing
to-day. And you, Mickey Ford, if you can't get
that horse to the post, I'll start without you. Give
him his head, put the spurs into him, thrash
him!'

And taking my father at his word, Mickey raised
his whip, and down it came sounding along the
golden hide. The horse bounded higher, but
without getting any nearer to unseating his rider,
and away they went towards the starting-point, my
father crying to the jockeys that they must get into
line, telling Mickey that if he didn't walk his horse
to the post he would disqualify him, and Mickey
swearing that his horse was unmanageable, and my
father swearing that the jockey was touching him on
the off-side with his spur. It seemed to me my father
was very cruel to the poor boy whose horse wouldn't
keep quiet. A moment after they were galloping
over the rough fields, bounding over the stone walls,
the ragged peasantry rebuilding the walls for the
next race, waving their sticks, running from one
comer of the field to another, and no one thinking
at all of the melancholy line of wandering hills
enclosing the plain.

A scene to be included in the novel I was dream-
ing, and, for the moment, my father appeared to me
as the principal character ; but only for a moment.

22 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

Something much rougher, more Irish, more uncouth,
more Catholic, was required. My father was a
Catholic, but only of one generation, and to produce
the pure Catholic several are necessary, and for the
hero of my novel I must seek among the Catholic
end of my family.

What I wanted was a combination of sportsman
and cattle-dealer, and I sought him among my
mother's family, among my Galway cousins. Andy
on his grey mare careering after the Blazers, rolling
about like a sack in the saddle, but always leading
the field, tempted me, until my thoughts were
suddenly diverted by a remembrance of a Curragh
meeting, with Dan who had brought up a crack from
Galway and was going to break the ring.

' Dan, aren't you going to see your horse run ?' I
cried to him.

' He'll run the same whether I'm looking at him
or not.'

And Dan, in his long yellow mackintosh, hurrying
through the bookies, rose up in my mind, as true and
distinct and characteristic of Ireland as the poor
woman I had discovered among the Dublin mountains.
She had fixed herself on my mind as she was in a
single moment. Dan I had seen many times, in all
kinds of different circumstances ; all the same, it is in
his mackintosh at the Curragh meeting, on his way
tci^the urinal, that I remember him — in his tall
silk hat (everyone wore a tall silk hat at the Curragh
in the 'seventies) ; but Dan was only half himself in a
hat, for whoever saw him remembers the long white
skull over which he trailed a lock of black hair — the
long skull which I have inherited from my mother's

AVE 23

family — and the long pale face ; and his hands were
like mine, long, delicate, female hands ; one of
Dan's sisters had the most beautiful hands I ever
saw. ' He'll run the same whether I'm looking at
him or not,' and Dan laughed craftily, for craft and
innocency were mingled strangely in his face. Dan
had a sense of humour. Or did I mistake a certain
naturalness for humour ? Be that as it may, when I
was in Galway I was often tempted to ride over to
see him.

^It will be difficult to get him on to paper,' I
reflected. ' His humour will not transpire if I'm not
very careful, for, though I may transcribe the very
words he uttered, they will mean little on paper
unless I get his atmosphere : the empty house at
Dunamon, the stables about it filled with race-horses,
most of them broken down, for no four legs ever
stood more than two years' training over the rough
fields which Dan called his race-course. A four-year-
old, with back sinews and suspensory ligaments
sound, rarely stood in the Dunamon stables, a chaser
or two perchance. All the same Dan did not lose
money on the turf ; a stroke of luck kept him going
for a long time, and these strokes of luck happened
every five or six years. Every five or six years he
would arrive at the Curragh with a two-year-old,
which, on account of its predecessors' failures, would
be quoted on the list at ten to one. Dan knew how
to back him quietly ; his backing was done surrep-
titiously, without taking anyone into his confidence,
not even his cousins. It was no use going to
Dunamon to ask him questions ; the only answer one
ever got was :

24 * HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' There he is^ quite wellj but whether he can gallop
or notj I can't tell you. I've nothing to try him with.
There he is ; go and look at him.'

When the horses were at the post he might advise
us to put a fiver on him, if he wasn't in too great a
hurry. On these occasions Dan backed his horse to
win seven or eight, sometimes ten thousand pounds,
and seven or eight thousand pounds would keep the
Dunamon establishment going for the next four or five
years.

As soon as a horse broke down he was let loose
on Lagaphouca, a rocky headland, where the cracks
of yesteryear picked up a living as best they could.
He treated his horses as the master of the harriers
treated his hounds : intelligent animals who could be
counted upon to feed themselves. He loved them,
too, in his own queer way, for he never made any
attempt to sell them, knowing that the only use they
could be put to, after he had finished training them,
would be to draw cabs ; and though food was scarce
in Lagaphouca in winter, they were probably happier
there than they would have been in a livery-stable.
Only once did Dan sell his horses. My brother, the
Colonel, succeeded in buying three from him. ' Any
three you like,' Dan said, ^at twenty-five pounds
apiece.' At that time Lagaphouca was full of wild
horses, and the Colonel's story is that he only just
escaped being eaten, which is probably an exaggera-
tion. But he chose three, and his choice was
successful. He won many races. . . . But I must
keep to my own story.

I had wandered round the church of the Templars,
and, after admiring the old porch, and the wig-

AVE 25

maker's shop, and the cloister, turned into Pump
Court. Up there aloft Edward was sleeping. Then,
leaving Pump Court, I found my way through a brick
passage to a seat under the plane-trees in Fountain
Court, and I sat there waiting for Symons, who re-
turned home generally about one. The Temple clock
clanged out the half-hour, and I said : ' To-night he
must be sleeping out,' and continued my memories
to the tune of water dripping, startled now and then
by the carp plunging in the silence, recollecting
suddenly that the last time I went to Dunamon,
Dan was discovered by me before an immense peat
fire burning in an open grate. The chimney-piece
had fallen some time ago ; one of the marbles had
been broken, and it was difficult to replace the slab.
No mason in the country could undertake the job ;
all the skilled workmen had gone out of the
country, he said. But one did not discuss the evils
of emigration with Dan, knowing what his answer
would be.

' As long,' he would say, ' as the people want to
go to America they'll go, and when America is out
of fashion they'll stay at home. . . . There will
always be enough people here for me.'

These somewhat trite remarks often brought the
conversation to a standstill, and, as I had not been
in Dunamon for many years (one generally met
Dan in the stables), my eyes went to the piano on
which his sisters had played, and to the pictures
they had admired. The room was empty, cheerless,
dilapidated, but it was strangely clean for a room in
the charge of an Irish woman of Bridget's class. I
shall speak of her presently ; now I must speak of

26 *HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

the two pictures of dogs going after birds, reddish
dogs with long ears, for I used to detest them when
I was a child — why I never knew, they seemed
foolish ; now they seemed merely quaint, and I
wondered at my former aversion. Under one ot
them stood the piano — a grand, made in the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century. ^The Virgin's
Prayer ' lay still on top of a heap of music unlooked
into by Dan, for when he touched a piano it was to
play his memories of operas heard long ago in his
youth. No doubt he often turned for refreshment
to this piano after an excellent dinner cooked by
Bridget, who, when she had done washing up,
would appear in the drawing-room, for she was not
confined to the bedroom and the kitchen. Dan was
a human fellow, and would not keep his mistress
unduly in the kitchen. I can see Bridget bringing
her knitting with her, and hear Dan playing to
her, until, overtaken by love or weariness, he would
cease to strum Traviata or Trovatore and go to her.

Nobody ever witnessed this scene, but it must have
happened just as I tell it.

A pretty girl Bridget certainly was, and one that
any man would have liked to kiss, and one whom I
should like to have kissed had I not been prevented by
a prejudice. We are all victims of prejudice of one
kind or another, and as the prejudice which pre-
vented me from kissing Bridget inclines towards
those which are regarded as virtues, I will tell the
reader that the reason I refrained from kissing Dan's
mistress was because it has always been the tradition
in the West that my family never yielded to such
indulgences as peasant mistresses or the esuriences

AVE 27

of hot punch ; nobody but Archbishop McHale was
allowed punch in my father's house; the common
priests who dined there at election times had to lap
claret. And, proud of my family's fortitudes, I
refrained from Bridget.

' But if you respect your family so much, why do
you lift the veil on Dan's frailties ?'

Because if I did not do so, I should not think of
Dan at all; and what we all dread most is to be
forgotten. If I don't write about him I shall not
be able to forget the large sums of money I lost by
being put on the wrong horses. I am sure he would
like to make amends to me for those losses ; and the
only way he can do this now is by giving me sittings.
His brother and sisters will, no doubt, think my
portrait in bad taste, the prejudices of our time
being that a man's frailties should not be written
about. It is difficult to understand why a mistress
should be looked upon as a frailty, and writing about
the sin more grievous than the sin itself. These are
questions which might be debated till morning, and
as it is very nearly morning now, it will be well to
leave their consideration to some later time, and to
decide at once that Dan shall become a piece of
literature in my hands. It is no part of my morality
to urge that nobody's feelings should be regarded if
the object be literature. But I would ask why one
set of feelings should be placed above another?
Why the feelings of my relations should be placed
above Dan's? For, if Dan were in a position to
express himself now, who would dare to say that
he would like his love of Bridget to be forgotten ?
There is nothing more human, as Pater remarks,

28 < HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

than the wish to be remembered for some years
after death, and Dan was essentially a human being,
and Bridget was a human being. So why should I
defraud them of an immortality opened up to them
by a chance word spoken by Edward Martyn in his
garret in Pump Court ? If my cousins complain, I'll
answer them : ' We see things from different sides :
you from a catholic, I from a literary.* ^ What a side
of life to choose !' I hear them saying, and myself
answering : ' Dan's love of Bridget was what was
best in him, and what was most like him. It is in
this preference that Dan is above you, for alone among
you he sought beauty. Bridget was a pretty girl, and
beauty in a woman is all that a man like Dan could
be expected to seek. Whoever amongst you has
bought an Impressionist picture or a Pre-Raphaelite
picture let him first cast a stone. But not one of
you ever bought any object because you thought it
beautiful, so leave me to tell Dan's story in my own
way. His love of Bridget I hold in higher esteem
than Mat's desire, during the last ten years of his
life, to buy himself a seat in Heaven in the front
row, a desire which, by the way, cost him many
hundreds a year.*

At that moment a leaf floated down, and, forgetful
of my tale, I looked up into the tree, admiring the
smooth stem, the beautiful growth, the multitudinous
leaves above me and the leaf in my hand. Enough
light came through the branches for me to admire the
pattern so wonderfully designed, and I said : ' How
intense life seems here in this minute ! Yet in a few
years my life in the Temple will have passed, will
have become as dim as those years of Dan's life in

AVE 29

Dunamon. But are these years dim or merely
distant ?'

A carp splashed in the fountain basin. ^How
foolish that fish would think me if he could think at
allj wasting my time sitting here, thinking of Dan
instead of going to bed.' But being a human being,
and not a carp, and Dan being a side of humanity
which appealed to me, I continued to think of him
and Bridget — dead days rising up in my mind one
after the other.

I had gone to Galway to write A Mummers Wife,
and Dan had lent me a riding horse, a great black
beast with no shoulders, but good enough to ride
after a long morning's work, and a rumour having
reached me that something had gone wrong with one
of his cracks, I rode over to Dunamon. The horse
was restive and seventeen hands high, so I did not
venture to dismount but halloed outside, and
receiving no answer rode round to the stables, and
inquired for the master of every stableman and
jockey, without getting a satisfactory answer. Every-
one seemed reticent. The master had gone to
Dublin, said one ; another, shnking away, mentioned
he was thinking of going, perhaps he had gone, and
seeing they did not wish to answer me, I called to
one, slung myself out of the saddle and walked into
the kitchen.

' Well, Bridget, how are you to-day ?*

' Well, thank you, sir.'

'What's this I'm hearing in the stables about the
master going to Dublin ?'

'Ah, you've been hearing that?' and a smile lit
up Bridget's pretty eyes.

30 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

^ Isn't it true ?' Bridget hesitated, and I added :
^ Is it that he doesn't want to see me ?'

' Indeed, sir, he's always glad to see you.'

And my curiosity excited, I pressed her.

' It's just that he don't want to be showing himself
to everybody.'

To deceive her my face assumed a grave air.

' No trouble with the tenants, I hope ? Nothing
of that sort ?'

'The people are quiet enough round here.'

'Well, Bridget, I've always thought you a pretty
girl. Tell me, what has happened }' And to lead
her further I said : ' But you and the master are just
as good friends as ever, aren't you ? Nothing to do
with you, Bridget ? I'd be sorry '

'With me, sir.^ Sure, it isn't from me he'd be
hiding in the garden.'

' Unless, Bridget, he's beginning to grow holy, like
Mr. Mat, who is a very holy man up in Dublin now,
wearing a white beard, never going out except to
chapel; far too repentant for the priest, who, it is
said, would be glad to get rid of him.*

' How is that, sir ?'

'He cries out in the middle of Mass that God
may spare his soul, interrupting everybody else's
prayers. I never liked that sort of thing myself,
Bridget, and have never understood how God could
be pleased with a man for sending his children and
their mother to America. You know of whom I'm
talking ?'

Bridget did not answer for a while, and when I
repeated my question she said :

' Of course I do. Of Ellen Ford.'

AVE SI

' Yes, that is of whom I'm thinking/

And then, looking round to see if anybody was
within hearing, she told me how two of Mr. Mat's
sons had come back from America, bothering Mr. Dan
for their father's address.

'Two fine young fellows, the two of them as tall
as Mr. Mat himself.'

'And to escape from his nephews the master
locks himself up in the garden ? Well, a good
place ; excellent security in eighteen feet of a
wall.'

'But didn't they get into the trees — Mr. Mat's
two big sons — and Mr. Dan never suspecting it
walked underneath them, and then it was that they
gave him the length and breadth of their tongues,
and the whole stable listening.' The smile died out
of her eyes, and fearing that one day her lot might
be Ellen Ford's, Bridget said : ' Wouldn't it be
more natural for Mr. Mat to have married Ellen
and made a good wife of her than sending her to
America and her sons coming back to bother
Mr. Dan ?'

' It was a cruel thing, Bridget.*

' That's always the way,' Bridget answered, and she
moved a big saucepan from one side of the range to
the other. 'You'll find him in the garden if you
knock three times.'

'I'll go and fetch him presently.'

' Will you be stapng to dinner, sir V

' That depends on what you're cooking.*

' A pair of boiled ducks to-day.'

' Boiled ducks !'

'Don't you like them boiled? You won't be

32 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

saying anjrthing against my cooking, if you stay to
dinner, will you ?'

'Not a word against your cooking. Excellent
cooking, Bridget.'

And she busied herself about the range, thinking
of the ducks boiling in the saucepan, or thinking of
what her fate would be if Dan died before making
a good wife of her. She was no longer the pretty
girl I had known years ago ; she was not more than
nine-and-twenty or thirty ; but at thirty a peasant's
figure begins to tell of the hard work she has done,
and as she bent over the range I noticed that she
wore a little more apron-string than she used to
wear.

The return of Mat's two sons from America seemed
to have made her a little anxious about her own
future. ' Any day,' I said, ' another girl may be
brought up from the village, and then Bridget will
be seen less frequently upstairs. She'll receive ten
or twelve pounds a year for cleaning and cooking,
and perhaps after a little while drift away like a
piece of broken furniture into the outhouses. That
will be her fate, unless she becomes my cousin,' and
the possibility of finding myself suddenly related to
Bridget caused a little pensiveness to come into my
walk. It was not necessary that Dan should marry
her, but he should make her a handsome allowance
if some years of damned hard luck on the turf should
compel him to marry his neighbour's daughter;
enlarged suspensory ligaments have made many
marriages in Mayo and Galway; and I went about

the Temple remembering that when was going

to marry , the bride's relations had gathered

AVE 33

round the fire to decide the fate of the peasant
girl and her children. They were all at sixes and
sevens until a pious old lady muttered : ' Let him
emigrate them'; whereupon they rubbed their shins
complacently. But Bridget was not put away ; Dan
died in her arms. After that her story becomes
legendary. It has been said that she remained at
Dunamon, and washed and cooked and scrubbed for
the next of kin, and wore her life away there as a
humble servant at the smallest wage that could be
offered to her. And it has been said that she made
terms with the next of kin and got a considerable sum
from him, and went to America and keeps a boarding-
house in Chicago. And I have heard, too, that she
ended her days in the workhouse, a little crumpled
ruin, amid other ruins, every one with her own story.
Bridget is a type in the West of Ireland, and I
have known so many that perhaps I am confusing
one story with another. For the purpose of my
book any one of these endings would do. The
best would, perhaps, be a warm cottage, a pleasant
thatch, a garden, hollyhocks, and beehives. In such
a cottage I can see Bridget an old woman. But
the end of a Hfe is not a thing that can be settled at
once, walking about in moonlight, for what seems
true then may seem fictitious next day. And already
Dan and Bridget had begun to seem a little too trite
and respectable for my purpose. When he came to
be written out Dan would differ little from the
characters to be found in Lever and Lover. They
would have served him up with the usual sauce, a
sort of restaurant gravy which makes everything
taste alike, whereas painted by me, Dan would get
c

34 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

into something like reality, he would attain a certain
dignity ; but a rougher being would suit my purpose
better, and I fell to thinking of one of Dan's hire-
lings, Carmody, a poacher, the most notorious in
Mayo and Galway, and so wary that he escaped
convictions again and again; and when Dan appointed
him as gamekeeper there was no further use to think
about bringing him for trial, for wasn't Dan on the
Bench ?

Carmody shot and fished over what land and what
rivers he pleased. My friend's grouse, woodcock,
snipe, wild duck, teal, widgeon, hares, and rabbits,
went to Dunamon, and during the composition of
A Mummer's Wife, when my palate longed for some
change from beef and mutton, I had to invite
Carmody to shoot with me or eat my dinner at
Dunamon. He knew where ducks went by in
the evening, and Carmody never fired without
bringing down his bird — a real poaching shot and a
genial companion, full of stories of the country.
It is regrettable that I did not put them into
my pocket-book at the time, for if I had I should
be able now to write a book original in every
line.

The old woodranger looked at me askance when I
brought Carmody from Dunamon to shoot over my
friend's lands. ' The worst man that ever saw day-
light,' he would say. I pressed him to tell me of
Carmody' s misdeeds, and he told me many . . . but
at this distance of time it is difficult to recall the
tales I heard of Carmody's life among the mountains,
trapping rabbits, and setting springes for woodcocks,
going down to the village at night, battering in

AVE 35

doors, sapng he must have a sheaf of straw to
lie on.

We used to row out to the islands and lie waiting
for the ducks until they came in from the marshes ;
and those cold hours Carmody would while away with
stories of the wrongs that had been done him, and
the hardships he had endured before he found a pro-
tector in Dan. The account he gave of himself
differed a good deal from the one which I heard
from the woodranger, and looking into his pale eyes,
I often wondered if it were true that he used to
entice boys into the woods, and when he had led
them far enough, turn upon them savagely, beat-
ing them, leaving them for dead. ' Why should
he commit such devilry?' I often asked myself
without discovering any reason, except that find-
ing the world against him he thought he might as
well have a blow at the' world when he got the
chance.

^ Many a poor girl was sorry she ever met with
him,' the woodranger would say, and I used to ask
him if he were such a wild man, how was it that girls
would follow him into the woods ? ^ Them tramps
always have a following*; and he told me a story
he had heard from a boy in the village. A knock-
ing at the door had waked the boy, and he lay
quaking, listening to his young sister talking to
Carmody, who was telling her she must come with
him.

' Norah was afraid, it being that late, but Carmody
caught a hold of her and dragged her out through
the door, so the boy told me, and he heard them
going down the road, Carmody crying : " Begob, I've

36 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !*

seen that much of you that you'll be no use to
anybody else." '

' And what became of the girl ? Did he marry
her?'

' Sorra marry ; he sold her to a tinker, it is said
to the one who used to play the pipes.'

' I thought you said he was a tinker.'

' So he was ; but he used to play the pipes in the
dancing-houses on a Sunday night, till one night
Father O'Farrell got out of his bed and walked
across the bog and pushed open the door without a
" By your leave " or " With your leave," and making
straight for the old tinker in the corner, snatched
the pipes from him and threw them on the floor,
and began dancing upon them himself, and them
squeaking all the time, and he saying every time he
jumped on them : " Ah, the divil is in them still.
Do you hear him roarin' ?" '

I closed my eyes a little and licked my lips as I
walked, thinking of the pleasure it would be to tell
this story . . . and to tell it in its place. The
priest would have to be a friend of the family that
lived in the Big House ; he would perhaps come up
to teach the children Latin, or they might go to
him. Dan and his lass were typical of Catholic
Ireland, tainted through and through with peasantry.
True that every family begins with the peasant ; it
rises, when it rises, through its own genius. The
cross is the worst stock of all, the pure decadent.
'But he must come into the book. Never was
there such a subject,' I said, 'as the one I am
dreaming. Dan, Bridget, Carmody and his friends
the tinkers — with these it should be possible

AVE 37

to write something that would be read as long
as '

And while thinking of a simile wherewith to
express the durability of the book, I remembered
that Ireland had not been seen by me for many
years, and to put the smack of immortaUty upon it,
it would be necessary to live in Ireland, in a cabin
in the West ; only in that way could I learn the
people, become intimate with them again. The
present is an English-speaking generation, or very
nearly, so Edward told me ; mine was an Irish-
speaking. The workmen that came up from the
village to the Big House spoke it always, and the
boatmen on the lake whispered it over their oars to
my annoyance, until at last the temptation came
along to learn it; and the memory of that day
floated up like a wraith from the lake : the two
boatmen and myself, they anxious to teach me the
language — a decisive day for Ireland, for if I had
learned the language from the boatmen (it would
have been easy to do so then) a book might have
been written about Carmody and the tinker that
would have set all Europe talking ; before the year
was out a translation would have appeared. The
novel dreamed that night in the Temple by me,
written in a new language, or in a language
revived, would have been a great literary event,
and the Irish language would now be a flourishing
concern.

That day on Lough Carra its fate was decided, un-
less, indeed, genius awakens in one of the islanders off
the coast where Edward tells me only Irish is spoken.
If such a one were to write a book about his island

M 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

he would rank above all living writers, and he would
be known for evermore as the Irish Dante. But the
possibility of genius, completely equipped, arising in
the Arran Islands seemed a little remote. To quote
that very trite, mutton-chop-whiskered gentleman,
Matthew Arnold, not only the man is required, but
the moment.

The novel dreamed that night in the Temple could
not be written by an Arran islander, so it will never
be written, for, alas ! the impulse in me to redeem
Ireland from obscurity was not strong enough to pro-
pel me from London to Holyhead, and then into a
steamboat, and across Ireland to Galway, whence I
should take a hooker whose destination was some fish-
ing harbour in the Atlantic. No, it was not strong
enough, and nothing is more depressing than the con-
viction that one is not a hero. And, feeling that I
was not the predestined hero whom Cathleen ni
Houlihan had been waiting for through the
centuries, I fell to sighing, not for Cathleen ni
Houlihan's sake, but my own, till my senses stiffen-
ing a little with sleep, thoughts began to repeat
themselves.

Other men are sad because their wives and
mistresses are ill, or because they die, or because
there has been a fall in Consols, because their names
have not appeared in the list of newly-created peers,
barons, and knights ; but the man of letters . . . my
energy for that evening was exhausted, and I was
too weary to try to remember what Dujardin had said
on the subject.

A chill came into the air, corresponding exactly
with the chill that had fallen upon my spirit; the

AVE 59

silence grew more intense and grey, and all the
buildings stood stark and ominous.

^Out of such stuff as Ireland dreams are made. . . .
I haven't thought of Ireland for ten years, and to-
night in an hour's space I have dreamed Ireland from
end to end. When shall I think of her again ? In
another ten years ; that will be time enough to think
of her again.' And on these words I climbed the
long stone stairs leading to my garret.

40 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

I

NE of Ireland's many tricks is to fade
away to a little speck down on the
horizon of our lives^ and then to return
suddenly in tremendous bulk, frighten-
ing us. My words were : ' In another
ten years it will be time enough to think of Ireland
again.' But Ireland rarely stays away so long. As
well as I can reckon, it was about five years after my
meditation in the Temple that W. B. Yeats, the
Irish poet, came to see me in my flat in Victoria
Street, followed by Edward. My surprise was great
at seeing them arrive together, not knowing that
they even knew each other; and while staring at
them I remembered they had met in my rooms in
the King's Bench Walk. But how often had Edward
met my friends and liked them, in a way, yet not
sufficiently to compel him to hook himself on to
them by a letter or a visit ? He is one of those self-
sufficing men who drift easily into the solitude of a
pipe or a book; yet he is cheerful, talkative, and
forthcoming when one goes to see him. Our fellow-
ship began in boyhood, and there is affection on his
side as well as mine, I am sure of that ; all the same
he has contributed few visits to the maintenance of
our friendship. It is I that go to him, and it was
this knowledge of the indolence of his character that
caused Jne to wonder at seeing him arrive with Yeats.

AVE 41

Perhaps seeing them together stirred some fugitive
jealousy in me, which passed away when the servant
brought in the lamp, for, with the light behind them,
my visitors appeared a twain as fantastic as anything
ever seen in Japanese prints — Edward great in girth
as an owl (he is nearly as neckless), blinking behind
his glasses, and Yeats lank as a rook, a-dream in
black silhouette on the flowered wall-paper.

But rooks and owls do not roost together, nor have
they a habit or an instinct in common. 'A mere
doorstep casualty,' I said, and began to prepare a
conversation suitable to both, which was, however,
checked by the fateful appearance they presented,
sitting side by side, anxious to speak, yet afraid. They
had clearly come to me on some great business ! But
about what, about what ? I waited for the servant
to leave the room, and as soon as the door was closed
they broke forth, telling together that they had
decided to found a Literary Theatre in Dublin ; so
I sat like one confoimded, saying to myself: 'Of
course they know nothing of Independent Theatres,'
and, in view of my own difficulties in gathering
sufficient audience for two or three performances,
pity began to stir in me for their forlorn project. A
forlorn thing it was surely to bring literary plays to
Dublin ! . . . Dublin of all cities in the world !

' It is Yeats,' I said, ' who has persuaded dear
Edward,' and looking from one to the other, I thought
how the cunning rook had enticed the profound owl
from his belfry — an owl that has stayed out too late,
and is nervous lest he should not be able to find his
way back; perplexed, too, by other considerations,
lest the Dean and Chapter, having heard of the

42 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

strange company he is keeping, may have, during his
absence, bricked up the entrance to his roost.

As I was thinking these things, Yeats tilted his
chair in such dangerous fashion that I had to ask
him to desist, and I was sorry to have to do that, so
much like a rook did he seem when the chair was
on its hind legs. But if ever there was a moment for
seriousness, this was one, so I treated them to a full
account of the Independent Theatre, begging them
not to waste their plays upon Dublin.

' It would give me no pleasure whatever to produce
my plays in London,' Edward said. ' I have done with
London.'

' Martjrn would prefer the applause of our own
people,' murmured Yeats, and he began to speak of
the by-streets, and the lanes, and the alleys, and how
one feels at home when one is among one's own
people.

' Ninety-nine is the beginning of the Celtic
Renaissance,' said Edward.

* I am glad to hear it ; the Celt wants a renais-
sance, and badly ; he has been going down in the
world for the last two thousand years.'

'We are thinking,' said Yeats, 'of putting a
dialogue in Irish before our play ..." Usheen and
Patrick.'

' Irish spoken on the stage in Dublin ! You are
not '

Interrupting me, Edward began to blurt out that
a change had come, that Dublin was no longer a
city of barristers, judges, and officials pursuing a
round of mean interests and trivial amusements, but
the capital of the Celtic Renaissance.

AVE 43

' With all the arts for crown — a new Florence/ I
said, looking at Edward incredulously, scornfully
perhaps, for to give a Literary Theatre to Dublin
seemed to me like giving a mule a holiday, and
when he pressed me to say if I were with them, I
answered with reluctance that I was not ; where-
upon, and without further entreaty, the twain took
up their hats and staves, and they were by the open
door before I could beg them not to march away
like that, but to give me time to digest what they
had been saying to me, and for a moment I walked
to and forth, troubled by the temptation, for I am
naturally propense to thrust my finger into every
literary pie-dish. Something was going on in Ireland
for sure, and remembering the literary tone that had
crept into a certain Dublin newspaper — somebody
sent me the Express on Saturdays — I said, 'I'm with
you, but only platonically. You must promise not
to ask me to rehearse your plays.' I spoke again
about the Independent Theatre, and of the misery I
had escaped from when I cut the painter.

' But you'll come to Ireland to see our plays,' said
Edward.

' Come to Ireland !' and I looked at Edward sus-
piciously ; a still more suspicious glance fell upon
Yeats. ' Come to Ireland ! Ireland and I have ever
been strangers, without an idea in common. It never
does an Irishman any good to return to Ireland . . .
and we know it.'

'One of the oldest of our stories,' Yeats began.
Whenever he spoke these words a thrill came over
me ; I knew they would lead me through accounts
of strange rites and prophecies, and at that time

44 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !*

I believed that Yeats, by some power of divination,
or of ancestral memory, understood the hidden mean-
ing of the legends, and whenever he began to tell
them I became impatient of interruption. But it was
now myself that interrupted, for, however great the
legend he was about to tell, and however subtle his
interpretation, it would be impossible for me to give
him my attention until I had been told how he had
met Edward, and all the circumstances of the meet-
ing, and how they had arrived at an agreement to
found an Irish Literary Theatre. The story was
disappointingly short and simple. When Yeats had
said that he had spent the summer at Coole with
Lady Gregory I saw it all; Coole is but three
miles from Tillyra : Edward is often at Coole ; Lady
Gregory and Yeats are often at Tillyra ; Yeats and
Edward had written plays — the drama brings strange
fowls to roost.

'So an owl and a rook have agreed to build in
Dublin. A strange nest indeed they will put
together, one bringing sticks, and the other — with
what materials does the owl build?' My thoughts
hurried on, impatient to speculate on what would
happen when the shells began to chip. Would the
young owls cast out the young rooks, or would the
young rooks cast out the young owls, and what view
would the beholders take of this wondrous hatching ?
And what view would the Church ?

' So it was in Galway the nest was builded, and
Lady Gregory elected to the secretaryship,' I said.
The introduction of Lady Gregory's name gave me
pause . . . ' And you have come over to find actors,
and rehearse your plays. Wonderful, Edward, won-

AVE 45

derful ! I admire you both, and am with you, but
on my conditions. You will remember them ? And
now tell me, do you think you'll find an audience in
Dublin capable of appreciating The Heather Field f

^ Ideas are only appreciated in Ireland,' Edward
answered, somewhat defiantly.

I begged them to stay to dinner, for I wanted to
hear about Ireland, but they went away, speaking of
an appointment with Miss Vernon — that name or
some other name — a lady who was helping them to
collect a cast.

As soon as they had news they would come to me
again. And on this I returned to my room deliciously
excited, thrilling all over at the thought of an Irish
Literary Theatre, and my own participation in the
Celtic Renaissance brought about by Yeats. ' So the
drama,' I muttered, ^ was not dead but sleeping,' and
while the hour before dinner was going by, I recalled
an evening I had spent about two years ago in the
Avenue Theatre. It was there I had seen Yeats for
the first time, and it amused me to remember with
what eyes I had seen him first, just after the perform-
ance of his little one-act play. The Land of Heart's
Desire. His play neither pleased nor displeased ;
it struck me as an inoffensive trifle, but himself
had provoked in me a violent antipathy, because I
judged him from his appearance, and thereby lost
two years of his wonderful company. It is true
that when I saw him he was on exhibition, striding
to and forth at the back of the dress circle, a
long black cloak drooping from his shoulders, a
soft black sombrero on his head, a voluminous
black silk tie flowing from his collar, loose black

46 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

trousers dragging untidily over his long, heavy feet
— a man of such excessive appearance that I could
not do otherwise — could I? — than to mistake
him for an Irish parody of the poetry that I had
seen all my life strutting its rhythmic way in the
alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens, preening its
rhjrmes by the fountains, excessive in habit and
gait.

As far back as the days when I was a Frenchman,
I had begun to notice that whosoever adorns himself
will soon begin to adorn his verses, so robbing them
of that intimate sense of life which we admire in
Verlaine ; his verses proclaim him to have been a
man of modest appearance. Never did Hugo or
Banville aiFect any eccentricity of dress — and there
are others. But let us be content with the theory,
and refrain from collecting facts to support it, for in
doing so we shall come upon exceptions, and these
will have to be explained away. Suffice it to say,
therefore, that Yeats' appearance at the Avenue
Theatre confirmed me in the behef that his art
could not be anything more than a merely pretty
externality, if it were as much, and I declined to
allow Nettleship to introduce me to him. ' No, my
good friend, I don't want to know him ; he wouldn't
interest me, not any more than the Book of Kells —
not so much ; Kells has at all events the merit of

being archaic, whereas No, no ; to speak to him

" would make me 'eave " — if I may quote a girl whom
I heard speaking in the street yesterday.'

It was months after, when I had forgotten all
about Yeats, that my fingers distractedly picked up a
small volume of verse out of the litter in Nettleship's

AVE 47

room. ' Yeats' !' And after turning over a few
pages, I called to Nettleship, who, taking advantage
of my liking for the verses, begged again that he
might be allowed to arrange a meeting, and, seduced
by the strain of genuine music that seemed to
whisper through the volume, I consented.

The ^ Cheshire Cheese ' was chosen as a tryst, and
we started for that tavern one summer afternoon,
talking of poetry and painting by turns, stopping at
the comer of the street to finish an argument or an
anecdote. Oxford Street was all aglow in the simset,
and Nettleship told, as we edged our way through
the crowds, how Yeats' great poem was woven out
of the legends of the Fianna, and stopped to recite
verses from it so often that when we arrived the
poet was seated in front of a large steak, eating
abstractedly, I thought, as if he did not know what
he was eating — which was indeed the case — for he
did not pretend any interest in the remonstrance
that I addressed to Nettleship for having failed to
choose Friday to dine at the ^Cheshire Cheese,' it
being the day when steak-and-kidney pudding was
^ on ' at that tavern.

In order to help us through the first awkward five
minutes, Nettleship informed me that Yeats was
writing a work on Blake, and the moment Blake's
name was mentioned Yeats seemed altogether to
forget the food before him, and very soon we were
deep in a discussion regarding the Book of Tiel,
which Nettleship said was Blake's most effectual
essay in metre. The designs that accompanied
Blake's texts were known to me, and when the
waiter brought us our steaks, Blake was lost sight

48 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

of in the interest of the food, and in our interest in
Yeats' interpretation of Blake's teaching.

But as the dinner at the ' Cheshire Cheese ' was
given so that I should make Yeats' acquaintance,
Nettleship withdrew from the conversation, leaving
me to continue it, expecting, no doubt, that the
combat of our wits would provide him with an enter-
tainment as exciting as that of the cock-fights which
used to take place a century ago in the adjoining
yard. So there was no choice for me but to engage
in disputation or to sulk, and the reader will agree
with me that I did well to choose the former course,
though the ground was all to my disadvantage, my
knowledge of Blake being but accidental. There
was, however, no dread of combat in me, my ad-
versary not inspiring much belief that he would prove
a stout one, and feeling sure that without difficulty I
could lay him dead before Nettleship, I rushed at
him, all my feathers erect. Yeats parried a blow on
which I counted, and he did this so quickly and with
so much ease that he threw me on the defensive in
a moment. ' A dialectician,' I muttered, ' of the very
first rank ; one of a different kind from any I have
met before'; and a few moments after I began to
notice that Yeats was sparring beautifully, avoiding
my rushes with great ease, evidently playing to tire
me, with the intention of killing me presently with
a single spur stroke. In the bout that ensued I was
nearly worsted, but at the last moment an answer
shot into my mind. Yeats would have discovered
its weakness in a moment, and I might have fared
ill, so it was a relief to me to notice that he seemed
willing to drop our argument about Blake and to

AVE 49

talk about something else. He was willing to do
this, perhaps, because he did not care to humiliate
me, or it may have been that he wearied of talking
about a literature to one who was imperfectly ac-
quainted with it, or it may have been that I made a
better show in argument than I thought for.

We might indulge in endless conjectures, and the
simplest course will be to assume that the word
' dramatic ' led the conversation away from Blake.
Yeats was interested in the theatre, and anxious for
me to tell him what his chances were of obtaining a
hearing for a literary play in London. The Land of
Hearths Desire was not the only play he had written ;
there was another — a four-act play in verse, which my
politeness said would give me much pleasure to read.
I had met with many beautiful verses in the Httle
volume picked up in Nettleship's rooms. Yeats
bowed his acknowledgment of my compliments, and
the smile of faint gratification that trickled round his
shaven lips seemed to me a Uttle too dignified ; nor
did I fail to notice that he refrained from any mention
of my own writings, and wondering how Esther
Waters would strike him, I continued the conversa-
tion, finding him at every turn a more interesting
fellow than any I had met for a long time. Very
soon, however, it transpired that he was allowing me
to talk of the subjects that interested me, without
relinquishing for a moment his intention of returning
to the subject that interested him, which was to dis-
cover through me what his chances were of getting a
verse play produced in London. Two or three times I
ignored his attempts to change the conversation, but
at last )ielded to his quiet persistency, and treated

50 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

him to an account of the Independent Theatre and
of its first performance organized by me, and, warm-
ing to my subject, I told him of the play that I had
agreed to write if Mr. G. R. Sims would give a
hundred pounds for a stall from which he might
watch the performance. The stipulated price brought
the desired perplexity into Yeats' face, and it was
amusing to add to his astonishment with — 'And I
got the hundred pounds.' As he was obviously
waiting to hear the story of the hundred-pounds
stall, I told him that Sims was a popular dramatist,
to whom a reporter had gone with a view to gather-
ing his opinions regarding independent drama, and
that in the course of Sims' remarks about Ibsen,
allusion had been made to the ideas expressed by
me regarding literature in drama ; and, as if to give
point to his belief in the limitations of dramatic art,
he had said that he would give a hundred pounds if
Mr. George Moore would write an unconventional
play for the Independent Theatre.

The reporter came to me with his newspaper, and
after reading his interview with Mr. Sims, he asked
me for my answer to Mr. Sims' challenge.

' I am afraid Mr. Sims is " spoofing " you.' (In the
'nineties the word ' spoofing ' replaced the old word
' humbug,' and of late years it seems to be heard less
frequently ; but as it evokes a time gone by, I may
be excused for reviving it here.)

' If you write a play,' the reporter answered, ' Mr.
Sims will not refuse to give the hundred pounds.'

' But he asks for an unconventional play, and who
is to decide what is conventional ? I notice,' I said,
picking up the paper, ' that he says the scenes which

AVE 51

stirred the audience in Hedda Gahler are precisely
those that are to be found in every melodrama.
Mr. Sims has succeeded in ''spoofing" you, but he
will not get me to write a play for him to repudiate
as conventional. " No, no," I can hear him saying,
" the play is as conventional as the last one I wrote
for the Adelphi. I'll not pay for that. ..." But if
Mr. Sims wishes to help the independent drama, let
him withdraw the word "conventional" or let him
admit that he has been humbugging.'

The reporter left me, and the next week's issue of
the paper announced that Mr. Sims had withdrawn
the objectionable word, and that I had laid aside my
novel and was writing the play.

So did I recount the literary history of The Strike
at Arlingford to Yeats, who waited, expecting that
I would give him some account of the performance of
the play, but remembering him as he had appeared
when on exhibition at the Avenue Theatre, it seemed
to me that the moment had come for me to develop
my sestheticism that an author should never show
himself in a theatre while his own play was being
performed. Yeats was of the opinion that it was
only by watching the effect of the play upon the
public that an author could learn his trade. He con-
sented, however, and very graciously, to read The
Strike at Arlingford, if I would send it to him, and
went away, leaving me under the impression that he
looked upon himself as the considerable author, and
that to meet me at dinner at the ' Cheshire Cheese ' was
a condescension on his part. He had somehow
managed to dissipate, and, at the same time, to
revive, my first opinion of him, but I am quick to

52 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

overlook faults in whoever amuses and interests
me, and this young man interested me more than
Edward or Symons, my boon companions at that
time. He was an instinctive mummer, a real dancing
dog, and the dog on his hind legs is, after all,
humanity; we are all on our hind legs striving to
astonish somebody, and that is why I honour respect-
ability ; if there were nobody to shock, our trade would
come to an end, and for this reason I am secretly in
favour of all the cardinal virtues. But this young
man was advertising himself by his apparel, as the
Irish middle-classes do when they come to London
bent on literature. They come in knee-breeches, in
Jaeger, in velvet jackets, and this one was clothed
like a Bible reader and chanted like one in his talk.
All the same, I could see that among much Irish
humbug there was in him a genuine love of his art,
and he was more intelligent than his verses had led
me to expect. All this I admitted to Nettleship
as we walked up Fleet Street together. It even
seemed difficult to deny to Nettleship, when he bade
me good-bye at Charing Cross, that I should like to
see the young man again, and all the way back to
the Temple I asked myself if I should redeem my
promise and send him The Strike at Arlingford. And
I might have sent it if I had happened to find a copy
in my bookcase, but I never keep copies of my own
books. The trouble of writing to my publisher for
the play was a serious one ; the postman would bring
it to me in a brown-paper parcel which I should have
to open in order to write Yeats' name on the fly-leaf.
I should have to tie the parcel up again, redirect it,
and carry it to the post — and all this trouble for the

AVE 5S

sake of an opinion which would not be the slightest
use to me when I had gotten it. It was enough to
know that there was such a play on my publisher's
shelves, and that a dramatic writer had paid a hundred
pounds to see it. ' Why turn into the Vale of Yarrow/
I muttered, and, rising from my table, I went to the
window to watch the pigeons that were coming down
from the roofs to gobble the com a cabman was
scattering for them.

Yeats was forgotten, and almost as completely as
before, a stray memory of his subtle intelligence
perhaps crossing my mind from time to time and a
vague regret coming into it that he had dropped out
of my life. But no effort was made to find him, and
I did not see him again until we met at S3Tiions'
rooms — unexpectedly, for it was for a talk with
Symons before bedtime that I had walked over
from King's Bench Walk. But it was Yeats who
opened the door; Symons was out, and would be
back presently — he generally returned home about
one. Wouldn't I come in? We fell to talking
about Symons, who spent his evenings at the
Alhambra and the Empire, watching the ballet.
Having written Symbolism in Literaturej he was now
investigating the problem of sjnnbolism in gesture.
Or was it symbolism in rhythm or rhythmic
symbolism ? Even among men of letters conversation
would be difficult were it not for the weakness of
our absent friends, and to pass the time I told Yeats
of an evening I had spent with Symons at the Empire
two weeks ago, and how I had gone with him after
to the ' Rose and Crown ' ; but I soon began to see
that Yeats was not very much interested. He hung

54 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

dreamily over the fire, and fearing that he should
think I had spoken unkindly of Symons — a thing I
had no intention of doing (Symons being at the time
one of my greatest friends) — I spoke of the pleasure
I took in his society, and then of my admiration of
his prose, so distinguished, so fine, and so subtle.
The Temple clock clanging out the hour interrupted
my eulogy. ' As Symons does not seem to return,'
I said, ' I must go home to bed.' Yeats begged me
to stay a little longer, and tempted by the manu-
scripts scattered about the floor, I sat down and
asked him to tell me what he had been writing. He
needed no pressing to talk of his work — a trait that
I like in an author, for if I do not want to hear about
a man's work I do not want to hear about himself

He told me that he was revising the stories that
he had contributed to different magazines, and was
writing some new ones, and together these were to
form a book called The Secret Rose.

' I am afraid I interrupted you.'

' No, I had struck work some time. I came upon
a knot in one of the stories, one which I could not
disentangle, at least not to-night.'

I begged him to allow me to try to disentangle it,
and when I succeeded, and to his satisfaction, I ex-
pected his face to light up ; but it remained impassive,
hierarchic as ancient Egypt. ' Wherein now lies his
difficulty ?' I asked myself ' Being a poet, he must
be able to find words,' and we began to talk of the
search for the right word.

' Not so much the right word,' Yeats interrupted,
' but the right language, if I were only sure of what
language to put upon them.'

AVE 55

* But you don't want to write your stories in Irish,
like Edward ?'

A smile trickled into his dark countenance, and I
heard him say that he had no Irish. It was not for
a different language that he yearned, but for a style.
Morris had made one to suit his stories, and I learnt
that one might be sought for and found among the
Sligo peasants, only it would take years to discover
it, and then he would be too old to use it.

' You don't mean the brogue, the ugliest dialect
in the world ?'

^No dialect is ugly,' he said; ^the bypaths are
all beautiful. It is the broad road of the joiunalist
that is ugly.'

Such picturesqueness of speech enchants me, and
the sensation was of a window being thrown suddenly
open, and myself looking down some broad chase
along which we would go together talking literature,
I saying that very soon there would not be enough
grammar left in England for literature. English was
becoming a lean language. 'We have lost, Yeats,
and I fear for ever, the second person singular of
the verbs ; " thee " and " thou " are only used by
peasants, and the peasants use them incorrectly.

In poetry, of course ' Yeats shook his head —

' thee ' and ' thou ' were as impossible in verse as in
prose, and the habit of English writers to allow their
characters to ' thee ' and to ' thou ' each other had
made the modem poetic drama ridiculous. Nor
could he sympathize with me when I spoke of the
lost subjunctive, and I understood him to be of the
opinion that a language might lose all its grammar
and still remain a vehicle for literature, the hterary

56 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

artist always finding material for his art in the
country.

^ Like a landscape painter/ I answered him. ' But
we are losing our verbs ; we no longer ascend and
descend, we go up and we go down ; birds still continue
to alight, whereas human beings get out and get in.'

Yeats answered that even in Shakespeare's time
people were beginning to talk of the decline of
language. 'No language/ he said, 'was ever so
grammatical as Latin, yet the language died ; perhaps
from excess of grammar. It is with idiom and not
with grammar that the literary artist should concern
himself ; and, stroking his thin yellow hands slowly,
he looked into the midnight fire, regretting he had
no gift to learn living speech from those who knew
it — the peasants. It was only from them one could
learn to write, their speech being living speech,
flowing out of the habits of their lives, ' struck out of
life itself,' he said, and I listened to him telling of a
volume of folklore collected by him in Sligo ; a wel-
come change truly is such after reading the Times j
and he continued to drone out his little tales in his
own incomparable fashion, muttering after each one
of them, like an oracle that has spent itself — 'a
beautiful story, a beautiful story !' When he had
muttered these words his mind seemed to fade away,
and I could not but think that he was tired and would
be happier tucked up in bed. But when I rose out
of my chair he begged me to remain ; I would if he
would tell me another story. He began one, but
Symons came in in the middle of it, tired after long
symbolistic studies at the Empire, and so hungry that
he began to eat bread and butter, sitting opposite to

AVE 57

us and listening to what we were sapng, without,
however, giving us much of his attention. He
seemed to hke listening to Yeats talking about style,
but I gathered from his detachment that he felt his
own style had been formed years ago ; a thing of
beauty without doubt, but accidentally bestowed
upon him, so much was it at variance with his
appearance and his conversation ; whereas Yeats and
his style were the same thing ; and his strange old-
world appearance and his chanting voice enabled
me to identify him with the stories he told me, and
so completely that I could not do otherwise than
believe that Angus, £taine, Diarmuid, Deirdre,
and the rest, were speaking through him. ' He is
a lyre in their hands; they whisper through him
as the wind through the original forest ; but we
are plantations, and came from England in the
seventeenth century. There is more race in him
than in anyone I have seen for a long while,' I
muttered, while wending my way down the long
stairs, across Fountain Court, through Pump Court,
by the Temple Church, under the archway into
King's Bench Walk.

It is pleasant to stay with a friend till the dusk,
especially in summer; the blue dusk that begins
between one and two is always wonderful ; and that
morning, after listening to many legends, it struck
me, as I stood under the trees in King's Bench Walk,
watching the receding stars, that I had discovered at
last the boon companion I had been seeking ever
since I came to live in London.

A boon companion is as necessary to me as a valet is
to Sir William Eden. Books do not help me to while

58 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

away the time left over when I am not writing, and I
am fain to take this opportunity to advise everybody
to attend to his taste for reading ; once it is lost it is
hard to recover ; and believe, if in nothing else, in
this, that reading is becoming an increasing necessity.
The plays that entertain us are few, the operas hardly
more numerous ; there are not always concerts, and
one cannot choose the music that shall be played if
one be not a King. To have music in the evenings
at home one must choose for a wife one who can
play Chopin, and modern education does not seem to
have increased the number of these women. One
meets one, misses her, and for ever after is forced to
seek literary conversation ; and literary conversation
is difficult to get in London. One cannot talk
literature in a club, or at a literary dinner; only
with a boon companion; and my search is even a
more difficult one than that of the light-o'-loves who
once told me that her great trouble in life was to find
an amant de coeur. The confession amused me, the lady
being exceedingly beautiful, but I understood her as
soon as she explained all the necessary qualifications
for the post. ' He must be in love with me,' she
said. ' As you are very polite, you will admit that
there can be no difficulty about that. And I must be
in love with him ! Now you are beginning to under-
stand. He must be able to give me his whole time,
he must be sufficiently well off to take me out to
dinner, to the theatre, to send me flowers. . . .
Money, of course, I would not take from him.'

' Your trouble as you explain it is a revelation of
life,' I answered, ' but it is not greater than mine' —
she tossed her head — ' for what I am seeking in

AVE 59

London at the present time is a boon companion.
In many respects he must resemble your amant de
coeur. He must hke my company, and as you are
very poHte, you will admit there can be no difficulty
about that. I shall have to enjoy his company ; and
so many other things are necessary that I am begin-
ning to lose heart.'

Mary pressed me to recapitulate my paragon, and
to console her, for there is nothing so consoling as to
find that one's neighbour's troubles are at least as
great as one's own, I told her that my boon com-
panion must be between thirty and fifty. ^ Until
a man reaches the age of thirty he is but a boy,
without experience of life ; I'd prefer him be-
tween thirty-five and forty ; and my boon companion
must be a bachelor or separated from his wife. How
he spends his days concerns me not, only in the
evenings do I want his company — at dinner about
twice a week, for it is my pleasure to prolong the
evenings into the small hours of the morning, talking
literature and the other arts until the mouth refuses
another cigar and the eyelids are heavy with sleep.
You see, he must be a smoker, preferably a cigar
rather than a cigarette smoker, but I lay no stress
upon that particular point. I should prefer his
appearance and manner to be that of a gentleman,
but this is another point upon which I lay no par-
ticular stress. His first qualification is intelligence,
and amongst women you will understand me better
than any other, your lovers having always been men
of intellect. Any one of them would suit me very
well : you have loved, I think, Adrien Marcs, Coppee,
and Becque '

60 < HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' You ask for a great deal/ she answered.

' Not so much as you/ I said. ' You, Mary, have
required great works from your lovers, and have
gotten them. But I do not require that my boon
companion shall write nearly as well as any of the
men you have honoured. My companion's literature
concerns me much less than his conversation, and if
it were not that only a man of letters can understand
literature, I would say that I should not care if he
had never put a pen to paper. I am interested
much more in his critical than in his creative
faculty; he must for my purpose be a man keenly
critical, and he must be a witty man too, for to be
able to distinguish between a badly and a well-
written book is not enough — a professor of literature
can do that , . . occasionally. My man must be
able to entertain me with unexpected sallies. I
would not hear him speak of the " verbal felicities "
of Keats, or of the " truly noble diction " of Milton,
and I would ring and tell my servant to call a cab
were I to catch him mumbling "and with new-
spangled ore, flames in the forehead of the morning
sky." If the subject were poetry, my boon companion
would be expected by me to flash out unexpected
images, saying that Keats reminded him of a great
tabby- cat purring in the sun; and I would like to hear
him mutter that there was too much rectory lawn in
Tennyson ; not that I would for a moment hold up
the lawn and the cat as felicities of criticism. He
would, I hope, be able to flash out something better.
It is hard to find a simile when one is seeking for
one. He would have to be interested in the other
arts, and be able to talk about them intelligently.

AVE 61

literature not being sufficient to while an evening
away. And in every art he must be able to dis-
tinguish between wash-tubs and vases ; he must
know instinctively that Manet is all vase, and that

Mr. 's portraits are all wash-tub. When the

conversation wanders from painting to sculpture,
he must not be very concerned to talk about Rodin,
and if he should speak of this sculptor, his praise
should be measured : " There is not the character of
any country upon Rodin's sculpture ; it is not French
nor Italian ; it would be impossible to say whence it
came if one did not know. As a decorative artist he
is without remarkable talent, and he too often
parodies Michael Angelo." Michel Ange a la coule
would be a phrase that would not displease me to
hear, especially if it were followed by — "Only the
marvellous portraitist commands our admiration : the
bronzes, not the marbles — they are but copies by
Italian workmen, untouched by the master who
alone, among masters, has never been able to put
his hand to the chisel." A knowledge of music is
conmaendable in a boon companion, else he must be
unmusical like Yeats. It would be intolerable to
hear him speak of Tristan and ask immediately after
if Madame Butterfly were not a fine work, too.'

With her enchanting smile, Mary admitted that
my difficulties were not less than hers, and so I
kissed her and returned, with some regret, next day
to London and to dear Edward, who has served me
as a boon companion ever since he came to live in
the Temple. He likes late hours ; he is a bachelor,
a man of leisure, and has discovered at last what to
admire and what to repudiate. But he is not very

62 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

sure-footed on new ground, and being a heavy man,
his stumbUngs are loud. Moreover, he is obsessed
by a certain part of his person which he speaks of as
his soul : it demands Mass in the morning. Vespers
in the afternoon, and compels him to believe in the
efficacy of Sacraments and the Pope's indulgences ;
and it forbids him to sit at dinner with me if I do
not agree to abstain from flesh meat on Fridays, and
from remarks regarding my feelings towards the
ladies we meet in the railway-trains and hotels when
we go abroad.

When Symons came to live in the Temple I looked
forward to finding a boon companion in him. He is
intelligent and well versed in literature, French and
English ; a man of somewhat yellowish temperament,
whom a wicked fairy had cast for a parson ; but
there was a good fairy on the sill at the time, and
when the wicked fairy had disappeared up the
chimney she came in through the window, and
bending over the cradle said : ' I bestow upon thee
extraordinary literary gifts.' Her words floated up
the chimney and brought the wicked fairy down
again as soon as the good fairy had departed. For
some time she was puzzled to know what new
mischief she should be up to ; she could not rob the
child of the good fairy's gift of expression in writing :
^ but in thy talk,' she said, ' thou shalt be as common-
place as Goldsmith,' and flew away in a great passion.

Unlike Symons, Yeats is thinner in his writings
than in his talk ; very little of himself goes into his
literature — very little can get into it, owing to the
restrictions of his style ; and these seemed to me to
have crept closer in Rosa Alchemical inspiring me to

AVE 6S

prophesy one day to Symons that Yeats would end
by losing himself in Mallarm6, whom he had never
read.

Symons did not agree with me in my estimation of
Yeats' talent, and I did not press the point, being only
really concerned with Yeats in as far as he provided
me with literary conversation. A more serious draw-
back was Yeats' lack of interest in the other arts.
He admired and hung Blake's engravings about
his room, but it was their literary bent rather
than the rhythm of the spacing and the noble line
that attracted him, I think. But I suppose one must
not seek perfection outside of Paris, and in the
Temple I was very glad of his company. He is
absorbed by literature even more than Dujardin,
that prince of boon companions, for literature has
allowed Dujardin many love-stories, and every one
has been paid for with a book (his literature is mainly
unwritten) ; all the same, his women, though they
have kept him from writing, have never been able to
keep him from his friends ; for our sakes he has had
the courage only to be beguiled by such women as
those whom he may treat like little slaves ; and when
one of these accompanies him to his beautiful summer
residence at Fontainebleau, in those immemorial
evenings, sad with the songs of many nightingales,
she is never allowed to speak except when she is
spoken to; and when she goes with him to Bay-
reuth, she has to walk with companions of her own
sex, whilst the boon companion explains the mystery
of The Ring, musical and literary. If I were to go
to his lodgings on the eve of the performance of
The Valkyrie and awaken Dujardin, he would push

64 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

his wife aside as soon as he heard the object of my
visit was to inquire from him why Wotan is angry
with Briinnhilde because she gives her shield and
buckler to Siegmund^ wherewith Siegmund may fight
Hunding on the mountain-side, and would rise up in
bed and say to me : ' You do not know, then, that
the Valkyrie are the wills of Wotan which fly forth
to do his bidding?' And if I said that I was not
quite sure that I understood him, he would shake
himself free from sleep and begin a metaphysical
explanation for which he would find justification in
the character of the motifs. And then, if one were
to say to Dujardin : ^ Dujardin, in a certain scene in
the second act of Siegfried, Wagner introduces the
" Question to Fate " motif without any apparent
warrant from the text to do so ; I fear he used the
motif because his score required the " three grave
notes," ' Dujardin would, for sure, begin to argue
that though the libretto contained no explicit allusion
to Fate in the text, yet Fate was implicit in it from
the beginning of the scene, and, getting out of bed,
he would take the volume from the little shelf at his
head and read the entire scene before consenting to
go to sleep.

And if one were to go to Yeats' bedside at three
o'clock in the morning and beg him to explain a
certain difficult passage, let us say, in the Jerusalem,
he would raise himself up in bed like Dujardin, and,
stroking his pale Buddhistic hands, begin to spin
glittering threads of argument and explanation ; in-
stead of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, we should hear
of the Rosicrucians and Joseph Boehm.

My boon companions are really strangely alike.

AVE 65

though presenting diverse appearances. Were I to
devote a volume to each^ the casual reader would
probably mutter as he closed the last, ' A strangely
assorted set/ but the more intelligent reader would
be entertained by frequent analogies ; many to his
practised eye would keep cropping up : he would
discover that Dujardin, though he has written a book
in which he worships the massive materialism of
ancient Rome, and derides the soft effusive Jewish
schism known as Christianity, would, nevertheless,
like to preserve a few Catholic monasteries for the
use of his last days. At least a dozen would be
necessary, for Dujardin admits that he would be not
unlikely flung out of several before he reached the
one in which he was fated to die in long white robe
and sandal shoon, an impenitent exegetist, but an
ardent Catholic, and, perhaps to the last, a doubtful
Christian. How often have I heard him mutter in
his beard as he crosses the room : ' It would be a
beautiful end ... in smock and sandal shoon.' He
is attracted by rite, and Yeats is too ; but whereas
Dujardin would like the magician to boil the pot for
him, Yeats would cry :

' Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble,'

following all the best recipes of the Kabala. I have
often thought that he takes a secret pleasure in the
word, speaking it with that unction which comes into
the voices of certain relations of mine when they
mention the Bible. And from his constant reference
to the Kabala, I judged it to be his familiar reading,
though I never saw it in his hand nor upon his table
when I went to see him. So one day when he left

66 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

the room I searched for it among his books, but
only copies of Morris and Blake's works came
under my hand ; and on mentioning the Kabala
to him when he returned, he began to speak
volubly of the alchemists and Rosicrucians who
had left a great mass of mystical writings. The
interpretation of these was the business of the adepts,
and the fair conclusion appeared to be, that instruc-
tion from the Kabala formed part of the ceremony
of initiation into the ' Order of the Golden Door ' —
an Order which, so far as I could gather from his
allusions, held weekly meetings somewhere in West
Kensington. As soon as I asked him for a copy of
the book, the conversation drifted back to the al-
chemists and Rosicrucians, their oaths and conclaves,
and when we returned speciously to modern times I
heard for the first time about McPherson — a learjied
one in the Order ; he may have been the Prior of
it, and that, I think, was the case, for I remember
being told that he had used his authority so
unflinchingly that the other members had rebelled
against it, and now he had, after expelling the
entire Order, gone away with the book in which
was written much secret matter. So far the Order
had not replied to his repeated libels, but it
would be well for McPherson to refrain from
publication of their secrets ; if he did not, it
would be hard to prevent certain among them
from . . . Up to the present the authority of a
certain lady had saved him, but it was by no means
sure that she would be able to protect him in the
future ; she had, indeed, incurred a good deal . . .
I strained my ears, but Yeats' voice had floated up

AVE 67

the chimney, and all I could hear was the sound of
one hand passing over the other.

Rising from the low stool in the chimney-comer,
he led me to a long box packed with manuscripts,
and among these I discovered on looking closer
several packs of cards. As it could not be that
Yeats was a clandestine bridge-player, I inquired the
use the cards were put to, and learnt that they were
specially designed for the casting of horoscopes. He
spoke of his uncle, a celebrated occultist, whose
predictions were always fulfilled, and related some of
his own successes. All the same, he had been bom
under Aquarius, and the calculations of the move-
ments of the stars in that constellation were so
elaborate that he had abandoned the task for the
moment, and was now seeking the influences of
the Pleiades. He showed me some triangles drawn
on plain sheets of cardboard, into which I was to
look while thinking of some primary colour — red, or
blue, or green. His instructions were followed by
me — why not ? — but nothing came of the experiment ;
and then he selected a manuscript from the box,
which he told me was the new rules of the ' Order
of the Golden Door,' written by himself. There was
no need to tell me that, for I recognize always his
undulating cadences. These rules had become
necessary ; an Order could not exist without rule,
and heresy must be kept within bounds, though for
his part he was prepared to grant everyone such
freedom of will as would not endanger the existence
of the Order. The reading of the manuscript
interested me, and I remember that one of its finest
passages related to the use of vestments, Yeats main-

68 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

taining with undeniable logic that the ancient priest
put on his priestly robe as a means whereby he
might raise himself out of the ordinary into an
intenser life, but the Catholic priest puts on an
embroidered habit because it is customary. A
subtle intelligence which delighted me in times
gone by, and I like now to think of the admiration
with which I used to listen to Yeats talking in the
chimney-comer, myself regretting the many eloquent
phrases which floated beyond recall up the chimney,
yet unable to banish from my mind the twenty-five
men and women collected in the second pair back
in West Kensington, engaged in the casting of
horoscopes and experimenting in hypnotism.

As has been said before, analogies can be dis-
covered in all my boon companions. Could it be
otherwise, since they were all collected for my
instruction and distraction ? Yeats will sit up
smoking and talking of literature just like Dujardin,
Edward the same ; and Yeats and Edward are both
addicted to magic : it matters little that each
cultivates a different magic, the essential is that
they like magic. And looking towards the armchairs
in which they had been sitting, I said : ' Yeats likes
parlour magic, Edward cathedral magic. A queer
pair, united for a moment in a common cause — the
production of two plays : The Heather Field and
The Countess Cathleen. The Heather Field I know,
but The Countess Cathleen I have not read,' and
wondering what it might be like, I went to the
bookcase and took down the volume.

AVE

II

Three weeks after Edward knocked at my door.

^ Are you busy ? I don't want to disturb you, but
I thought I'd Hke to ask you '

^ You have come to tell me that the company has
been engaged. No ! My dear friend, this is trifling,'
I cut in sharply, asking if the date had been fixed
for the first rehearsal ; it seemed necessary to shake
him into some kind of activity, and it amused me to
see him flurried.

From his narrative it appeared that Miss Vernon,
a friend of Yeats, whom they had engaged as general
manager, had received letters from a number of
actors, and he mentioned the name of one who
thought he might like to play the part of Garden
Tyrrell.

'II faut que je m'en mele,' I said one morning,
jumping out of bed, 'for if I don't there'll be no
performance.' So I wired to Edward, and in the
course of the afternoon he knocked.

' Has this woman called a rehearsal ?'

' She has written to a man — I have forgotten his
name — he played in one of Ibsen's plays, and hopes
to '

' Yes, I know ; and hopes to get an answer from
him next week. My dear friend, if the rehearsals
don't begin at once there'll be no performance.
Run away and engage the company.'

He went away red and flurried, and I didn't hear
of him again until the end of the week. It was late
one afternoon that he called, meeting me on my
doorstep. 'A moment later and you would have

70 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

missed me/ I said, and the evening being too fine to
turn indoors, he agreed that we should go for a walk
in St. James's Park.

As I write I can see ourselves walking side by
side, Edward's bluff and dogmatic shoulders con-
trasting with my own very agnostic sloping shoulders ;
and the houses rising up against the evening sky,
delicate in line and colour. I can see a blue spire
striking into the heart of the sunset, and the casual
winds moving among the branches and among the
long silken grass. The pen pauses ... or I am
moved to wonder why I should remember that
evening in St. James's Park when so many other
evenings are forgotten ? Maybe that I was con-
scious of Edward's emotion ; all the while, though
outwardly calm as any parish priest, he was troubled
inly ; and the fact that he expressed his trouble in
the simplest language perhaps helped me to under-
stand how deeply troubled he was.

'We have had three or four rehearsals,' he con-
fided to me, ' but my play is not '^ coming out." ' An
alarming piece of news, for I had sworn to him that
The Heather Field was a good play. 'But Yeats'
play is coming out beautifully.'

A still more alarming piece of news, for I did not
want to see Yeats supreme in these theatricals ; and
without betraying my concern, I told him that
Yeats' play was poetry, and had only to be repeated,
whereas The Heather Field would have to be care-
fully rehearsed, and by an experienced stage-
manager.

' Now, who is your stage-manager ? What does he
say ? And is he competent ?'

AVE 71

As Edward at that time had never seen a stage-
manager at work he could form no opinion of the
man's abihty, nor did he seem to have a clear idea
whether the actors and actresses were competent
and suited to their parts. ' I can't tell from a
rehearsal/ he said. ^ Yeats and I went together to
the agent's office '

^ I know, and you chose the company from the
description in the agent's book. " Miss X., tall, fair,
good presence — I think she'll do for your leading
lady, sir." " How much ?" " Four pounds a week."
" I can't afford so much. Three ?" "1 think I could
get her to accept three pounds ten." "Very well."
" Now for your leading man. Tall, dark, aristocratic
bearing. Five." "I can't give so much." "You
might get him to take four." '

' That's just what he is getting,' said Edward.

There must have been an outburst ; rude words
were uttered by me, no doubt j one is unjust, and
then one remembers and is sorry. Edward had never
cast a play before ; he had never engaged a com-
pany, nor had he ever seen a rehearsal; therefore
my expectations that he would succeed in so delicate
an enterprise were ridiculous.

^ If you would come to see a rehearsal,' he
ventured timidly.

This very natural request can only have provoked
another outburst; one learns oneself, and in the
course of my rage, not quite spontaneous, I must
have reminded him that I had specially stipulated
that I was not to be asked to cast or rehearse plays.

' If you would only just come to see one rehearsal.'

^ Anything else, but not that,' I answered

72 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

sullenly, and walked on in silence, giving no heed
to Edward's assurance that the mere fact of my
going to see a rehearsal would not transgress our
agreement. There were my proofs ; it would be
folly to lay them aside, and striving against myself,
for at the back of my mind I knew I would yield, I
swore again that I would not go. But if I didn't ?
The thought of these two wandering over to
Dublin with their ridiculous company was a worry.
The Heather Field would be lost ] Edward would be
bitterly disappointed ; his play was his pleasure ;
besides, it was annoying to hear that The Countess
Cathleen was coming out better than The Heather
Field. So it was perhaps jealousy of Yeats that
caused the sudden declension of my will ; and when
the question, ^ Where are you rehearsing?' slipped
from me, I knew that for three weeks at least I
should be up to my neck in their business. Once I
had altered something I should not leave The Heather
Field, nor perhaps The Countess Cathleen, if Yeats
allowed me to rehearse it, until it was quite clear to
me that the expedition to Dublin would not turn
out so absurd as General Humbard's.
' Where are you rehearsing ?'
'At the Bijou Theatre in Notting Hill.'
'Very amateurish. It is impossible to rehearse
anywhere except in the Strand.'

' We will rehearse anywhere you like '; and he
continued to press me to say why I was so averse
from seeing the plays. ' You're coming to Dublin ?'
' I never said I was. If the plays were going to
be acted in London it would be a different thing,
but to ally myself to such folly as the bringing of

AVE 73

literature to Ireland ! Les Cloches de Corneville is
what they want over there.' And next morning in
the hansom 1 continued to poke Edward up with
the sharpest phrases I could find_, and to ask myself
why I had yielded to his solicitations. For his sake,
or for the sake of his play — which? He is an
amateur ; that is to say, a man of many interests,
one of which is literature. Edward is interested in
his soul, deeply interested ; he is interested in
Palestrina and in his property in Galway, and the
sartorial reformation of the clergy. He would like
to see the clergy in cassocks. Then there are his
political interests. He wants Home Rule, and when
he is thinking of none of these things he writes plays.

But he had written a very good play, and I am
always ready to stretch out a hand to save a work
of art, however little merit it may have, if it only
have a little. Yeats is like me in this. Other
men write for money, or for fame, or to kill time,
but we are completely disinterested. We are moved
by the love of the work itself, and therefore can
make sacrifices for other men's work. Yeats is
certainly like that, and for disinterestedness in art
I'm sure he would give me a good character. My
reverie was interrupted by Edward crying : ' There's
Yeats,' and I saw the long black cloak with the manu-
script sticking out of the pocket, and the rooklike
gait, and a lady in a green cloak. My stick went
up, the cab stopped, and as we entered the theatre
Edward told me that Yeats and the lady had been in
and out of the bun-shop ever since rehearsals began.

' I knew it, I knew it ; I can see it all — talking con-
tinually of the speaking of verse.'

74 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

Two or three people on a stage, repeating as much
as they can remember of something they have been
trying to learn by heart, and a man with a script in
his hand watching and interrupting them with some
phrase like ' I think, old man, the line, " If you are
convinced that that is so," should get you across,' are
the externals of every rehearsal ; but whoever is in
the habit of conducting rehearsals can tell at the first
glance if things are going well or badly, if the actors
are interested in their work, and, above all, if the
stage-manager knows his business. A play is like
music ; it has to go to a beat ; and it did not take me
long to see that The Heather Field was not going to
a bad or a good beat ; it was just going to no beat at
all, and I said to Edward :

' Which is your stage-manager ? The one reading
from the script ? But he isn't rehearsing the play ;
he's prompting, that's all.'

Edward begged me to be patient, but in a very
few minutes it was clear to me that patience meant
wasting time.

' We shall have to make some alterations in the

cast. Mr. , I don't think the part of Garden

Tyrrell altogether suits you ; the second part, Barry

Ussher .' The gentleman who was playing

Barry Ussher objected. ' You'll play,' I said, ' per-
haps, one of the doctors in the second act. Now,
Edward, who is your leading lady ?'

Edward whispered : ' The fair-haired lady '

* But she looks as if she had come from the halls.*
' So she has. She's been doing a turn.'
' And you expect a music-hall artist to play
Mrs. Tyrrell !'

AVE 75

Edward besought me to try her.

' Will you. Miss , if you please, read your part

from your first entrance.' With some reluctance the
lady rose out of her seat, and went upon the stage.
She did not think the part suited her, and it was
with evident relief that she agreed to give it up and
accept two pounds for her trouble. Then I entered
into discussion with the gentleman who had been
told that he was not to play Barry Ussher.

' Now, sir, if you'll read me the part of one of the
doctors from the first entrance.' A few words from
him on the stage amounted to a conviction that, like
the fair-haired lady, he would be of no use to me ; but
when he was told so he caught up a chair, threw it
at me, and swore and damned the whole company
and all the plays. An irate little actor interposed,

saying that Mr. should try to remember that he

was in the presence of ladies. Edward was appealed
to, but he said the matter was entirely out of his
hands, and in the course of the next half-hour three
or four more members of the company received small
doles from Edward, and went their several ways.

'We've got through a very nice rehearsal,' I
whispered, taking Edward's arm — ' very satisfactory
indeed, dear Edward.' For it was just as well to
show a bold front, although, indeed, I was a little
frightened. The responsibility of collecting an
efficient company was now my share of the Irish
Literary Theatre, and if I failed and the plays did
not go to Dublin. . . . Even so, it were better that
the project should fall through than that the plays
should go distributed among such odds and oddments.
' One can go out hunting,' I said to Edward, ' on

76 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

bad horses, but one can't go out hunting on goats.'
And I impressed this point of view upon Yeats too,
begging of him to try to find a small part among
the peasants in his play for the gentleman who
had thrown the chair at me ; he had since apologized,
and seemed so distressed at his own bad conduct, that
I thought I must do something for him. 'A few
words to speak, that is all I ask, Yeats. Edward and
I are going to the Strand to find a Garden Tyrrell
and a Mrs. Tyrrell.'

' And we're going to the bun-shop, where we have
an appointment with Miss Vernon's niece. Her

speaking of verse '

' Don't trouble ; I'll bring you back a Countess
Cathleen, my good friend.'

Edward sat back in the hansom, too terrified for
speech, and as we went along I explained to him the
disaster that had been averted. At last we came to
the Green Room Club, and opposite two friends of
mine were living. ' The wife is just the woman to
play Mrs. Tyrrell. She wouldn't do the Countess
Cathleen badly, either. Be that as it may, she'll
have to play it.' And we went up the stairs praying
that we might find her at home ; she was, and after
a little solicitation agreed to come with us.

^Now, Edward, do you follow in another cab.

I'll jump into this one with Miss , and will tell

her about the Iriit Literary Theatre, and that we
want her to play leading parts in Dublin, in two of
the most beautiful plays of modern times.' Mrs.
Tyrrell and the Countess Cathleen whiled the miles
away. 'There's Yeats' — and putting up my stick
I stopped the cab — 'the man in the long black

AVE 77

cloak like a Bible reader, coming out of the bun-
shop.'

' With the woman in the long green cloak followed
by a pretty girl ?'

' Deeply engaged/ I said, ' in conversation.'

It was difficult to attract his attention, and his
emotions were so violent that he could hardly collect
himself sufficiently to bow to the new Countess
Cathleen, and for the first time this master of words
could not find words to tell us of the joy he had
experienced at hearing his verses properly spoken.
Miss Vernon's niece had recited the monologue in
the second act

' I'm glad, Yeats, very glad ; and now you'll have
the pleasure of hearing somebody else recite the
monologue.'

' But won't you hear '

'The monologue isn't the part. My dear young
lady,' I said, turning to a girl about sixteen, ' we've
reserved one of the fairies for you, and you'll look
enchanting in a blue veil. The G)untess Cathleen

requires an experienced actress. Now, Miss ,

you who can speak verse better than any living
actress, will you read us the monologue, for your
pleasure and for ours ? I have told Mr. Yeats about
you, and . . . now, will you be so kind ?'

The experienced actress went on the stage, and
while she recited my mind turned over all the
possible Garden Tyrrells in the Green Room Club ;
but Yeats had been listening, and as soon as I had
congratulated her he began to talk to her about his
method. My anger was checked by the thought
that the quickest way, and perhaps the only way, to

78 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

rid ourselves of Yeats would be to ask him to go on
the stage and read his verses to us. There was no
choice for him but to comply, and when he left the
stage I took him by the arm, saying :

' One can hear that kind of thing, my dear fellow,
on Sunday, in any Methodist chapel.'

Yeats' face betrayed his disappointment, but there
is a fund of good sense in him which can be relied
upon, and he had already begun to understand that,
however good his ideas might be in themselves, he
had not had enough experience to carry them out,
and that there was no time to experiment. What I
would do with his play would not be what he wanted,
but I should realize something.

' Now, Edward, I'll say good-bye ; I must get back
to the Green Room Club. I may find your husband

there. Miss , playing cards ; if I do I shall try

to persuade him to undertake the stage-management.
I'll write and let you know about the next rehearsal ;
Notting Hill is too far away. We must find some
place in the Strand, don't you think so. Miss ?'

Miss agreed with me that Notting Hill

was too far for her to go to rehearsals, and as I
handed her out of the cab, she pointed with her
parasol across the street, and looking along it, I
spied a man in a velvet coat going into the Green
Room Club. She said he might play Carden Tyrrell.
A friend introduced us ; I gave him the part to read,
and he came to rehearsal next day enthusiastic. A
boy presented himself — and an excellent boy-actor
he showed himself to be, giving a good reading of

his part, and a few days after Miss 's husband

relieved me of the stage-management, and seeing

AVE 79

that things were going well, I bade everybody
good-bye.

^ I'm going back to my writing, but will give you a
look in some time next week, towards the end of the
week, for my publishers are pressing me to finish
some proofs.'

The proofs were those of Esther Waters, not the
proofs of the original edition (they had been corrected
in the Temple), but the proofs of a cheap edition. I
had been tempted by the opportunity a new type-
setting gave me of revising my text, and had begun,
amid many misgivings, to read a book which I had
written, but never read. One reads when the passion
of composition is over, and on the proofs of the
original edition one correction alone amounted to the
striking out of some twenty or thirty pages, and the
writing in of as many more new pages, and there were
many others nearly as important, for proofs always
inspire me, and the enchanted period lasts until the
bound copy arrives. Esther Waters was no exception ;
and turning the pages, seeing all my dreams frozen
into the little space of print, I had thrown the book
aside and had sat like one overcome until the solitude
of King's Bench Walk became unendurable, and forced
me to seek distraction in St. James's Theatre, for I
did not think that anyone had yet read the book,
and was genuinely surprised when an acquaintance
stopped me in the lobby and began to thank me for
the pleasure my story had given him. But I could
not believe that he was not mocking me, and escaped
from him, feeling more miserable than before. A
little farther on another acquaintance stopped me
to ask if I had written the book with the intention

80 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

of showing up the evils of betting, and his question
was understood as an ironical insinuation that the
existence of my book might be excused on account
of the moral purpose on the part of the author. Or
was my intention merely to exhibit? His second
question struck me as intelligent, but strange as
coming from him. His writings have since gained
some notoriety, but not because he has ever confined
himself to the mere exhibition of a subject.

The old saw that 'everything is paid for' came
into my mind. I was paying for the exaltation I
had experienced when rewriting my proofs, and
when I returned to the Temple I had fallen into
an armchair, without sufficient energy to take off
my clothes and turn into bed, wondering at my folly
in having supposed that there could have been any-
thing worth reading in Esther Waters. How could
there be, since it was I who wrote it ? I repeated to
myself over and over again.

For it is difficult for me to believe any good
of myself Within the oftentimes bombastic and
truculent appearance that I present to the world,
trembles a heart shy as a wren in the hedgerow or a
mouse along the wainscotting. And the question has
always interested me, whether I brought this lack
of belief in myself into the world with me, or whether
it was a gift from Nature, or whether I was trained
into it by my parents at so early an age that it
became part of myself. I lean to the theory of
acquisition rather than to that of inheritance, for it
seems to me that I can trace my inveterate distrust
of myself back to the years when my father and
mother used to tell me that I would certainly marry

AVE 81

an old womarij Honor King, who used to come to
the door begging. This joke did not wear out ; it
lasted through my childhood ; and I remember still
how I used to dread her appearance, or her name,
for either was sufficient to incite somebody to re-
mind me of the nuptials that awaited me in a few
years. I understood very well that the joke rested
on the assumption that I was such an ugly little boy
that nobody else would marry me.

I do not doubt that my parents loved their little
boy, but their love did not prevent them laughing
at him and persuading him that he was inherently
absurd ; and it is not wise to do this, for as soon as
the child ceases to take himself seriously he begins
to suspect that he is inferior, and I had begun to
doubt if I would ever come to much, even before
I failed to read at the age of seven, without
hesitating, a page of English written with the long
//'s, whereas my father could remember reading the
Times aloud at breakfast when he was three. I
could see that he thought me a stupid little boy,
and was ashamed of me, and as the years went by
many things occurred to confirm him in his opinion.
The reports that were sent home from school incited
him to undertake to teach me when I came back for
the holidays, but the more I was taught the stupider
I became, and, perhaps, the more unwilling to learn.
My father was trying to influence me directly, and
it is certain that direct influence counts for nothing.
We are moulded, but the influences that mould us
are indirect, and are known to nobody but ourselves.
We never speak of them, and are almost ashamed
even to think of them, so trivial do they seem. It

F

82 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

requires some little courage to tell that my early
distaste for literature was occasioned by my father
coming into the billiard-room where I was playing
and insisting on my reading Burke's French Revolu-
tion; nor does it sound very serious to say that a
meeting with a cousin of mine who used to paint
sign-board lions and tigers awakened a love of paint-
ing in me that has lasted all my life. He sent me
to Paris to learn painting ; I have told in My Con-
fessions how I found myself obliged to give up
painting, having no natural aptitude for it ; but I do
not know if I tell in that book, or lay sufficient stress
on the fact that the agony of mind caused by my
failure was enhanced by remembrances of the
opinion that my father formed of me and my inability
to learn at school. I think I am right in saying
that I tell in My Confessions of terrible insomnias
and of a demon who whispered in my ear that it
would be no use my turning to literature ; my
failure would be as great there as it had been in
painting.

The slight success that has attended my writings
did not surprise my relations as much as it surprised
me, and what seems to me curious is that, if the
success had been twice what it was, it would not
have restored to me the confidence in myself that I
lost in childhood. I am always a novice, publish-
ing his first book, wondering if it is the worst
thing ever written; and I am as timid in life as
in literature. It is always difficult for me to believe
that my friends are glad to see me. I am never quite
sure that I am not a bore — an unpleasant belief, no
doubt, but a beneficial one, for it saves me from

AVE 83

many blunders, and I owe to it many pleasant sur-
prises : that day at Steer's, when Tonks interrupted
me in one of my usual disquisitions on art with —
' Isn't it nice to have him in our midst again criti-
cizing our paintings ?' I had come back from Ireland
after an absence of two years, and I shall never forget
the delicious emotion that his words caused me. It
had not occurred to me that my friends had missed
me, or that it would mean much to them to see me
again. And were I Rousseau, my pages would be filled
with instances of my inherent modesty of character,
but my way is not Rousseau's. Out of this one in-
stance the reader should be able, if he be intelligent,
to imagine for himself the hundred other exquisite
moments that I owe to my inveterate belief in my
own inferiority. True that it has caused me to lose
many pleasant hours, as when I imagined that some
very dear friends of mine were bored by my society,
and did not wish to see me in their house again.
Mary Robinson did not say a word to suggest any such
thing, only there are times when the belief inten-
sifies in me that nobody does, or could, care for me
or feel any interest in me ; and I did not go to see
her for a long while, and would never have gone if
I had not met her at her railway-station, and if she
had not asked me if I were on my way to her, and
on my answering that I wasn't, had not cheerfully
replied that I ought to be, it being nearly two years
since she had seen me.

' But you don't want to see me .'' The last time,
just as I was leaving '

She looked at me and I tried to explain, but there
was nothing to explain, and I walked by her side

84 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

thinking of the many delightful visits that my
imagination had caused me to lose.

No doubt something of the same kind has happened
to everybody, but not so often as it happened to me
— I am sure of that_, and I am quite sure that nobody
believes that he is in the wrong so easily as I do, or
is tempted so irresistibly to believe that the fault is
his if anything goes wrong with his work. If an
editor were to return an article to me to-morrow, it
would never occur to me to think that he returned
it for any other reason than its utter worthlessness,
and those who think badly of my writings are always
looked upon as very fine judges, while admirers are
regarded with suspicion. Symons used to say that
he could not understand such a lack of belief side
by side with unflagging perseverance, and he often
told me that when a manuscript was returned to
him, he never doubted the editor to be a fool. . . .
The Confessions are coming back to me. Rousseau
realized in age that in youth Rousseau was a shy
silly lad, with no indication, apparently, of the genius
that awaited him in middle age, always blundering,
and never with the right word on his lips. But I do
not think Rousseau was obsessed by a haunting
sense of his own inferiority — not, at any rate, as
much as I am — and I am not sure that he realized
sufficiently that the braggart wins but foolish women
and the vain man has few sincere friends. If it had
not been for my unchanging belief in my own un-
worthiness, I might have easily believed in myself to
the extent that my contemporaries believe in them-
selves, and there is little doubt that many of them
believe themselves to be men and women of genius ;

AVE 85

and I am sure it were better^ on the whole^ to leave
St. James's Theatre heart-broken than to leave it
puffed up, thinking oneself a great man of letters^
representing English literature. Even from the
point of view of personal pleasure^ it were better
that I should learn gradually that Esther Waters was
not such a bad book as I had imagined it to be when
the first copy came to me. It were enough that my
friends and the Press should succeed at length in
hammering this truth into me ; it were too absurd
that I should continue to think it worthless ; an artist
should know his work to have been well done^ and
it is necessary that it should meet with sufficient
appreciation, though, indeed, it is open to doubt if
the vain fumes that arise from the newspapers when
a new ' masterpiece ' is published be of any good to
anybody.

Only once can I accuse myself of any sudden
vanity called out of the depths by the sight of a
newspaper placard — once certain words excited in
me a shameful sense of triumph at, shall I say, having
got the better of somebody ? — only once, and it did
not endure longer than while walking past St. Clement
Danes.

I am less ashamed to speak of the joy I ex-
perienced five years after the first publication of
Esther Waters. ^The task has to be got through,' I
said, throwing myself into an armchair, having left
my friends at rehearsal. The hospital scenes were
not liked, but the story soon picked up again, and
when the end came I sat wondering how it could
have happened to me to write the book that among
all books I should have cared most to write, and to

86 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

have written it so much better than I ever dreamed
it could be written.

The joy of art is a harmless joy, and no man should
begrudge me the pleasure that the only book of
mine I ever read gave me. He would not, though
he were the most selfish in the world, if he knew
the unhappiness and anxieties that my writings always
cause me. A harmless joy, the reading of Esther
Waters, truly, and it is something to think of that
the book itself, though pure of all intention 'to do
good ' — that is to say, to alleviate material suffering —
has perhaps done more ' good ' than any novel written
in my generation. It is no part of my business nor
my desire to speak of the ' Esther Waters ' Home — I
am much more concerned with the evil I know the
book to have done than with the good. It did good
to others — to me it did evil, and that evil I could
see all around me when I raised my eyes from my
proofs. At the end of a large, handsome, low-
ceilinged flat on the first-floor, very different from the
garret in King's Bench Walk, hung a grey portrait
by Manet; on another wall a mauve morning by
Monet, willows emerging from a submerged meadow ;
on another an April girl sitting in an arbour, her
golden hair glittering against green leaves, by Berthe
Morisot. The flowered carpet and all the pretty
furniture scattered over it represented evil, and the
comfortable cook who came to ask me what I
would like for dinner. We read in the newspapers
of the evil a book may produce — the vain speculation
of erotic men and women ; but here is a case of a
thoroughly healthy book having demoralized its
author. How is such evil to be restrained ? All

AVE 87

virtuous men and women may well ask^ and I hope
that they may put their heads together and find out
a way.

In Paris I had lived very much as I lived in
Victoria Street, but it had never occurred to me that
I showed any merit by accepting, without murmur-
ing, the laborious life in the Temple that a sudden
reverse of fortune had forced upon me ; * it was
no suffering for me to live in a garret, wearing old
clothes, and spending from two shillings to half a
crown on my dinner, because I felt, and instinctively,
that that is the natural life of a man of letters ; and
I can remember my surprise when my brother told
me one day that my agent had said he never knew
anybody so economical as George. Some time after
Tom Ruttledge himself came panting up my stairs, and
during the course of conversation regarding certain
large sums of money which I heard of for the first
time, he said : ' Well, you have spent very little
money during the last few years.' And when I
spoke of the folly of other landlords, he added :
' There are very few who would be content to live
in a cockloft like this.'

And looking round my room I realized that what
he said was true ; I was living in a cockloft, bitterly
cold in winter and stifling in summer ; the sun beating
on the windows fiercely in the afternoon, obliging
me to write in my shirt sleeves. And it so happened
that a few days after Tom Ruttledge' s visit a lady
called by appointment — a lady whom I was so anxious
to see that I did not wait to put on my coat before
opening the door. My plight and the fatigue of
* See Confessions of a Young Man.

88 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

three long flights of stairs caused her to speak her
mind somewhat plainly.

' A gentleman/ she said, ' wouldn't ask a lady to
come to such a place ; and he wouldn't forget to put
his coat on before opening the door to her.'

' But you have received me dressed still more
lightly.'

^ With me it is all or nothing/ she said laughing,

her ill-humour passing away suddenly. All the

same, I realized that she was right ; the Temple is

too rough and too public a place for a lady, and it is

an inconvenient place, too, for in the Temple it is

only possible to ask a lady to dinner during forty

days in the year. Only for forty days are there

dinners in the hall ; the sutler then will send over

an excellent dinner of homely British fare to anyone

hving in the Temple. She used to enjoy these

dinners, but they did not happen often enough ;

and it was the necessity of providing myself with

a suitable trysting place that drew me out of the

poverty to which I owe so much of my literature,

and despite many premonitions compelled me to

sign the lease of a handsome flat. The flat sent me

forth collecting pretty furniture which she never

saw, for she never came to Victoria Street. I should

have written better if I had remained in the Temple,

within hearing and seeing of the poor folk that run

in and out of Temple Lane like mice, picking up a

living in the garrets, for, however poor one may be

there is always somebody by one who is still poorer.

Esther Waters was a bane — the book snatched me, not

only out of that personal poverty which is necessary

to the artist, but out of the way of all poverty.

AVE 89

My poor laundress used to tell me every day (the
charwomen who work in the Temple are called
laundresses, some say because they never wash any-
thing, not even themselves) of her troubles, and
through her I became acquainted with many other
poor people, and they awakened spontaneous
sympathy in me, and by doing them kindnesses I
was making honey for myself without knowing it.
Esther Waters and Tom Futtledge robbed me of all my
literary capital ; and I had so little, only a few years of
poverty. I've forgotten how long I lived in the Strand
lodging described in My Conjessions — two years I
think ; I was five or six in Dane's Inn, and seven in
the Temple — about twelve lean years in all ; and
twelve lean years are not enough, nor was my poverty
hard enough. The last I saw of literature was when
my poor laundress came to see me in Victoria Street.
Standing in the first position of dancing (she used to
dance when she was young), she looked round the
drawing-room. Five pounds was my farewell preseift
to her ! How mean we seem when we look back
into our lives ! When her son wrote to ask me to
help her in her old age I forgot to do so, and this
confession costs me as much as some of Rousseau's
cost him. ... In bidding her good-bye I bade
good-bye to Hterature. No, she didn't inspire the
subject of Esther Waters ^hut she was the atmosphere
I required for the book, and to talk to her at break-
fast before beginning to write was an excellent
preparation. In Victoria Street there was nobody
to help me ; my cook was nearly useless (in the
library), and the parlour-maid quite useless. She
had no stories to tell me of the poor who wouldn't

90 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

be able to live at all if it weren't for the poor. She
thought, instead, that I ought to go into society, and
at the end of the week opened the door so gleefully
to Edward that she seemed to say : ' At last somebody
has called.'

I turned round in my chair : ' Well, how are the
rehearsals going on?' I noticed that he was
unusually red and flurried. He had come to tell me
that Yeats had that morning turned up at rehearsal,
and was now explaining his method of speaking
verse to the actors, while the lady in the green cloak
gave illustration of it on a psaltery. At such news
as this a man cries ' Great God !' and pales. For
sure I paled, and besought Edward not to rack my
nerves with a description of the instrument or of the
lady's execution upon it. In a fine rage I started
out of my seat in the bow-window, crying : ' Edward,
run, and be in time to catch that cab going by.'
He did this, and on the way to the Strand indigna-
tion boiled too fiercely to hear anything until the
words ' quarter tones ' struck my ear.

' Lord save us ! Quarter tones ! Why, he can't
tell a high note from a low one !' And leaving
to Edward the business of paying the cab, I hurried
through the passage and into the theatre, seeking
till I found Yeats behind some scenery in the act of
explanation to the mummers, whilst the lady in the
green cloak, seated on the ground, plucked the
wires, muttering the line, ' Cover it up with a lonely
tune.' And all this going on while mummers were
wanted on the stage, and while an experienced
actress walked to and fro like a pantheress. It was
to her I went cautiously as the male feline approaches

AVE 91

the female (in a different intent, however) and
persuaded her to come back to her part.

As soon as she had consented I returned to Yeats
with much energetic talk on the end of my tongue,
but finding him so gentle, there was no need for
it ; he betook himself to a seat, after promising
in rehearsal language ^ to let things rip,' and we sat
down together to listen to The Countess Cathleen,
rehearsed by the lady who had put her psaltery
aside and was going about with a reticule on her arm,
rummaging in it from time to time for certain
memoranda, which when found seemed only to
deepen her difficulty. Her stage-management was
all right in her notes, Yeats informed me :

^But she can't transfer it from paper on to the
stage,' he said, without appearing in the least to
wish that the stage-management of his'^play should
be taken from her. At that moment the voice of
the experienced actress asking the poor lady how
she was to get up the stage drew my attention from
Yeats to the reticule, which was searched unsuccess-
fully for a satisfactory answer. The experienced
actress walked up the stage and stood there looking
contemptuously at Miss Vernon, who laid herself
down on the floor and began speaking through the
chinks. Her dramatic intention was so obscure that
perforce I had to ask her what it was, and learnt
from her that she was evoking hell.

^But the audience will think you are trying to
catch cockroaches.'

Yeats whirled forward in his cloak with the
suggestion that she should stand on a chair and
wave her hands.

92 *HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

' That will never do, Yeats ' ; and the lady inter-
rupted, asking me how hell should be evoked, and
later begged to be allowed to hand over the rehearsal
of The Countess Cathleen to the experienced actress's
husband, who said he would undertake to get the
play on the stage if Mr. Yeats would promise not to
interfere with him.

Yeats promised, but as he had promised me before
not to interfere, I felt myself obliged to beg him to
take himself off for a fortnight.

' The temptation to deliver orations on the speak-
ing of verse is too great to be resisted, Yeats.'

One can always manage to do business with a
clever man, and with a melancholy caw Yeats went

away in his long cloak leaving Mr. to settle

how the verses should be spoken ; and feeling that
my presence was no longer required, I returned to
my novel, certain that Erin would not be robbed of
the wassail-bowl we were preparing for her. But
there is always a hand to snatch the bowl from
Erin's lips, and at the end of the week Yeats came
to tell me that Edward had gone to consult a theo-
logian, and was no longer sure that he would be able
to allow the performance of The Countess Cathleen.

' You see, he's paying for it, and believes himselt
to be responsible for the heresy which the friar
detects in it.'

Every other scene described in this book has been
traced faithfully from memory ; even the dialogues
may be considered as practically authentic, but all
memory of Yeats bringing news to me of Edward's
vacillations seemed to have floated from my mind
until Yeats pitted his memory against mine. My

AVE 93

belief was that it was in Ireland that Edward had
consulted the theologian, but Yeats is certain that it
was in London. He gave me a full account of it in
Victoria Street, and was careful ^ to put geasa upon
me/ as himself would word it, which in English
means that he was careful to demand a promise
from me not to reproach Edward with his back-
sliding until the company had left Euston. The
only interest in the point is that I who remember
everything should have forgotten it. There can be
no doubt that Yeats' version is the true one ; it
appears that I was very angry with Edward, and did
write him a letter which flurried him and brought
him to Yeats with large sweat upon his forehead.
Of this I am sure, that if I were angry with Edward,
it was not because he feared to bring an heretical play
to Dublin — a man has a right to his conscience — if I
were angry, it was because he should have neglected
to find out what he really thought of The Countess
Cathleen before it went into rehearsal. It seemed
that, after giving up many of my days to the
casting of his play, and to the casting of The
Countess Cathleen, it was not fair for him to cry
off, and at the last moment. He had seen The
Countess Cathleen rehearsed day after day, and to
consult a friar about a play was not worthy of a man
of letters. But he was not a man of letters, only an
amateur, and he would remain one, notwithstanding
The Heather Field — Symons had said it. What
annoyed me perhaps even more than the sudden
interjection of the friar into our business, were
Edward's still further vacillations, for after consulta-
tion with the friar he was not yet certain as to

94 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

what he was going to do. ' Such a state of mind/
I must have declared to Yeats^ ' is horrifying and
incomprehensible to me.' Edward's hesitation must
have enraged me against him. It is difficult for
me to understand how I could have forgotten the
incident. ... It seems to me that I do remember
it now. But how faint my memory of it is compared
with my memory of the departure of the mummers
from Euston ! Yeats and the lady in green had
started some days before — Yeats to work up the
PresSj and the lady to discover the necessary prop-
erties that would be required in Dublin for both
plays. Noggins were wanted for The Countess
Cathleen, and noggins could not be procured in
London. Yeats and the lady in green were our
agents in advance^ Edward with universal approba-
tion casting himself for the part of baggage-man.
He was splendid in it, with a lady's bag on his arm,
running up and down the station at Euston, shepherd-
ing his flockj shouting that all the luggage was now
in the van, and crying : ' The boy, who is to look
after him.? I will be back with the tickets in a
moment.' Away he fled and at the ticket-office he
was impassive, monumental, muttering fiercely to
impatient bystanders that he must count his money,
that he had no intention of leaving till he was sure
he had been given the right change.

^ Now, are you not coming with us ?' he cried to me,
and would have pulled me into the train if I had not
disengaged myself, saying :

' No, no ; I will not travel without clothes. Loose
me.' The very words do I remember, and the
telegram two days after : ' The sceptre of intelli-

AVE 95

gence has passed from London to Dublin.' Again
and again I read Edward's telegram. If it be true,
if art be winging her way westward ? And a vision
rose up before me of argosies floating up the Liifey,
laden with merchandise from all the ports of Phoenicia,
and poets singing in all the bowers of Merrion
Square ; and all in a new language that the poets had
learned, the English language having been discovered
by them, as it had been discovered by me, to be a
declining language, a language that was losing its
verbs.

The inflaming telegram arrived in the afternoon,
and it was possible for me to start that evening ; but
it seemed to me that the returning native should see
Ireland arising from the sea, and thinking how beauti-
ful the crests would show against the sunset, I
remembered a legend telling how the earliest in-
habitants of Ireland had the power of making the
island seem small as a pig's back to her enemies, and
a country of endless delight to her friends.

And while I sat wondering whether Ireland would
accept me as a friend or as an enemy, the train
steamed through the Midlands ; and my anger
against Edward, who preferred his soul to his art,
was forgotten ; it evaporated gently like the sun
haze at the edges of the wood yonder. A quiet,
muffled day continued its dreams of spring and
summer time ; but my thoughts were too deeply set
in memories of glens where fairy-bells are heard, to
heed the simple facts of Nature — the hedgerows
breaking into flower, the corn now a foot high in
the fields, birds rising out of it, birds flying from
wood to wood in the dim sunny air, flying as if they,

96 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

that had been flying all their lives^ still found pleasure
in taking the air. I was too deeply set in my
adventure to notice the red towns that flashed past,
nor did I sentimentalize over the lot of those who
lived in those ugly parallel streets — human warrens
I should call them. I could think of nothing else
but the sweetness of Etaine's legs as she washed
them in the woodlands ; of Angus coming perhaps to
meet her, his doves flying round him ; of Grania and
Diarmuid sleeping under cromlechs, or meeting the
hermit in the forest who had just taken three fish
out of the stream, of the horns of Finn heard in the
distance, and the baying of his hounds.

The sudden sight of shaw, spinney, and sagging
stead would at other times have carried my thoughts
back into medieval England, perhaps into some play
of Shakespeare's, interwoven with kings and barons ;
now the legends of my own country — the renascent
Ireland — absorbed me, and so completely, that I did
not notice the passing of Stafford and Crewe. It
was not until the train flashed through Chester
that I awoke from my reveries sufficiently to admire
the line of faint yellow hills, caught sight of
suddenly, soon passing out of view. Before my
wonderment ceased we were by a wide expanse of
water, some vast river or estuary of the sea, with
my line of yellow hills far away — cape, promontory,
or embaying land, I knew not which, until a fellow-
passenger told me that we were travelling along the
Dee, and at low tide the boats, now proudly floating,
would be Ipng on the empty sand. A beautiful view
it was at high tide, the languid water lapping the
rocks within a few feet of the railway ; and a

AVE 97

beautiful view it doubtless was at low tide — miles
and miles of sand, a streak of water flashing half-way
between me and the distant shore.

We went by a manufacturing town, and there
must have been mines underneath the fields, for
the ground sagged, and there were cinder-heaps
among the rough grass. Conway Castle was passed ;
it reminded me of the castles of my own country,
and Anglesea reminded me of the Druids. Yeats
had told me that the Welsh Druids used to visit
their brethren in Ireland to learn the deeper
mysteries of their craft. Pictures rose up in my
mind of these folk going forth in their galleys,
plied with oar or borne by sail, I knew not; and I
would have crossed the sea in a ship rather than in
a steamer. It was part of my design to sit under a
sail and be the first to catch sight of the Irish hills.
But the eye of the landsman wearies of the horizon,
and it is possible that I went below and ordered the
steward to call me in time ; and it is also possible that
I rolled myself up in a rug and sat on the deck,
though this be not my ordinary way of travelling.
But having no idea at the time of writing the book
1 am now writing, no notes were taken, and after the
lapse of years details cannot be discovered.

But I do remember myself on deck watching the
hills now well above the horizon, asking myself
again if Ireland were going to appear to me ' small
as a pig's back ' or a land of ' extraordinary enchant-
mient'.'' It was the hills themselves that reminded
me of the legend — on the left, rough and uncomely
as a drove of pigs running down a lane, with one tall
hill very like the peasant whom I used to see in

G

98 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

childhood, an old man that wore a tall hat, knee-
breeches, worsted stockings, and brogues. ' Like a
pig's back Ireland has appeared to me,' I said ; but
soon after on my right a lovely hill came into view,
shapen like a piece of sculpture, and I said : ' Perhaps
I am going to see Ireland as an enchanted isle after
all.'

While debating which oracle I should accept, the
steamer churned along the side of the quay, where I
expected, if not a deputation, at least some friends to
meet me ; but no one was there, though a telegram had
been sent to Yeats and Edward informing them of my
journey. And as there was nobody on the platform at
Westland Row to receive me, I concluded that they
were waiting at the Shelbourne Hotel for me. But
I entered that hotel as any stranger from America
might, unknown, unwelcomed, and it was with a
sinking heart that I asked vainly if Edward had left
a note for me, an invitation to dine with him at his
club. He had forgotten. He never thinks of the
gracious thing to do, not because he is unkind, but
because he is a little uncouth. ^ He will be glad to
see me,' I said, ^when we meet.' All the same,
it seemed to me uncouth to neglect me like this,
leaving me to eat a solitary table d'hote dinner when
I had come over in his honour. And while chewing
the casual food that the German waiters handed me,
I meditated the taunts that I would address to him
about the friar whose advice he had sought in
London, and whose advice he had not followed.
' He runs after his soul like a dog after his tail, and
lets it go when he catches it,' I muttered as I went
down the street, too angry to admire Merrion Square,

AVE 99

beautiful under the illumination of the sunset^ making
my way with quick, irritable steps towards the Antient
Concert Rooms, whither the hall-porter had directed
me, and finding them by a stone-cutter's yard.
' Angels and crosses ! A truly suitable place for a
play by Edward Martyn/ I said. The long passage
leading to the rooms seemed to be bringing me into
a tomb. ' Nothing very renascent about this/ I said,
pushing my way through the spring doors into a lofty
hall with a balcony and benches down the middle,
and there were seats along the walls placed so that
those who sat on them would have to turn their
heads to see the stage, a stage that had been con-
structed hurriedly by advancing some rudely-painted
wings and improvising a drop-curtain.

There is something melancholy in the spectacle
of human beings enjoying themselves, but the
melancholy of this dim hall I had never seen before,
except in some of Sickert's pictures : the loneliness
of an audience, and its remoteness as it sits watching
a small illuminated space where mummers are moving
to and fro reciting their parts.

'And it is here that Edward thinks that heresy
will flourish and put mischief into men's hearts,' I
thought, and searched for him among the groups,
finding him not; but Yeats was there, listening
reverentially to the sound of his verses. He went
away as soon as the curtain fell, returning just before
the beginning of the next act, his cloak and his
locks adding, I thought, to the melancholy of the
entertainment. His intentness interested me so much
that I did not venture to interrupt it. His play
seemed to be going quite well, but in the middle of

100 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

the last act some people came on the stage whom I
did not recognize as part of the cast, and immediately
the hall was filled with a strange wailing, intermingled
with screams ; and now, being really frightened, I
scrambled over the benches, and laying my hand
upon Yeats' shoulder begged him to tell me what
was happening. He answered, ^The caoine — the
caoine.' A true caoine and its singers had been
brought from Galway.

' From Galway !' I exclaimed. ' You miserable
man ! and you promised me that the play should be
performed as it was rehearsed. Instead of attending
to your business you have been wandering about from
cabin to cabin, seeking these women.'

Immediately afterwards the gallery began to howl,
and that night the Antient Concert Rooms reminded
me of a cats' and a dogs' home suddenly merged
into one. 'You see what you have brought upon
yourself, miserable man !' I cried in Yeats' ear.

' It is not,' he said, ' the caoine they are howling at,
but the play itself.'

'But the play seemed to be going very well,' I
interjected, failing to understand him.

' I would hear the Countess's last speech — I'll tell
you after.'

' A man must love his play very much,' I thought,
' to be able to listen to it in such distressing circum-
stances.' He did not seem to hear the cat-calls,
and when the last lines had been spoken he asked
if I had seen The Cross or the Guillotine. ' Wasn't it
put into your hand as you came into the theatre ?'
And while walking to the hotel with me he told me
that the author of this pamphlet was an old enemy of

AVE 101

his. All the heresies in The Countess Cathleen were
quoted in the pamphlet^ and the writer appealed to
Catholic feeling to put a stop to the blasphemy. ' Last
night/ Yeats said, ' we had to have the police in, and
Edward, I am afraid, will lose heart; he will fear
the scandal and may stop the play.' He spoke not
angrily of Edward as I should have done, but kindly
and sympathetically, telling me that I must not
forget that Edward is a Catholic, 'and to bring a
play over that shocks people's feelings is a serious
matter for him. The play, of course, shocks nobody's
feelings, but it gives people an opportunity to think
their feelings have been shocked, and it gives other
people an opportunity of making a noise '; and
Yeats told me how popular noise was in Ireland,
and controversy, too, when accompanied with the
breaking of chairs. But I was too sad for laughter,
and begged him to tell me more about the friar
whom Edward had consulted in London, and whose
theology had not been accepted, perhaps because
Gill had advised Edward that the friar's opinion
was only a single opinion, no better and no worse
than any other man's. It appeared that Gill had
held out a hope to Edward that opinions regarding
The Countess Cathleen, quite different from the friar's,
might be discovered, and I more or less understood
that Gill's voice is low and musical, that he had sung
' Hush-a-by baby on the tree top '; but a public
scandal might awaken the baby again.

'And send it crying to one of the dignitaries of
the Church, and so it may well be that we have seen
the last of The Countess Cathleen.'

Yeats seemed to take the matter very lightly for

102 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

one whom 1 had seen deeply interested in the play,
and I begged him to explain everything — himself,
Edward, the friar, and above all, Ireland.

'In Ireland we don't mean all we say, that is
your difficulty,* and he began to tell me of the
many enemies his politics had made for him, and
in a sort of dream I listened, hearing for the
hundredth time stories about money that had been
collected, purloined, information given to the police,
and the swearing of certain men to punish the
traitors with death. I was told how these rumoured
assassinations had reached the ears of Miss Gonne,
and how she and Yeats had determined to save the
miscreants ; and many fabulous stories of meetings
in West Kensington, which in his imagination had
become as picturesque as the meetings of Roman
and Venetian conspirators in the sixteenth century.
A few years before Miss Gonne had proclaimed
'98 to a shattering accompaniment of glass in Dame
Street, Yeats walking by her, beholding divinity.
We have all enjoyed that dream. If our lady be
small we see her with a hand-mirror in her boudoir,
and if she be tall as an Amazon, well, then we see
her riding across the sky hurling a javelin. And
the stars ! We have all believed that they could tell
us everything if they only would ; and we have all
gone to someone to cast our horoscopes. So why
jeer at Yeats for his humanities ? We have all been
interested in the Rosicrucians — Shelley our van-
bird. Yeats knew all their strange oaths, and looked
upon himself as an adept. Even the disastrous
pamphlet could not make him utterly forget Jacob
Boehm, and we spoke of this wise man, going up

AVE 103

Merrion Street — a dry subject, but no subject is dry
when Yeats is the talker. 'Go on, Yeats/ I said
— ^ go on, I like to listen to you ; you believe these
things because Miss Gonne believes herself to be
Joan of Arc, and it is right that a man should
identify himself with the woman he admires. Go
on, Yeats — go on talking ; I like to hear you.'

After some further appreciation of Jacob Boehm
we returned to the pamphlet.

' It is all very sad, Yeats,' I said, ' but I cannot
talk any more to-night. To-morrow — to-morrow you
can come to see me, and we will talk about Edward
and The Cross or the Guillotine.'

Ill

When the boots asked me in the morning if I
would like to have my water 'otted, it seemed to me
that I was back in London ; but the bareness of the
hotel bedroom soon stimulated my consciousness,
and with a pang yesterday returned to me — its
telegram, its journey, and the hissing of The Countess
Cathleen in the Antient Concert Rooms.

' I haven't been shown Ireland as a land of endless
enchantment,' I said, turning over, ^and perhaps
the wisest thing for me to do would be to go away
by the morning boat.' But the morning boat was
already in the offing; word should have been left
overnight that I was to be called at seven. An
impulsive departure would be in strict keeping with
myself ... a note for Yeats, enclosing a paragraph
to be sent to the papers : ' Mr. George Moore
arrived in Dublin for the performance of The Countess

104 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

Cathleen, but the hissing of the play so shocked his
artistic sensibilities that he could not bide another
day in DubUn, and went away by the eight o'clock
boat.' The right thing to do, without a doubt, only
I had not done it, and to go away by the eleven
o'clock boat from the North Wall would not be quite
the same thing. There was an evening boat at eight
to consider ; it would give me time to see Yeats,
with whom I had an appointment, and to find out
if there was stuffing enough in Edward to hold out
against the scandal that this pamphlet had provoked.

^The Cross or the Guillotine. Into what land
have I drifted ?' and slipping out of bed, I stood in
pyjamas for some moments asking myself if a para-
graph in the papers announcing my sudden departure
would cause Ireland to blush for her disgraceful
Catholicism. . . .

But it is difficult to be angry with Ireland on a May
morning when the sun is shining, and through clouds
slightly more broken than yesterday's, but full of the
same gentle, encouraging light — dim, ashen clouds out
of which a white edging rose slowly, calling attention
to the bright blue, the robe that perhaps noon would
wear. All about the square the old brick houses
stood sunning themselves, and I could see a chinaney-
stack steeped in rich shadow, touched with light,
and beyond it, and under it, upon an illuminated
wall, the direct outline of a gable ; and at the end
of the streets the mountains appeared, veiled in
haze, delicate and refined as The Countess Cathleen.

* A town wandering between mountain and sea,'
I said as I stood before my glass shaving, forgetful
of Edward, for below me was Stephen's Green, and

AVE 105

it took me back to the beginning of my childhood,
to one day when I stole away, and inspired by an
uncontrollable desire to break the monotony of
infancy, stripped myself of my clothes, and ran
naked in front of my nurse or governess, screaming
with delight at the embarrassment 1 was causing
her. She could not take me home along the streets
naked, and I had thrown my clothes out of reach
into a hawthorn — cap and jacket, shirt and trousers.
Since those days the Green had been turned into
an ornamental park by a neighbour of mine in Mayo,
and given to the public ; and telling the hall-porter
that if Mr. Yeats called he would find me in the
Green, I went out thinking how little the soul of
man changes. It declares itself in the beginning,
and remains with us to the end. Was this visit to
Ireland anything more than a desire to break the
monotony of my life by stripping myself of my
clothes and running ahead a naked Gael, screaming
' Brian Boru !' ?

There is no one in the world that amuses one
as much as oneself. Whoever is conscious of his
acts cannot fail to see life as a comedy and him-
self as an actor in it ; but the faculty of seeing
oneself as from afar does not save a man from his
destiny. In spite of his foreseeing he is dragged
on to the dreaded bourne like an animal, supposing
always that animals do not foresee. But a spring
morning will not tolerate thought of destiny, and of
dreaded bournes. A glow of sunlight catches our
cheeks, and we begin to think that life is a perfect
gift, and that all things are glad to be alive. Our
eyes go to the horse between the shafts ; he seems

106 'HAIL AND FAREWELL r

to munch in his nosebag, conscious of the goodness
of the day, and the dogs bark gaily and run,
delighted with the world, interested, in everything.
The first thing I saw on entering the Green was a
girl loosening her hair to the wind, and following
her down a sunny alley, I found myself suddenly
by a brimming lake curving like some wonderful
caligraphy round a thickly-planted headland, the
shadows of some great elms reflected in the water,
and the long, young leaves of the willow sweeping
the surface. The span of a stone bridge hastened
my steps, and leaning over the parapet I stood
enchanted by the view of rough shores thickly
wooded, and high rocks down which the water
came foaming to linger in a quiet pool. It was
pleasant to stand on the bridge and feel the breeze
that came rustling by, flowing through me as if I
were plant or cloud, and see it turning the leaden
surface of the lake to silver. The water-fowl were
interesting to watch ; many varieties of ducks,
green-headed sheldrakes, beautiful, vivacious teal
hurried for the bread that the children were
throwing, and over them a tumult of gulls passed
to and fro; the shapely little black-headed gull,
the larger gull whose wings are mauve and whose
breast is white, and a herring gull, I think, its
dun-coloured porpoise-like body hanging out of
great wings. Whither had they come ? From their
nests among the cliffs of Howth? 'Anyhow, they
are here, being fed by children and admired by me.'
But a drama has begun : a nursemaid rushes
forward, a boy is led away screaming ; and wonder-
ing what the cause of his grief might be, I went

AVE 107

in quest of new interests, finding a momentary
one in an equestrian statue that ornamented the
centre of the Green. There were parterres of
flowers about it, and in the shadow people of all
ages sat half asleep, half awake, enjoying the spring
morning like myself ; perhaps more than I did, they
being less conscious of their enjoyment.

My mood being sylvan, I sought the forest, and
after wandering for some time among the haw-
thorns, came upon a nook seemingly unknown to
anybody but a bee that a sweet scent had tempted
out of the hive. The insect was bustling about in
the lilac bloom, reminding me that yesterday the
crocuses were coming ; and though they are ugly
flowers, like cheap crockery, it was a sad surprise
to find them over, and daffodils nodding in
woods already beginning to smell rooky. And the
rooks. How soon they had finished building !
Before their eggs were hatched the hyacinths were
wasting and the tulips opening — the pale yellow
tulip which I admire so much, and the purple tulip
which I detest, for it reminds me of an Arab drapery
that I once used to see hanging out of a shop in the
Rue de Rivoli. But the red tulip with yellow stripes
is as beautiful as a Chinese vase, and it is never so
beautiful as when it is growing among a bed of
forget-me-nots — the tall feudal flower swaying over
the lowly forget-me-nots, well named, indeed, for
one can easily forget them.

And thinking of Gautier's sonnet, ' Moi, je suis la
tulipe, une fleur de Hollande,' I remembered that
lilies would succeed the tulips, and after the lilies
would come roses, and then carnations. A woman

108 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

once told me that all that goes before is a pre-
liminary, a leading-up to the carnation. After them
are dahlias, to be sure, and I love them, but the
garden is over in September, and the year declines
into mist and shortening days and those papery
flowers, ugly as the mops with which the coachmen
wash carriage-wheels. All the same, this much can
be said in praise of the winter months, that they are
long, and sorrow with us, but the spring passes by,
mocking us, telling us that the flowers return as
youthful as last year's, but we . . .

I wandered on, now enchanted by the going and
coming of the sun, one moment implanting a delicious
warmth between my shoulder-blades, and at the
next leaving me cold, forgetful of Yeats until I saw
him in his black cloak striding in a green alley, his
gait more than ever like a rook's. But the simile
that had once amused me began to weary me from
repetition, and resolving to banish it from my mind
for evermore, I listened to him telling that he had
been to Kildare Street Club without finding Edward.
Mr. Martyn had gone out earlier than usual that
morning, the hall-porter had said, and I growled out
to Yeats :

' Why couldn't he come to see the tulips in the
Green instead of bustling off* in search of a theo-
logian . . . listening to nonsense in some frowsy
presbytery ? The sparrows, Yeats ! How full of
quarrel they are ! And now they have all gone away
into that thorn-bush !'

By the water's edge we met a willing duck pur-
sued by two drakes — a lover and a moralist. In my
good-nature I intervened, for the lover was being

AVE 109

hustled off again and again, but mistaking the moralist
for the lover, I drove the lover away, and left the
moralist, who feeling that he could not give the
duck the explanation expected from him, looked ex-
tremely vexed and embarrassed.

This little incident seemed to me full of human
nature, but Yeats' thoughts were far above nature
that morning, and he refused to be interested, even
when a boy pinched a nursemaid and she answered
his rude question very prettily with — she would be
badly off without one.

' The spring-time ! The spring-time ! Wake up
and see it, Yeats,' I cried, poking him up with this
objection — that before he met the Indian who had
taught him metaphysics he used to take pleasure
in the otter in the stream, the magpie in the
hawthorn and the heron in the marsh, the brown
mice in and out of the corn-bin, and the ousel that
had her nest in the willow under the bank. ' Your
best poems came to you through your eyes. You
were never olfactory. I don't remember any poems
about flowers or flowering trees. But is there any-
thing, Yeats, in the world more beautiful than a pink
hawthorn in flower ? For all the world like one of
those purfled waistcoats that men wore in the
sixteenth century.' And then, changing the con-
versation, I told him about an article which I should
write, entitled, ' The Soul of Edward Martyn,' if dear
Edward should yield to popular outcry and withdraw
The Countess Cathleen. ' But I wouldn't be walking
about all the morning, Yeats ; let us sit on a bench
where the breeze comes filled with the scent of the
gillyflowers.'

110 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

^ What do you say to coming with me to see one
of the old Dublin theatres — a wreck down by the
quays ? Some say it was a great place once . . .
before the Union.'

* The ghost of a theatre down by the quays ?' I
answered.

One does not like to speak of a double self, having
so often heard young women say they fear they never
can be really in love, because of a second self which
spies upon the first, forcing them to see the comic
side even when a lover pleads. Yet if I am to give
a full account of my visit to Dublin, it seems neces-
sary that I should speak of my self-consciousness, a
quality which I share with every human being;
but as no two human beings are alike in anything,
perhaps my self-consciousness may be different from
another's. The reader will be able to judge if this
be so when he reads how mine has been a good
friend to me all my life, helping me to while away
the tediousness of walks taken for health's sake,
covering my face with smiles as I go along the streets ;
many have wondered, and never before have I told
the secret of my smiling face. In my walks comedy
after comedy rises up in my mind, or I should say
scene after scene, for there are empty interspaces
between the scenes, in which I play parts that would
have suited Charles Mathews excellently well. The
dialogue flows along, sparkling like a May morning,
quite different from any dialogue that I should
be likely to find pen in hand, for in my novels
I can write only tragedy, and in life play nothing
but light comedy, and the one explanation that
occurs to me of this dual personality is that I write

AVE 111

according to my soul, and act according to my
appearance.

The reader will kindly look into his mind, and
when the point has been considered he will be in a
mood to take up my book again and to read my story
with profit to himself.

These unwritten dialogues are often so brilliant
that I stop in my walk to repeat a phrase, making
as much of it as Mathews or Wyndham would make,
regretting the while that none of my friends is by to
hear me. All my friends are actors in these un-
written plays ; and almost any event is sufficient for
a theme on which I can improvise. But never did
Nature furnish me with so rich a theme as she did
when Yeats and Edward came to see me in Victoria
Street. The subject was apparent to me from the
beginning, and the reason given for my having
accepted to act with them in the matter of the Irish
Literary Theatre (the temptation to have a finger in
every literary pie) has to be supplemented. There
was another, and a greater temptation — the desire
to secure a good part in the comedy which I foresaw,
and which had for the last three weeks unrolled
itself, scene after scene, exceeding any imagination
of mine. Who could have invented the extraordinary
rehearsals. Miss Vernon and her psaltery ? Or the
incident of Yeats' annunciation that Edward had
consulted a theologian in London ? My anger was
not assumed ; Yeats told me he never saw a man so
angry; how could it be otherwise, ready as I am
always to shed the last drop of my blood to defend
art ? Yet the spectacle of Edward and the theologian
heresy-hunting through the pages of Yeats' play was

112 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

behind my anger always, an irresistible comicality
that I should be able to enjoy some day. And then
the telegram saying that the sceptre of intelligence
had passed from London to Dublin. Who could
have invented it? Neither Shakespeare nor Cer-
vantes. Nor could either have invented Yeats' letter
speaking of the Elizabethan audiences at the Antient
Concert Rooms. The hissing of The Countess Cathlee?i
had enraged me as every insult upon art must enrage
me — my rage was not factitious ; all the same, when
Yeats spoke to me of his arch-enemy the author of
the pamphlet The Cross or the Guillotine, the West
Kensington conspirators and the President of the
' Order of the Golden Door ' who had expelled the
entire society and gone away to Paris, I felt that
the comedy was not begotten by any poor human
Aristophanes below, but was the invention of the
greater Aristophanes above.

We had only just finished the first act of the
comedy in which I found myself playing a principal
part, and the second act promised to exceed the
first, as all second acts should, for I learned from
Yeats that The Cross or the Guillotine had been sent
to Cardinal Logue, and that a pronouncement was
expected from him in the evening papers. If
Logue' s opinion was adverse to the play, Yeats was
afraid that Edward would not dare to challenge his
authority, he being Primate of all Ireland. Further
rumours were current in Dublin that morning — the
names of the priests to whom Gill had sent the play ;
it had gone, so it was said, to a Jesuit of high repute
as an educationalist, and to a priest of some literary
reputation in England. Yeats wouldn't vouch for

AVE 113

the truth of these rumours, but if there were any
truth in them he felt sure that Edward would be
advised that to stop the play would raise the question
whether Catholicism was incompatible with modern
literature ; and this was a question that no Jesuit
would care to raise. The line Yeats said that
the pamphlet laid special stress on was: 'And
smiling, the Almighty condenms the lost.' I begged
for an explanation, for, as we can only conceive the
Almighty as a man in magnitude, we must conceive
him as smiling or frowning from his Judgment-seat.

'Frowning, I suppose, would mean that he was
angry with those who had disobeyed the commands
of his priests, and smiling would mean that he wasn't
thinking of priests at all, which, of course, would
be very offensive to a majority of the population.'

Yeats laughed, but could not be pressed into a
theological argument. 'You look upon theology,
Yeats, as a dead science.*

At that he cawed a little — the kindly caw of the
jackdaw it was, and I wondered why he was not
more angry with Edward and with the priests.

'Ecclesiastical interference is intolerable,' I said,
trying to rouse him. But if he were indifferent to
the fate of his play, if he did not care for literature
as much as I thought he did, why was it that he
did not notice the spring-time ? ' Have tulips and
nursemaids no part in the Celtic Renaissance ? It
isn't kind not to look at them ; they have come out
to be looked out. Do notice the fragrance of the
lilacs. Are all of you Irish indifferent to the spring-
time? Upon my word, it wouldn't surprise me if
the spring forgot one of these days to turn up in

114 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

Ireland. Yeats^ I looked forward to finding Ireland
a land of endless enchantment, but so far as I can
see at present Ireland isn't bigger than a priest's
back.'

We passed out of the gates and walked up the
sunny pavement ; girls were going by in pretty
frocks.

' That one, Yeats. How delightful she is in her
lavender dress !'

To exaggerate one's ignorance of Dublin seemed
to me to be parcel of the character of the returned
native, and though I knew well enough that we
were walking down Grafton Street, Yeats was asked
what street we were in. When he mentioned the
name, I told him the name was familiar, but the
street was changed, or my memory of it imperfect.
For such parade — for parade it was — I have no fault
to find with myself, nor for stopping Yeats several
times and begging of him to admire the rich
shadows that slumbered in the brick entanglements,
making an ugly street seem beautiful. But I cannot
recall, without frowning disapproval, the fact that
I compared the sky at the end of Grafton Street
to a beautiful sky by Corot. The sky I mean rises
above yellow sand and walls, blue slates, and iron
railings ; and these enhance its beauty very much
in the same way as the terra-cotta shop fronts in
Grafton Street enhanced the loveliness of the pale
blue sky that I saw the day I walked down Grafton
Street with Yeats. To exalt art above nature has
become a platitude ; and resolving never to be guilty
of this platitude again, I asked Yeats if the grey
walls at the end of the street were Trinity College,

AVE 115

and standing on my toes insisted on looking through
the railings and admiring the greenswards, and the
trees, and the cricket-match in progress. Yeats was
willing to talk of Trinity, but not to look at it ; and
though I have no taste, nor much interest in archi-
tecture, it was pleasant, even with Yeats, to admire
the Provost's House and the ironwork over the
gateway, and the beautiful proportions of the court-
yard. It was pleasant to allow one's enthusiasm to
flow over likp a mug of ale at the sight of the front
of Trinity, to contrast the curious differences in style
that the Bank presented to the College — the College
severe and in straight lines, the Bank all in curves.

' The Venus de Milo facing the Antinous,' I cried.

Yeats laughed a somewhat chilling approval as is
his wont ; all the same, he joined me in admiration
of the curve of the parapet cutting the sky, the
up-springing statues breaking the line and the
beautiful pillared porticoes up and down the street,
the one in Westmorland Street reminding me of
a walk with my father when I was a child of
ten. In those times a trade in umbrellas was
permitted under the great portico, and though it
could interest Yeats nowise, I insisted on telling
him that I remembered my father buying an
umbrella there, and that my interest in Dublin was
wilting for lack of an umbrella stand under the
portico. Impossible to interest Yeats in that
umbrella my father bought in the 'sixties, he
seemed absorbed in some project on the other side
of the street, and when the opposite pavement was
reached he began to tell me of a friend of his, a
clerk in a lawyer's oflice who I gathered was a

116 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

revolutionary of some kind (after business hours),
a follower of Miss Gonne. I refused, however, to
be interested in Miss Gonne' s prophecies or in the
mild-eyed clerk on the third landing, who said he
would join us on the quays when he had finished
drafting a lease.

The quays were delightful that day, and I wished
Yeats to agree with me that there is nothing in the
world more delightful than to dawdle among seagulls
floating to and fro through a pleasant dawdling light.

'But how is it, Yeats, you can only talk in the
evening by the fire, that yellow hand dropping over
the chair as if seeking a harp of apple-wood ?'

Yeats cawed ; he could only caw that morning, but
he cawed softly, and my thoughts sang so deliciously
in my head that I soon began to feel his ideas to be
unnecessary to my happiness, and that it did not
matter how long the clerk kept us waiting. When
he appeared he and Yeats walked on together, and I
followed them up an alley discreetly remaining in the
rear, fearing that they might be muttering some great
revolutionary scheme. I followed them up a stair-
case full of dust, and found myself to my great surprise
in an old library.

'Very like a drawing by Phiz,' I said to myself,
bowing, for Yeats and the clerk were bowing apologies
for our intrusion to twenty or more shabby genteel
scholars who sat reading ancient books under im-
memorial spider webs. At the end of the library
there was another staircase, and we ascended, leaving
footprints in the dust. We went along a passage,
which opened upon a gallery overlooking a theatre,
one that I had no difficivhjun recognizing as part of

AVE 117

the work done in Dublin by the architects that were
brought over in the eighteenth century from Italy.
The garlands on the ceiling were of Italian work-
manship, the reliefs that remained on the walls.
Once the pit was furnished with Chippendale chairs,
carved mahogany chairs, perhaps gilded chairs in
which ladies in high-bosomed dresses and slippered
feet had sat listening to some comedy or tragedy
when their lovers were not talking to them ; and in
those times the two boxes on either side of the stage
let out at a guinea or two guineas for the evening.

Once supper-parties were served in them, for Abbey
Street is only a few yards from the old Houses of
Parliament, and even Grattan may have come to this
theatre to meet a lady, whom he kissed after giving
her an account of his speech. It amused me to
imagine the love-scene, the lady's beauty and
Grattan' s passion for her, and I wondered what her
end might have been, if she had died poor, without
money to buy paint for her cheeks or dye for her
hair, old, decrepit, and alone like the fair helm-maker
who had lived five hundred years ago in France,
or the helm-maker who had lived a thousand years
ago in Ireland. She, too, had been sought by kings
for her sweet breasts, her soft hair, her live mouth
and sweet kissing tongue ; and she, too, tells how
she fell from love's high estate into shameful loves
at nightfall in the wind and rain. I looked on the
plank benches that were all the furniture of this
theatre, I thought of the stevedores, the carters, the
bullies and their trulls, eating their suppers, listening
the while to some farce or tragedy written nobody
knows by whom. Grattan's mistress may have sat

118 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

among such, eating her bread and onions about
eighty years ago. A little later she may have fallen
below even the lust of the quays, and in her great
want may have written to Grattan some simple
letter, and her words were put into my mind.
' Dear Henry, — You will be surprised to hear from
me after all these years. I am sorry to say that I am
in very poor health, and distress. I had to leave a
good place last Christmas, and have not been able to
do much since. I thought you might send me a few
shillings. If you do I shall be very grateful and will
not trouble you again. Send them for old time's
sake. Do you know that next year it will be forty
years since we met for the first time ? Looking over
an old newspaper, I saw your speech, and am sending
this to the House of Commons. My address is
24, Liffey Street ; Mrs. Mulhall, my proper name.'

Grattan would read this letter, hurriedly thrusting
it into the brown frock-coat with brass buttons which
he wore, and that night, and the next day, and for
many a week, the phrase of the old light-o'-love :
' Do you know that next year it will be forty years
since we met for the first time ?' would startle him,
and would recall a beautiful young girl whom he
had met in some promenade, listening to music,
walking under trees — the Vauxhall Gardens of Dublin
— and he would say, ' Now she is old with grey hair
and broken teeth,' and would wonder what was the
good place she had lost last Christmas. He would
send her something, or tell somebody to give her a
few pounds, and then would think no more of her.

Yeats and the clerk were talking about the
rebuilding of the theatre, saying that the outer walls

AVE 119

seemed sound enough, but all the rest would have
to be rebuilt, and I wandered round the gallery
wondering what were Yeats' dreams while looking
into the broken decorations and the faded paint.
Plays were still acted in this bygone theatre. But
what plays ? And who were the mummers that came
to play them ?

As if in answer, a man and two women came on
the stage. I heard their voices, happily not the
words they were speaking, for at the bottom of
my heart a suspicion lingered that it might be The
Colleen Bamn they were rehearsing, and not to hear
that this was so I moved up the gallery and joined
Yeats, saying that we had been among dust and
gloom long enough, that I detected drains, and
would like to get back into the open air.

We moved out of the theatre, Yeats still talking to
the clerk about the price of the building, telling him
that the proprietor must never know from whom the
offer came ; for if he were to hear that there was a
project on foot for the establishment of an Irish
Literary Theatre his price would go up fifty per cent.
The clerk muttered something about a hundred per
cent. 'And if he were to hear that Mr. Edward

Martyn was at the back of it ' Yeats muttered.

The clerk interjected that if he were to hear that it
would be hard to say what price he would not be
putting upon his old walls.

A dried-up, dusty fellow was the clerk, a man
about fifty, and I wondered what manner of revolu-
tion it might be that he was supposed to be stirring,
and how deep was his belief that Maud Gonne would
prove herself to be an Irish Joan of Arc ; not very

120 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

much deeper than Yeats' belief that he would one
day become possessed of a theatre in Dublin and
produce literary plays in it for a people unendowed
with any literary sense whatever. Yet they con-
tinued shepherding their dreams up the quays, just
as if The Countess Cathleen had not been hissed the
night before, as if Cardinal Logue were not about
to publish an interdiction, as if Edward were one
that could be recovered from ecclesiasticism.

It is an old philosophy to say that the external world
has no existence except in our own minds, and that
day on the quays my experience seemed to bear
witness to the truth of the old adage. The houses on
the other side, the quays themselves, the gulls floating
between the bridges, everything seemed to have put
off its habitual reality, to have sloughed it, and to
have acquired another — a reality that we meet in
dreams ; and connecting the external world with the
fanciful projects that I heard discussed with so much
animation at my elbow, I began to ask myself if I
were the victim of an hallucination. Had I come
over to Ireland? Else surely Ireland had lost
her reality? The problem was an interesting one,
and getting it well before me, I began to consider
if it might be that through excessive indulgence in
dreams for over a hundred years the people had at
last dreamed themselves and Ireland away. And this
was a possibility that engaged my thoughts as we
crossed Carlisle Bridge. I put it to myself in this
way : reality can destroy the dream, why shouldn't the
dream be able to destroy reality ? And I continued to
ponder the theory that had been accidentally vouch-
safed to me until the clerk left us, and Yeats said :

AVE 121

'Even if it should happen that Edward should
stop the performances (I don't think he will), the
Irish literary movement will go on.'

'It's extraordinary what conviction they can put
into their dreams/ I thought, and we walked on in
silence, for in spite of myself Yeats' words had
revealed to me a courage and a steadfastness in his
character that I had not suspected. ' There is more
stuffing in him than I thought for, and I shouldn't
be surprised if he carried something through. What
that will be, and how he will carry it, it is impossible
to form any idea.'

Stopping suddenly, he told me that T. P. Gill, the
editor of the Daily Express, expected me to lunch,
and he was anxious I should meet him, for he was
one of the leaders of the movement; an excellent
journalist, he said, who had been editing the paper
with great brilliancy ever since he and Horace
Plunkett had changed it from an organ of moulder-
ing Unionism into one interested in the new Ireland.

Somebody — Gill, perhaps — had been kind enough
to send me the Express during the winter, and I
used to read it, thinking it even more unworldly
than any of the little reviews of my youth edited
by Parnassians and Realists. All the winter I had
read in it stories of the Celtic gods — Angus, Dana
and Lir intermingled with controversies between
Yeats and John Eglinton regarding the literary
value of national legend in modern literature ; and
when the Irish Literary Theatre was spoken of,
the Express seemed to have discovered its mission —
the advancement of Celtic drama. Angus and Lir
were lifted out of, and Yeats and Edward lifted into

122 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

their thrones ; and on the Saturday before the arrival
of the company in DubUn the Express had printed
short but succinct biographies of the actors and
actresses whom I had picked up in the casual Strand.
If the entire Com^die Fran9aise had come over with
plays by Racine and Victor Hugo, not the old plays,
but new ones lately discovered, which had not yet
been acted, the Express could not have displayed
more literary enthusiasm. A newspaper so contused
and disparate that I had never been able to imagine
what manner of man its editor might be. A tall,
dark, and thin man with feverish, restless hands and
exalted diction whenever he spoke, was dismissed for
a short, square, and thick-set man like a bulldog, with
great melancholy eyes, and he in turn was dismissed
for a stout, elderly man with spectacles, very common-
place and polite, speaking little, and not interested
at all in literature or in theosophy, but something
quite different, and I had often sat thinking what
this might be, without being able to satisfy myself,
getting up from my chair at last, saying that only
Balzac could solve the problem ; only he could
imagine the inevitable personality of the editor of
the Daily Express.

He would have foreseen that the editor of this
extraordinary sheet wore a Henri Quatre beard ;
whereas the beard, the smile, the courtesy, the flow
of affable conversation, were a surprise to me.
Balzac would have foreseen the wife and children,
and their different appearances and personalities ;
whereas I had always imagined the editor of the
Express a bachelor. Balzac would have divined
the family man in his every instinct, despite the

\

AVE 123

round white brows shaded by light hair, curling
ptettily; despite the eyes — the word that comes
to the pen is ^ furtive,' but for some reason, perhaps
from repetition, the expression ' furtive eyes '
has come to mean very little. Gill's eyes seem to
follow a dream and then they suddenly return, and
he watches his listener, evidently curious to know
what effect he is producing upon him, and then the
eyes wander away again in pursuit of the dream.
The coming and going of his eyes interested me
until the nose caught my attention — a large one with
a high bridge, and with those clean-cut nostrils with-
out which every nose is ugly. But the nose is said
to be an index of character, telling of resolution ;
and the hand, too, is said to be a tell-tale feature : I
noticed that Gill's hands were small and white, with
somewhat crooked and ill-shapen nails. A hand of
languid movement — one that went to the beard,
caressing it constantly, reminding one of a cat licking
its fur, with this difference, however, that a cat is
silent while it licks itself, whereas Gill could talk
while he dallied with his beard.

It has been said, too, that a man's character tran-
spires in his dress, and Gill was carefully dressed.
His shirt-collar looked more like London than Dublin
washing, and I asked myself if his washing went to
London while I admired the carefully-chosen necktie
and the pin. The grey suit fitted his shoulders so well
that I decided he must have gone back and forwards
a good many times to try on, and then that he did
not give his tailor much trouble, for his figure was
well-knit, square shoulders, clean-cut flanks. 'A
delicate man withal,' said the hollow chest, and I

124 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

remembered that Yeats had told me that last winter
Gill had been obliged to go abroad in search of
health.

We were not altogether strangers, as he reminded
me — he had had the pleasure of meeting me in
London. We had been fellow-workers on the
Speaker, and so it gave him much pleasure to see me
in Ireland.

' I'm afraid that Ireland doesn't want either Yeats
or me/ I growled out ; and this remark carried us
right into the middle of the controversy regarding
The Countess Cathleen. When he was in London
Martyn had spoken to him on the subject, and had
told him that a learned theologian had been con-
sulted and that the incident of the crucifix kicked
about the stage by the starving peasantry had been
cut out.

' I don't remember the incident you speak of.
Martyn insisted on its omission, you say Y

Without answering me, Gill continued, speaking
very slowly, hesitating between his words. He seemed
to take pleasure in hearing himself talk, and this
seemed strange to me, for he was saying nothing of
importance, merely that the subject of the play was
calculated to wound the religious susceptibilities of
the Irish people; and while stroking his beard he
continued to speak of the famine times and of the
proselytizing by the Protestants : memories like
these were too deep to be washed away by mere
poetry, though, indeed, he would yield to nobody in
his admiration of Yeats' poetry ; and if Yeats had con-
sulted him regarding the choice of a subject for a
play, he certainly would not have advised him to

AVE 125

choose The Countess Cathleen. All the same, he had
done all that he possibly could do for the Irish Literary
Theatre, as I must have seen by his paper. He had
even done more than what had appeared in the paper,
for he had, himself, sent The Countess Cathleen to two
priests, and placing himself in the light of a wise
mediator, he told me that both these priests had given
their verdict in favour of the play. One of them, a
Jesuit of considerable attainments, had pointed out
that the language objected to was put into the mouths
of demons.

^ Who could not be expected to say altogether
kind things of their Creator,' I interjected.

Gill laughed, and his laughter seemed to reveal a
temperament that ripples, pleasantly murmuring,
over shallows, never sinking into a deep pool or
falling from any great height. ' A pleasant stream,*
I said to myself, ' only I wish it would flow a little
faster.' The opposition to The Countess Cathleen in
the Antient Concert Rooms was no doubt regrettable,
but I must not judge Ireland too harshly. The famine
times were remembered in Ireland ; and I had lived
too long out of Ireland to sympathize with the people
on this point. Yeats had lived more in Ireland ;
but he, too, was liable to misjudge Ireland, being a
Protestant. Gill felt that there was an Ireland in
Ireland that Protestants could not understand, and
he repeated that if Yeats had come to him in the
first instance he certainly would have advised him to
choose another subject. When Pamell consulted him
at the time of the split — ' I begin to be interested,' I
said to myself, and wondering what advice Gill had
given to Pamell, all my attention was strained to hear.

126 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

The fault was mine, no doubt, but at the supreme
moment Gill's words and voice began to ripple
vaguely, like the stream, and I heard that if a great
Liberal newspaper had existed then (he used the
word ' Liberal ' in its broadest sense), it would have
been possible to arrive at some compromise between
Parnell and the party, and himself would have gone
to the prelates, and knowing Ireland as well as he
did, he thought that the situation might have been
saved. The present situation might be saved if
somebody came forward and gave Ireland a news-
paper, a newspaper bien entendu, that would give
expression to all the different minds now working in
Ireland. He was doing this in the Express, in a
small way, for his enterprise was checked by lack of
capital. All the same, he had managed to bring more
culture into the Express than had ever entered into
it before — John Eglinton, M, Yeats. Under his
direction the Express was the first paper that had
attempted to realize that Ireland had an aesthetic
spirit of her own.

' This is true,' I said to myself, and I lent to Gill
an attentive ear, thinking he was interested in art ;
but he glided away from my questions, passing into
an account of the co-operative movement, apparently
as much interested in dairies as in statues ; and for
an hour I listened to his slumbrous talk until at last
it seemed to me that a firkin rolled out of the door
of one of the dairies, and that I could see a dainty
little man fixed upon it for ever, a sort of petrifac-
tion having taken place, a statue upon butter or

My reverie was broken by Gill, who questioned me
regarding my first impressions of Dublin, if I would

AVE 127

be kind enough to write them out for him, and if not,
he was interested to hear them for his own pleasure.
On the subject of DubUn the leader of the Renais-
sance seemed to hold far-reaching views. He knew
Paris well, and feeling that the conversation would
be agreeable to me, he spoke of the immense benefit
of the work that Baron Haussmann had done there ;
and then, as if spurred by a sense of rivalry, he de-
scribed the great boulevards he would cut through
Dublin if he were entrusted with the dictatorship of
Ireland for fifteen years. Nor was this all. The
University question could be dealt with, and the
Home Rule question to the satisfaction of all parties.
It seemed to me that I had come upon the original
fount of all wisdom ; it flowed from him in a slow but
continual stream, bearing along in its current
different schemes ; one, I remember, was for the
construction of a new bank, for the bankers would
have to be housed when they were turned out of the
old House of Parliament. He talked on, thinking
that I was interested in himself; whereas I was
thinking whether his father was Balzac or Tourgue-
nieff, and perhaps this point might never have been
decided if he had not suddenly begun to talk about
Trinity College, saying there was a wider and more
Bohemian culture, one to which he would like to give
effect.

' By means of the newspaper you were speaking of
just now ?'

The newspaper would be necessary, but a cafe
was necessary too. A cafe was Continental, and
the new Dublin should model itself more upon
Continental than British ideas ; and we talked on,

128 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

discussing the effect of the cafe on the intellectual
life in Dublin. The cafe would be useless unless it
remained open until two in the morning. A short
Act of Parliament might easily be introduced^ and the
best site would be the corner of Grafton Street and
the Green. The site, however, had this disadvantage
— it would go to make Stephen's Green the centre
of Dublin, and this was not desirable. The old
centre of Dublin, which was in the north, should be
restored to its former prosperity. Another cafe
might be established on the quays, an excellent site
were it not for the Liffey. I mentioned that I had
only seen the river when the tide was up, and Gill
told me that when it was out the smell was not
pleasant. The new drainage, however, would soon
be completed, and a cafe could be opened at the
comer of O'Connell Street, but for the moment the
corner of Grafton Street seemed the more practical
site.

A question regarding the probable cost of the
cafe brought a slight cloud into his face, but it
vanished quickly as soon as he had stroked his beard,
and he spoke to me at a great length about a man
whom he had met in America, and with whom he had
become great friends. This man was a millionaire,
and his ambition was to build hotels in Ireland,
whether for the sake of adding to his millions, or
diminishing them for the sake of Ireland, Gill did
not know. Probably his friend was influenced by
both reasons, for, of course, to found hotels that did
not pay some dividend would be of no benefit to any-
body. Gill continued to talk of possible dividends,
and I listened to them with difficulty, for my curiosity

AVE 129

was now keen to hear from him the reciprocation of
the miUionaire in the building of hotels and the
founding of a real Parisian cafe at the corner of
Stephen's Green and Grafton Street, and I waited
almost breathless for the answer to this conundrum.
It was simple enough when it came. After the
building of the hotels a great deal of money would
remain over, and with this money the millionaire
would build the cafe.

'There isn't a drop of Balzac blood in him/ I said
to myself; 'he is pure Tourguenieff, and perhaps
Ireland is a little Russia in which the longest way
round is always the shortest way home, and the
means more important than the end.'

Two or three young men who wrote in the Express
every night had been invited to come to take coffee
with us after lunch, and their arrival was a relief to
both Gill and myself. We had been talking of
Ireland for several hours, and Gill had begun to
speak of the time when he would have to go down
to the office. The young men, too, wished to speak
to him about what they were to write that evening,
for Gill explained that he did not write very much
himself in his newspaper ; his notion of editing was to
pump ideas into people ; and after listening for some
time I got up to go. It was then that Gill told me
that the newspaper of which he was the editor was
offering a great dinner at the Shelboume Hotel to
the Irish Literary Theatre, and he hoped that I
would be present.

On this we parted, and a few moments afterwards
I found myself lost in Nassau Street, for Nature
has denied me all sense of topography, and while
I

130 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

looking up and down the street wondering how 1
should get to Merrion Square, I caught sight of
Yeats coming out of a bun-shop. By calling wildly
I succeeded in awakening him from his reverie. He
stopped, and in answer to my question told me that
he had been to Edward's club ; but Edward was not
there. ' With one of his theologians, no doubt, both
deep in your heresies,' I said, and we walked on in
silence until a newsboy posted his placard against
some railings, and we read : ^Letter from Cardinal
Logue condemning The Comitess Cathleen.' ■

Yeats pointed, saying, ^There's Edward,' and I
saw him in his short black jacket and voluminous
grey trousers reading the newspaper at the kerb.

' There will be no plays to-night !' we cried.

His glasses dropped from his high nose, but he
caught them as they fell.

'You haven't seen Logue's letter then? He
admits that he hasn't read the play; he has only
judged it by extracts. And you can't judge a work
by extracts.'

'Besides,' I said, 'the two priests to whom the
play was sent have decided in its favour. Gill
told me that he showed you some letters from
them.'

' As well as I remember he showed me '

' But, my dear friend, you must know whether he
showed you a letter or not.'

' Yes, I'm practically sure that I saw a letter, but
I'm not affected by stray opinions, whether they
are in favour of the play or against it.'

' You may not have sent the play to two priests,
but you brought it to a theologian.'

AVE 131

' That was in England.'

' Of course you were then in a Protestant country.
And did he decide in favour of the play ?'

' No, he didn't. Very much the other way.'

Edward's sense of humour does not desert him
even when he fears that his soul may be grilled ;
and he entertained us with an account of the evening
he had spent with the theologian.

'I had to bite my lips to prevent myself from
laughing when he climbed up the steps of a ladder,
taking dovm tomes, and he descended step by step
very carefully, for he is an old man, and putting the
tome under the lamp '

' He read aloud the best opinions on the subject.
It was like going to a lawyer. Blackstone writes
according to So-and-so Vic. Who was this theologian ?'

Edward refused to give up his name, and I could
not guess it, although he allowed me many guesses.

' Somebody you never heard of.'

' Then I am to understand the plays will go on as
usual ?'

' I see no reason why not. The Cardinal hasn't
read the play ; he has put himself out of court.'

' But if he had read the play, Edward, and had
interdicted it ?'

'An interdiction would be quite another matter.
I'm not obliged to accept stray opinions, but an
interdiction would be very serious. It would be a
very serious matter for me to persist in supporting
a play that the head of the Church in Ireland
deemed harmful !'

I suggested that Dr. Walshe was a sufficient
authority in his own diocese.

1S2 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !*

'There's that, too, and I wouldn't be surprised if
Walshe said some of those sharp things that ecclesi-
astics can, on occasion, say about each other.'

' What enrages me,' I said, turning to Yeats, ' is
the insult offered to mankind by this Cardinal. But
you don't seem interested, Yeats. I can't under-
stand why you are so little interested in the general
question, apart from the particular.'

* I am interested ; but the matter isn't so serious
as you think. I know Ireland better than you, and
am more patient.'

Yeats' words appeased me, and without knowing
it my thoughts were drawn away from the peasant
Cardinal to the spring weather, and I relinquished
myself to the delight of the warm air, to the beauty
of the sunlight among the flowering trees, to the sky,
so blue, so ecstatic, lifting the heart to rapture ; and
knowing how interested Edward always is in archi-
tecture, and feeling he needed a little compensation
for the courage he had shown, I called his attention
to a piece of monumented wall, designed to conceal
the rear of a gardener's cottage, but a beautiful thing
in itself, and adding to the beauty of the square.

Two curving wings, an arched recess, vases and
terra-cotta plaques — very eighteenth - century, a
century to which Edward has never been able to
extend his sympathy, calling it with some truth a
century of boudoirs, and its genius the decoration of
an alcove. His sympathies flow out more naturally
to the cathedral, to the monastery, and to the palace,
never very generously to the dwelling-house.

'You've always said, my dear friend, that you
understand public life much better than private.*

AVE 1S3

Edward is always willing to discuss his ideas, but
for the moment he wa5 taken with the beauty of the
monumented wall.

'As a screen/ he said, 'it is beautiful, but the
sixteenth century would have built '

'Built a cottage that would have been beautiful
all the way round? No, it wouldn't. As I have
said, you've never understood the eighteenth century,
Edward, and your misunderstanding is quite natural ;
a century of feminine intrigue, subtle women in-
terested in the arts and in delightful abbes, who
visited artists in their studios, drawing attention to
the points of their female models. In the six-
teenth century Roman priests no longer spoke of
their sons as their nephews, and went into the
church laughing at the Mass they were going to
celebrate. A sixteenth-century Cardinal would have
been highly amused at the thought of condemning
a beautiful play because the writer spoke of the
Almighty smiling as He condemned the lost. He
would have said, ' But if the line is beautiful ?' and
taking Logue by the arm, he would have told him
that religion is interesting until we are twenty.
After that it becomes a means to an end, and the
mission of every Cardinal should be to find a mistress
who would respect his nerves, and to collect some
passable pictures. My dear friends, how you have
duped me ! Do you remember what you told me
about the Celtic Renaissance? Poets and painters
burgeoning on every bush.'

I laid a hand on Edward's shoulder and another
on Yeats', and looked into their faces.

' Now, Edward '

1 34 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' Well, all I can say is the Irish people liked my
play, and it wouldn't have been listened to in
London . . . any more than Ibsen is.'

* And what about Yeats ?'

' His would have been listened to if he had not
put things into it which shocked people's feelings.
I know there are many calling themselves Christians
who are only Christians in name, but it is very
hurtful for those who really believe to have to listen
to lines . . .' And Edward stopped, fearing to
wound Yeats' feelings.

He bade us good-bye soon after. 'Perhaps he
is going to Vespers,' I said. 'A good fellow — an
excellent one, and a man who would have written
well if his mother hadn't put it into his head that
he had a soul. The soul is a veritable pitfall. I'm
afraid, Yeats, you'll find it difficult to persuade him
to buy the theatre for you. He would live in terror
lest you should let him in for some heresy.'

IV

I read an historic entertainment in the appearance
of the waiters ; *'iey were more clean and spruce
and watchful than usual ; the best shirts had been
ordered from the laundry, every button-hole held its
stud, shoes had been blacked scrupulously ; and the
head-waiter, a tall, thin man, confident in his re-
sponsibilities, pointed out the way to the cloak-room,
and in subdued voice told us that we should find
Mr. Gill in the ante-room.

And we found him receiving his guests, blythe and

AVE 135

alert as a bird in the spring-time. All his serious-
ness had vanished from him, he stroked his beard
and he laughed, and his eye brightened as he told
of his successes . . . the extreme ends of Dublin
had yielded to his persuasiveness, and under the
same roof-tree that night Trinity College and the
Gaelic League would dine together. Hyde was
coming, and John O'Leary, the Fenian leader, was
over yonder. And looking through the evening
coats and shirt-fronts, I caught sight of the patri-
archal beard that had bored me years ago in Paris,
for John would talk about Ireland when I wanted
to talk about Ingres and Cabanel. All the same I
went to him, and he angered me for the last time
by asking for news of Marshall, my friend in the
Confessions, instead of speaking to me about the
Gaelic literary movement. ' As tedious as ever,' I
said, escaping from him; and seeing nobody who
might amuse me, I returned to Gill to reproach him
for not having asked his guests to bring their
females with them.

At these public repasts women's necks and arms
are indispensable, strings of pearls, bracelets, gowns.
We can dispense with sex only when we are among
three or four intelligences — the eternal masculine
carries one up into the ether or draws one into
shabby observation of his appearance. In a pro-
vincial town he arrives at a banquet in a pot-hat and
muffler, still thinking of the wife at home and the
children that were sent to bed before papa started
forth.

' Not an opera hat among the company,* I muttered,
' and no one should be seen without one ' ; and

136 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

lowering my eyes^ I noticed that I was among a
still deeper disgrace. Some of the men had not
taken the trouble to change their shoes. ^ Perhaps
they haven't even changed their socks/ and to pass
the time away I began to wonder how it was that
women could take any faint interest in men.
Every kind seemed present : men with bellies and
without, men with hair on their heads, bald men,
short-legged men and long-legged men ; but looking
up and down the long tables, I could not find one
that might inspire passion in a woman ; no one even
looked as if he would like to do such a thing. And
with this sad thought in my head I sought for my
chair, and found it next to a bald, obese professor,
with Yeats on the other side, next to Gill, at the
head of the table. It is always nice to see dear
Edward, and he was not far away, on Gill's left
hand, as happy as a priest at a wedding. He sat,
chewing his cud of happiness ; a twig from The
Heather Field, slightly triumphant, I thought, over
Yeats, whose Countess Cathleen had not been received
quite so favourably.

Beside me, on my right, was a young man, clean-
shaven and demure ; the upper lip was long, but the
nose and eyes and forehead were delicately cut, hke
a cameo, and his bright auburn hair was brushed
over his white forehead, making a line that a girl
might have envied if she were inclined to that style
of coiffure. He answered my questions, but he
answered them somewhat dryly. Yeats would not
speak, but sat all profile, like a drawing on an
Egyptian monument, thinking his speech ; and it
was not until we had eaten the soup and the fish.

AVE 187

and a glass of champagne had been drunk, that I
discovered the young man at my right elbow to be
full of information about the people present.

'The very person/ I said, 'I stand in need of.
And that is why Gill put him next to me.' So I
began to speak of our host, of his kind and genial
nature. My young friend knew him (he was one of
the writers on the Express), and seemed to be much
amused at my story of Gill's plan to introduce Con-
tinental culture into Dublin. As we talked of Gill
our eyes went towards him, and we admired in
silence, thinking how like he was to some portraits
we had seen in the Louvre, or in the National
Gallery — we were not sure which.

' Bellini, I think.'

My young friend had some knowledge of the art
of painting, for he corrected me, saying that Geor-
gioni was the first designer of that round brow,
shaded by pretty curling hair.

'I believe you're right,' I said. 'It was he who
started the fashion for a certain wisdom which Gill
seems to have caught admirably, and which, though
enhanced by, is not dependent upon the beauty of a
blond and highly- trimmed beard.'

'Did you see a portrait of Gill done before he
grew his beard ?'

I answered that I had not seen it, surprised a little
by the question. My young friend smiled.

' He rarely shows that photograph now. Perhaps
he has destroyed it.'

' But at what are you smiling V

'Well, you see,' he answered, 'Gill was nothing
before he grew his beard. His face is so thin, and

1S8 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

falls away at the chin so quickly, that no one
credited him with any deep and commanding
intelligence.'

'The round, prettily-drawn eyes have nothing to
recommend them. One couldn't call them crafty eyes.'

My young friend smiled, but as I was about to ask
him why he was smiling, Gill addressed some re-
marks to me over Yeats' head, disturbing, I feared,
some wondrous array of imagery collecting in the
poet's mind. The professor I had perforce to fall
back upon, and I succeeded in engaging his attention
with a remark regarding Tennyson's proneness to
write the sentiment of his time rather than the
ideas of all time.

'But his language is always so exquisite. You
must know the line — something you know : " Doves
murmuring in immemorial elms," not since Milton,
and I am not sure that I don't prefer Tennyson's
imagery, excepting that immortal line : " Blazed in
the forehead of the morning sky." Give me,' said
the professor, 'the sublime diction. You can have
all the rest — the sentiments, the ideas, the thoughts
. . . all. You remember that wonderful line when
he addresses Virgil, that . . . that . . .' (I waited
for the rare adjective), 'that excellent line.' The
waiter interposed a bottle between us. 'This
excellent wine goes very well with the entree.'
He was then called into the conversation which Gill
was holding with Edward, regarding the necessity
of founding a school of acting, and I found myself
free to return to the young gentleman on my right.

'You mentioned just now that Gill's beard was
the origin of Gill.'

AVE 139

Lowering his voice, my young neighbour said :
' I'm afraid the story is difficult to tell here.'
^Nobody is listening; everybody is engaged in
different conversations.'

' Gill is not very strong, and has often to go away
in quest of health. It was in Paris that it happened.'
We were interrupted many times by the waiters
and our neighbours, seeing that we were amused,
sought to share our amusement. All the same, the
young man succeeded in telling me how, at the end
of a long convalescence. Gill had entered a barber's
shop, his beard neglected, growing in patches, thicker
on one side of the face than on the other. He fell
wearily into a chair, murmuring, * La barbe', and ex-
hausted by illness and the heat of the saloon, he
did not notice for some time that no one had come
to attend upon him. The silence at last awoke him
out of the lethargy or light doze into which he had
slipped, and looking round it seemed to him that his
dream had come true ; that the barber had gone :
that he was alone, for some reason unaccountable, in
the shop. A little alarmed he turned in his chair,
and for a moment could find nobody. The barber
had retreated to the steps leading to the ladies'
saloon, whence he could study his customer intently,
as a painter might a picture. As Gill was about to
speak the barber struck his brow, saying, ' Style
Henri Quatre,' and drew his scissors from the pocket
of his apron.

Gill does not remember experiencing any par-
ticular emotion while his beard was being trimmed.
It was not until the barber gave him the glass that
he felt the sudden transformation — felt rather than

140 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

saw, for the transformation effected in his face was
httle compared with that which had happened in his
soul. In the beginning was the beard, and the beard
was with God, who in this case happened to be a
barber ; and glory be to the Lord and to his shears
that a statesman of the Renaissance walked that
day up the Champs Elysees, his thoughts turning —
and we think not unnaturally — towards Machiavelli.
A Catholic Machiavelli is not possible, nor an
Alexander the Sixth, a Caesar Borgia, nor a Julius
the Second ; but if one is possessed of the sense of
compromise, difficulties can be removed, and Gill's
alembicated mind soon discovered that it was possible
to conceive Machiavelli with all that great states-
man's bad qualities removed and the good retained.
As he walked it seemed to him all the learning of
his time had sprung up in him. He found himself
like the great men of the sixteenth century, well
versed in the arts of war and peace, a patron of the
arts and sciences.

But at that moment reality thrust itself forward,
shattering his dream. Gill had been an active
Nationalist — that is to say, he had driven about the
country on outside cars, occasionally stopping at
cross-roads to tell little boys to throw stones at the
police ; in other words, he had been a campaigner,
and had felt that he was serving his country by
being one. But since he had set eyes on his new
beard the conviction quickened in him that he would
be able to serve his country much better by dis-
pensing his prodigal wisdom than by engaging in the
rough-and-tumble fights of party politics. The inside
of gaols were well enough for such simple minds as

AVE 141

Davitt and O'Brien, but not for a mind grown from
a Henri Quatre beard; and remembering the cele-
brated saying of him who had worn the beard four
hundred years ago — Paris vaut Hen une messe — Gill
muttered in his beard, ' Ma barbe vaut mieux que le
plan.'

About the time of Gill's beard Horace Plunket
was engaged in laying the foundations of what he
believed to be a great social reformation in Ireland.
But Plunket, Gill reflected as he walked gaily, with
an alert step and brightening eye, did not know
Ireland. A Protestant can never know Ireland in-
timately. Such was Gill's conviction, and there was
the still deeper conviction that he was the only man
who could advise Plunket, and save him from the
many pitfalls into which he was sure to tumble. All
that Plunket required was something of the genial
spirit of the Renaissance. Again beguiled by the
delicious temptation, Gill paused in his walk.
Plunket could not associate himself with one who had
been engaged in the Plan of Campaign. The Plan
had faded with the trimming of his beard ; and he
could hardly believe that he had been connected
with it, except, indeed, as a romantic incident in his
career. The only difficulty — if it were a difficulty —
was to find a means of explaining his repudiation of
the Plan satisfactorily. The Irish atmosphere is
dense, and to tell the people that it had all gone
away with the shaggy ends of his beard would hardly
satisfy them. But in Ireland there is always Our
Holy Mother the Church, and the Church had quite
lately condemned the Plan. Gill is a faithful son of
the Church. Of course, of course. The error into

142 *HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

which he had fallen had gone with the shaggy beard,
and with his trimmed beard, and his trimmed soul,
Gill appeared in Dublin henceforth known to his
friends as ' Tom the Trimmer.'

'An excellent story that probably started from
some remark of Gill's, and was developed as it passed
from mouth to mouth. A piece of folk. If a story
be told three or four times by different people it
becomes folk. You have, no doubt, stories of the
same kind about everybody ?'

This last remark was injudicious, for I seemed to
frighten my neighbour, and I had some difficulty in
tempting him into gossip again.

'Are there any other contributors to the Express
present ?'

' Yes,' he said, yielding again to his temptation to
talk. ' T. W. RoUeston. Do you see that handsome
man a head above everybody else, sitting a little
way down the table ?'

' Yes/ I said. ' And what a splendid head and
shoulders I Byron said he would give many a poem
for Sou they 's, and Southey's were not finer than that
man's.'

As if guessing that somebody was admiring him,
Rolleston looked down the table, and I saw how
little back there was to his head.

' He lacks something,' my neighbour said ; and I
was told how Rolleston came down every evening to
write his leader in a great cloak and in leggings if it
were raining, bringing with him his own pens and
ink and blotting-pad, all the paraphernalia of his
literature.

' A man like that writing leaders !' I said.

AVE 143

'Nothing short of an Odyssey, one would have
thought '

'So many people did think. He was a great
scholar at Trinity, and in Germany he translated, or
helped to translate, Walt Whitman into German.
When he came back the prophet, the old man,
John O'Leary, whom you told me you knew in
France, the ancient beard at the end of the room,
accepted him as Pamell's successor.'

' And now he is writing leaders for the Express /
How did the transformation happen ?*

' O' Grady tells a story '

'Who is C Grady?' I asked, enjoying the gossip
hugely ; and my neighbour drew my attention to a
grey, round-headed man, and after looking at him
for some time I said : ' How lonely he seems among
all these people ! Does he know nobody ? Or is
he very unpopular ?'

'He is very little read, but we all admire him.
He is our past;' and my neighbour told me that
O'Grady had written passages that for fiery eloquence
and energy were equal to any that I would find in
Anglo-Irish literature. ' Only '

' Only what ?' I asked.

And he told me that O' Grady's talent reminded
him of the shaft of a beautiful column rising from
amid rubble-heaps. After a pause, during which
we mused on the melancholy spectacle, I said :

'RoUeston — you were going to tell me about
Rolleston.'

'O'Grady tells that he found Rolleston a West
Briton, but after a few lessons in Irish history
Rolleston donned a long black cloak and a slouch

144 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

hat, and attended meetings, speaking in favour of
secret societies, persuading John O'Leary to look
upon him as one that might rouse the country,
" going much further than I had ever dreamed of
going," O' Grady said. " His extreme views fright-
ened me a little, but when I met him next time and
began to speak to him about the holy Protestant
Empire, he read me a paper on Imperialism." '

' And when did that happen ?'

' About ten years ago, a Messiah that punctured
while the others were going by on inflated tyres
. . . poor Rolleston punctured ten years ago.'

' The others hoot at him as they go by. And we
talked of Messiahs, going back and back until we
arrived at last at Krishna, the second person of the
Hindoo Trinity, whose crucifixion, it is related,
happened between heaven and earth.

' Two beautiful poems and a great deal of scholar-
ship which he doesn't know what to do with. How
very sad !' And looking at him, I said : ' A noble
head and shoulders. What a good tutor he would
make if I had children !'

So from one remark to another I was led into
saying spiteful things about men whom I did not
know, and who were destined afterwards to become
my friends.

' Tell me about some of your other contributors —
about the professor who writes Latin and Greek
verses as well as he writes English. He reviews
books for you, doesn't he ?'

' Yes ; but I beg of you to speak a little lower, or
he'll hear you.'

' No, no ; he's talking with Gill and Yeats.'

AVE 145

^Gill is terrified/ my young friend said, Hest
Yeats should speak disrespectfully of Trinity College.
He has taken a great deal of trouble about this
dinner, and believes that it will unite the country in
a common policy if Yeats doesn't split it up on him
again.'

At that moment the professor turned to me, and
asked me to lunch the following day at Trinity,
impressing upon me the necessity of coming down a
little early, in time to have just a glass of wine before
lunch. His doctor had forbidden him all stimulants
in the morning, and by stimulants he understood
whisky. But a bottle of wine, he said, was a tenuous
thing, and he would like to avail himself of my visit
to Dublin to drink one with me. I could see that
we had now struck upon his interest in life, and
with a show of interest which he had not manifested
in Virgil's poetry, he said :

'Just a glass of Marsala, the ancient Lilybaum.
You know, the grape is so abundant there that they
never think of mixing it with bad brandy.'

At that moment somebody spoke to me, and when
I had answered a few questions I heard the professor
saying that he had gone down for lunch to some
restaurant. 'Nothing much to-day, John. Just a
dozen of oysters and a few cutlets, and a quart of
that ejAiellent ale.'

Again my attention was distracted by a waiter
pressing some ice-pudding upon me, and I lost a
good deal of information regarding the professor's
arduous day. As soon, however, as I had helped
myself I heard a story, whether it related to yester-
day or some previous time I cannot say.

K

146 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' After that I had nothing at all, until something
brought me to the cupboard, and there, behold ! 1
found a bottle of lager. I said : ' Smith has been
remiss. He has mixed the Bass and the lager.
But no. They were all full, twelve bottles of Bass
and only one of lager ; so I took it, as it seemed a
stray and lonely thing.'

It appears that the professor then continued his
annotations of Aristophanes until the light began to
fade.

' I thought of calling again on Lilybaum. Really,
the more I drink of it the more honest and excellent
I find it.' When the bottle was finished it was time
to return home to dinner, and I learned that the
professor's abstinence was rewarded by the delight
he took in the first whisky and soda after dinner.

' An excellent old pagan he seems to be, Quintus
Horatius Flaccus of Dublin, untroubled by any
Messianic idea. Now Hyde — I've heard a good
deal about him. Can you point him out to me ?'

As my neighbour was about to do so Gill rose up
at the head of the table.

' Speech time has come,' I said.

Gill read a letter from W. E. H. Lecky, who
regretted that he was prevented from being present
at the dinner, and then went on to say that the
other letter was from a gentleman whose absence
he was sure was greatly regretted. He alluded to
his friend, Mr. Horace Plunket, who was, if he
might be allowed to say so, one of the truest and
noblest sons that Ireland had ever begotten.

' I've noticed,' I said to my young friend, ' even
within the few days I have been in Ireland, that

AVE 147

Ireland is spoken of, not as a geographical, but a
sort of human entity. You are all working for
Ireland, and I hear now that Ireland begets you ; a
sort of Wotan who goes about '

Somebody looked in our direction, somebody said
^ Hush !' And Gill continued, saying they had had
an exciting week in Ireland, one that would be
memorable in the history of the country. For the
first time Ireland had been profoundly stirred upon
the intellectual question. He said he regarded the
controversy which Yeats' play had aroused as one of
the best signs of the times. It showed that they
had reached at last the end of the intellectual
stagnation of Ireland, and that, so to speak, the grey
matter of Ireland's brain was at last becoming active.

' Ireland's brain ! Just now it was the loins of
Ireland.'

Gill flowed along in platitudes and stereotj^ed
sentences that evidently had a depressing effect
upon Yeats, who seemed to sink further and further
into himself, and was at last no longer able to raise
his head. Gill talked on all the same. He for one
had always regarded Yeats, broadly, as one who
held the sword of spirit in his hand, and waged war
upon the gross host of materialism, and as an Irish-
man of genius who had devoted a noble enthusiasm
to honouring his country by the production of
beautiful work. . . . What should he say of
Mr. Martyn ? There was no controversy about him.
Their minds were not occupied by controversy, but
with that which must be gratifying to Mr. Martyn
and to all of them — the knowledge that he had
produced a great and original play, and that Ireland

148 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

had discovered in him a dramatist fitted to take rank
among the first in Europe.

I think everybody present thought this eulogy a
little exaggerated^ for I noticed that everybody hung
down his head and looked into his plate, everybody
except Edward, who stared down the room unabashed,
which, indeed, was the only thing for him to do, for
it is better when a writer is praised that he should
accept the praise loftily than that he should attempt
to excuse himself, a mistake that I fell into at the
St. James's Theatre.

Gill continued in the same high key. This
gathering of Irishmen, which he thought he might
say was representative of the intellect of Dublin, and
included men of the utmost differences of opinion on
every question which now divided Irishmen, was, to
his mind, a symbol of what they were moving towards
in this country. He thought they had now reached
the stage at which they had begun to recognize the
profundity of the saying :

The mills of God grind slowly.
Yet they grind exceeding small.

They all felt, instinctively now, that the time for
the reconstruction of Ireland had begun. They
stood among the debris of old society and felt that
out of the ruins they were called upon to build a
new Ireland. No matter what their different
opinions on various questions might be, they all felt
within them a throb of enthusiasm for their new life,
their own country, and a determination that, irre-
spective of the different views, they would give their
country an intellectual and a political future worthy

AVE 149

of all the sufferings that every class and creed of the
country had gone through in the past.

' You're disappointed/ my young friend said, ' but
if you stay here much longer you'll get used to hear-
ing people talk about working for Ireland, helping
Ireland, selling boots for Ireland, and bullocks too.
You'll find if you read the papers that Gill's speech
will be very much liked — much more than Yeats'.
The comment will be : " We want more of that kind
of thing in Ireland." '

My young friend's cjmicism now began to get upon
my nerves, and turning upon him rudely, I said :

^Then you don't believe in the language move-
ment ?'

His reply not being satisfactory, and his accent
not convincing of his Celtic origin, I grew suddenly
hostile, and resolved not to speak to him again during
dinner ; and to show how entirely I disapproved of
his attitude towards Ireland, I affected a deep interest
in the rest of Gill's speech, which, needless to say,
was all about working for Ireland. Amid the
applause which followed I heard a voice at the end
of the table saying, 'We want more of that in
Ireland.'

My neighbour laughed, but his laughter only
irritated me still more against him, and my eyes
went to Yeats, who sat, his head drooping on his
shirt-front, like a crane, uncertain whether he should
fold himself up for the night, and I wondered what
was the beautiful eloquence that was germinating in
his mind. He would speak to us about the gods, of
course, and about Time and Fate and the gods
being at war ; and the moment seemed so long that I

150 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

grew irritated with Gill for not calling upon him at
once for a speech. At length this happened^ and
Yeats rose, and a beautiful commanding figure he
seemed at the end of the table, pale and in profile,
with long nervous hands and a voice resonant and
clear as a silver trumpet. He drew himself up and
spoke against Trinity College, saying that it had
always taught the ideas of the stranger, and the
songs of the stranger, and the literature of the
stranger, and that was why Ireland had never listened
and Trinity College had been a sterile influence.
The influences that had moved Ireland deeply were
the old influences that had come down from genera-
tion to generation, handed on by the story-tellers that
collected in the evenings round the fire, creating for
learned and unlearned a communion of heroes. But
my memory fails me ; I am disfiguring and blotting
the beautiful thoughts that I heard that night clothed
in lovely language. He spoke of Cherubim and
Seraphim, and the hierarchies and the clouds of
angels that the Church had set against the ancient
culture, and then he told us that gods had been
brought vainly from Rome and Greece and Judaea.
In the imaginations of the people only the heroes
had survived, and from the places where they had
walked their shadows fell often across the doorways ;
and then there was something wonderfully beautiful
about the blue ragged mountains and the mystery
that lay behind them, ragged mountains flowing
southward. But that speech has gone for ever. I
have searched the newspapers, but the journalist's
report is feebler even than my partial memory. It
seemed to me that while Yeats spoke I was lifted

AVE 151

up and floated in mid-air. . . . But I will no longer
attempt the impossible ; suffice it to say that I re-
member Yeats sinking back like an ancient oracle
exhausted by prophesying.

A shabby^ old, and woolly-headed man seated at
the head of the second table rose up and said he
could not accept Yeats' defence of the ancient beliefs
— Ireland had not begun to be Ireland until Patrick
arrived ; and he went on till everybody was wearied.
Then it was my turn to read the lines I had dictated
at the typist's.

After some words hastily improvised, some stutter-
ing apology for daring to speak in the land of oratory
(perhaps I said something about the misfortune of
having to speak after Demosthenes, alluding, of
course, to Yeats), I explained the reason for my
return to Ireland : how in my youth I had gone to
France because art was there, and how, when art
died in France, I had returned to England ; and now
that art was dead in England I was looking out like
one in a watch-tower to find which way art was wing-
ing. Westward, probably, for all the countries of
Europe had been visited by art, and art never visits
a country twice. It was not improbable that art
might rest awhile in this lonely Northern island ; so
my native country had again attracted me. And
when I had said that I had come, like Bran, to see
how they were getting on at home, I spoke of Yeats'
poetry, saying that there had been since the ancient
bards poets of merit, competent poets, poets whom I
did not propose they should either forget or think
less of ; but Ireland, so it seemed to me, had no poet
who compared for a moment with the great poet of

152 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

whom it was my honour to speak that night. It was
because I believed that in the author of The Countess
Cathleen Ireland had recovered her ancient voice that
I had undertaken the journey from London^ and
consented to what I had hitherto considered the
most disagreeable task that could befall me — a public
speech. I told them I would not have put myself to
the inconvenience of a public speech for anything in
the world except a great poet — that is to say, a man
of exceptional genius, who was born at a moment of
great national energy. This was the advantage of
Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, as well as Yeats.
The works of Yeats were not yet, and probably never
would be, as voluminous as those of either the French
or the English poet, but I could not admit that they
are less perfect. I pointed out that the art of
writing a blank-verse play was so difficult that none
except Shakespeare and Yeats had succeeded in
this form.

' The assertion,' I said, ' seems extravagant ; but
think a moment, and you will see that it is nearer the
truth than you suppose. We must not be afraid of
praising Mr. Yeats' poetry too much ; we must not
hesitate to say that there are lyrics in the collected
poems as beautiful as any in the world. We must,'
I said, ' be courageous in front of the Philistine, and
insist that the lyric entitled "Innisfree" is insur-
passable.'

And I concluded by saying that twenty years
hence this week in Ireland would be looked back
upon with reverence. Then tilings would have
fallen into their true perspective. The Saxon would
have recovered from his bout of blackguardism, and

AVE 153

would recognize with sorrow that while he was cele-
brating Mr. Kipling, Marie Corelli, Mrs. Humphry
Ward and Mr. Pinero, the Celt was celebrating in a
poor wayside house the idealism of Mr. Yeats.

My paper irritated a red-bearded man sitting some
way down the table. He wore no moustache, but
his beard was like a horse's collar under his chin, and
his face was like glass, and his voice was like the
breaking of glass, and everybody wondered why he
should speak so sourly about everybody, myself
included. ^ Now that Mr. Moore thinks that
Ireland has raised herself to his level, Mr. Moore
has been kind enough to return to Ireland, Hke
Bran.'

' Who is he ?' I asked Yeats.

' Bran is one of the greatest of our legends.'

^Yes, I know that. But the man who is
speaking ?'

' A great lawyer,' Yeats answered, ' who has never
quite come into his inheritance.'

And the gritty voice went on proclaiming the
genius of the Irish race.

' But, Yeats,' I said, ' he is talking nonsense. All
races are the same ; none much better or worse than
another : merely blowing dust ; the dust higher up
the road is no better than the dust lower down.'

Yeats said this would be an excellent point to
make in my answer, and Gill said that I must get up ;
but I shook my head, and sat listening to my speech,
seeing it quite clearly, and the annihilation of my
enemy in every stinging sentence, but without the
power to rise up and speak it.

' Who would care for France,' I whispered to Yeats,

154 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

' if it only consisted of peasants, industrious or idle ?
The race is anonymous, and passes away if it does not
produce great men who do great deeds, and if there
be no great contemporary writers to chronicle their
valour. What nonsense that man is talking, Yeats !
Do get up and speak for me. Tell him that the
fields are speechless, and the rocks are dumb. In
the last analysis everything depends upon the poet.
Tell him that, and that it is for Ireland to admire us,
not for us to admire Ireland. Dear me, what non-
sense, Yeats ! Do speak for me.'

Yeats tried to push me on to my feet.

' No, no !' I said ; ' I will not. My one claim to
originality among Irishmen is that I have never made
a speech.'

Gill waited for me, and looking at him steadily, I
said 'No'; and he answered,

' Then I will call upon Hyde.'

' Hyde,' I said ; ' that is the man I want to see.'

He had been sitting on my side of the table, and I
could only catch glimpses of his profile between the
courses when he looked up at the waiter and asked
him for more champagne, and the sparkling wine and
the great yellow skull sloping backwards had seemed
a little incongruous. ' A shape strangely opposite,' I
said, ' to RoUeston, who has very little back to his
head.' All Hyde's head seemed at the back, like a
walrus, and the drooping black moustache seemed
to bear out the likeness. As nothing libels a man as
much as his own profile, I resolved to reserve my
opinion of his appearance until I had seen his full
face. His volubility was as extreme as a peasant's
come to ask for a reduction of rent. It was inter-

AVE 155

rupted, however, by Edward calling on him to speak
in Irish, and then a torrent of dark, muddied stuff
flowed from him, much like the porter which used to
come up from Carnacun to be drunk by the peasants
on midsummer nights when a bonfire was lighted.
It seemed to me a language suitable for the celebra-
tion of an antique Celtic rite, but too remote for
modern use. It had never been spoken by ladies in
silken gowns with fans in their hands or by gentle-
men going out to kill each other with engraved
rapiers or pistols. Men had merely cudgelled each
other, yelling strange oaths the while in Irish, and I
remembered it in the mouths of the old fellows dressed
in breeches and worsted stockings, swallow-tail coats
and tall hats full of dirty bank-notes which they used
to give to my father. Since those days I had not
heard Irish, and when Hyde began to speak it an
instinctive repulsion rose up in me, quelled with
difficulty, for I was already a Gaelic Leaguer. Hyde,
too, perhaps on account of the language, perhaps it
was his appearance, inspired a certain repulsion in
me, which, however, I did not attempt to quell. He
looked so like a native Irish speaker ; or was it ? — and
perhaps it was this — he looked like an imitation native
Irish speaker ; in other words, like a stage Irishman.
Passing without comment over the speeches of the
various professors of Trinity, I will tell exactly how I
saw Hyde in the ante-room from a quiet corner
whence I could observe him accurately. He was talk-
ing to a group of friends. ' Is he always so hilarious,
so voluble ?' ^ I'm so delighted,' I could hear him
saying to some new-comer, ' so delighted to see you
again. Well, this is really a pleasure.'

156 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

His three-quarter face did not satisfy me^ but,
determined to be just, I refused to allow any opinion
of him to creep into my mind until I had seen him
in full face ; and when he turned, and I saw the full
face, I was forced to admit that something of the
real man appeared in it : I sat admiring the great
sloping, sallow skull, the eyebrows like blackthorn
bushes growing over the edge of a cliff, the black hair
hanging in lank locks, a black moustache streaking
the yellow-complexioned face, dropping away about
the mouth and chin.

' Without doubt an aboriginal,' I said.

He spoke with his head thrust over his thin chest,
as they do in Connemara. Yet what name more
English than Hyde ? It must have come to him
from some English ancestor — far back, indeed, for it
would require many generations of intermarriage with
Celtic women to produce so Celtic an appearance.

At this moment my reflections were interrupted by
Hyde himself. A common friend brought him over
and introduced him to me, and when I told him of
my interest in the language movement, he was
vociferously enthusiastic, and I said to myself : ^ He
has the one manner for everybody.'

Some of his writings were known to me — some
translations he had made of the peasant songs of
Connaught — and I admired them, though they seemed
untidily written, the verse and the prose. I had
read some of his propagandist literature, and this,
too, was of a very untidy kind. So the conclusion
was forced upon me that in no circumstance could
Hyde have been a man of letters in English or in
Irish.

AVE 157

' The leader has absorbed the scholar. So perhaps
the language movement is his one chance of doing
something.'

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival
of M. I had read his articles in the Express, and
looking at him I remembered the delight and the
wonder which his verse and prose had awakened in
me. It was just as if somebody had suddenly put
his hand into mine, and led me away into a young
world which I recognized at once as the fabled
Arcady that had flourished before man discovered
gold, and forged the gold into a ring which gave him
power to enslave. White mist curled along the edge
of the woods, and the trees were all in blossom.
There were tall flowers in the grass, and gossamer
threads glittered in the rays of the rising sim.
Under the trees every youth and maiden were
engaged in some effusive moment of personal love,
or in groups they weaved garlands for the pleasure
of the children, or for the honour of some god or
goddess. Suddenly the songs of the birds were
silenced by the sound of a lyre ; Apollo and his
muses appeared on the hillside ; for in these stories
the gods and mortals mixed in delightful comrade-
ship, the mortals not having lost all trace of their
divine origin, and the gods themselves being the
kind, beneficent gods that hve in Arcady.

The paper had dropped from my hands, and I
said : ^ Here is the mind of Corot in verse and prose ;
the happiness of immemorial moments under blossom-
ing boughs, when the soul rises to the lips and the
feet are moved to dance. Here is the inspired hour
of sunset ;' and it seemed to me that the man must

158 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

live always in this hour, and that he not only believed
in Arcady, but that Arcady was always in him.
'While we strive after happiness he holds it in his
hand,' I said, and it was to meet this man that I had
come to Ireland as much as to see the plays.

He had refused to dine with us because he did not
wish to put on evening clothes, but he had come in
afterwards, more attractive than anybody else in the
room in his grey tweeds, his wild beard, and shaggy
mane of hair. Some friends we seem to have known
always, and try as we will we cannot remember the
first time we saw them ; whereas our first meetings
with others are fixed in our mind, and as clearly
as if it had happened no later than yesterday, I
remember M coming forward to meet me, and the
sweetness of his long grey eyes. He was more
winning than I had imagined, for, building out of
what Yeats had told me in London, I had imagined
a sterner, rougher, ruder man. Yeats had told me
how a child, while walking along a country road near
Armagh, had suddenly begun to think, and in a few
minutes the child had thought out the whole problem
of the injustice of a creed which tells that God will
punish him for doing things which he never promised
not to do.

The day was a beautiful summer's day, the larks
were singing in the sky, and in a moment of extra-
ordinary joy M realized that he had a mind
capable of thinking out everything that was necessary
for him to think out for himself, realizing in a
moment that he had been flung into the world
without his consent, and had never promised not
to do one thing or do another. It was hardly five

AVE 159

minutes since he had left his aunt's house, yet in
this short space his imagination had shot up into
heaven and defied the Deity who had condemned
him to the phght of the damned because — he
repeated the phrase to himself — he had done some-
thing which he had never promised not to do. It
mattered nothing what that thing was — the point
was that he had made no promise ; and his mind
embracing the whole universe in one moment, he
understood that there is but one life : the dog at his
heels and the stars he would soon see (for the dusk
was gathering) were not different things, but one
thing.

^ There is but one life/ he had said to himself,
'divided endlessly, differing in degree, but not in
kind ' ; and at once he had begun to preach the new
gospel.

I had heard how, when earning forty pounds a
year in an accountant's office, he used to look at his
boots, wondering whether they would carry him to
the sacred places where the Druids ascended and
descended in many coloured spirals of flame ; and
fearing that they would not hold together for forty
long miles, he had gone to Bray Head and had
addressed the holiday folk. I could hear the tumult,
the ecstasy of it all ! I could see him standing on
a bit of wall, his long, thin, picturesque figure with
grey clothes drooping about it, his arms extended in
feverish gesture, throwing back his thick hair from
his face, telling the crowd of the sacred places of
Ireland, of the Druids of long ago, and their
mysteries, and how much more potent these were
than the dead beliefs which they still clung to; I

160 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

could hear him telling them that the genius of the
Gael^ awakening in Ireland after a night of troubled
dreams, returns instinctively to the belief of its
former days, and finds again the old inspiration.

' The Gael seeks again the Gods of the mountains,
where they live enfolded in a mantle of multitudinous
tradition. Once more out of the heart of mystery
he had heard the call "Come away"; and after that
no other voice had power to lure — there remained
only the long heroic labours which end in the
companionship of the Gods.'

The reason I have not included any personal
description of M is because he exists rather in one's
imagination, dreams, sentiments, feelings, than in
one's ordinary sight and hearing, and try as I will
to catch the fleeting outlines, they escape me ; and
all I remember are the long, grey, pantheistic eyes
that have looked so often into my soul and with such
a kindly gaze.

' Those are the eyes,' I said, ' that have seen the
old Celtic Gods '; for certainly M saw them when
he wandered out of the accountant's office in his old
shoes, into Meath, and lay under the trees that wave
about the Druid hills ; or, sitting on some mountain-
side, Angus and Diarmuid and Grania and Deirdre
have appeared to him, and Mannanan MacLir has risen
out of the surge before him, and Dana the great Earth
Spirit has chanted in his ears. If she had not, he
could not have written those articles which enchanted
me. Never did a doubt cross my mind that these
great folk had appeared to JE until he put a doubt
into my mind himself, for he not only admitted that
he did not know Irish (that might not be his fault.

AVE l6l

and the Gods might have overlooked it, knowing that
he was not responsible for his ignorance), but that he
did not believe in the usefulness of the Irish language.

' But how, then, am I to believe that the Gods
have appeared to you ?' I answered. ' That Angus
and Diarmuid, Son of Angus, have conversed with you ?
That Dana the Earth Spirit has chanted in your ears ?'

' The Gods,' he answered, ^ speak not in any mortal
language ; one becomes aware of their immortal
Presences.'

* Granted. But the Gods of the Gael have never
spoken in the English language ; it has never been
spoken by any Gods.'

'Whatever language the Gods speak becomes
sacred by their use.'

' That is begging the question. I can't accept you
as the redeemer of the Gael ;' and I turned from him
petulantly, let it be confessed, and asked somebody
to introduce me to John Eglinton. 'I'm vexed,
M,' I said, 'and will go and talk with John
Eglinton. For not having ever communed with the
Gods he is at liberty to deny their speech.'

And John Eglinton told me that it was not from
the Gods that he had learned what he knew of the
Irish language ; that his was only a very slight
knowledge acquired from O'Growney and some of
Hyde's folk-tales.

' So you've learned Irish enough to read it ?' And
I grew at once interested in John Eglinton, and
pressed him to continue his studies, averring that I
had not time to learn the language myself 'And
now what is your opinion about it as a medium of
literary expression ?'

162 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

Before he could answer me I had asked him if he
did not think that English was becoming a lean
language, and all I remember is that in the middle
of the discussion John Eglinton dropped the phrase :
' The Irish language strikes me as one that has never
been to school.'

' Of course it hasn't. How could it ? But is a
language the worse for that V

We began to argue how much a language must be
written in before it becomes fitted for literary use,
and during the discussion I studied John Eglinton,
wondering why he had said that the Irish language
had never been to school. Was it because he was
interested in education ? There was something of
the schoolmaster in his appearance and in his talk.
The articles he had published in the Express had
interested me, for they were vmtten by a clever man ;
but at that time M had cast a spell upon me, and
only his eloquence could appeal to me. John Eglin-
ton had only seemed to me dryly a writer, and I
could only regard as intolerable that an editor should
be found so tolerant as to allow John Eglinton to
contravene M, and remembering all this, I noticed
a thin, small man with dark red hair growing stiffly
over a small skull ; and I studied the round head and
the high forehead, and the face somewhat shrivelled
and thickly freckled.

' A gnarled, solitary life,' I said, ^ lived out in all
the discomforts inherent in a bachelor's lodging, a
sort of lonely thorn-tree. One sees one sometimes
on a hillside and not another tree near it.' The com-
parison amused me, for John Eglinton argued with
me in a thorny, tenacious way, and remembering his

AVE 16S

beautiftil prose, I said : ' The thorn breaks to flower/
and continued to discover analogies. A sturdy life
has the thorn, bent on one side by the wind, looking
as if sometimes it had been almost strangled by the
blast. John Eglinton, too, looked as if he had battled ;
and I am always attracted by those who have battled,
and who know how to live alone. Looking at him
more attentively, I said : ' If he isn't a schoolmaster
he is engaged in some business : an accountant's office,
perhaps ; and the tram takes him there every morning
at the same hour. A bachelor he certainly is, and
an inveterate one ; but not because all women appeal
to him, or nearly all ; rather because no woman
appeals to him much, not sufficiently to induce him
to change his habits. He sits in the tram, his hands
clasped over his stick, and no flowered skirt rouses
him from his literary reverie.'

So did I see him going into Dublin in the morning.
If there ever had been any feminine trouble in his
life it must have been a faint one, and could not
have interested him very intensely, a little surprise
to himself as soon as it was over. Talking to him, a
woman must feel as if there was a stone wall between
them. Many will think that this seems to imply
a lack of humanity, for the many appreciate only
humanity in the sexual instinct, an instinct which
we share with all animals and insects ; only the very
lowest forms of life are epicene. Yet, somehow, we
are all inclined to think that man is never so much
man as when he is in pursuit of the female. Perhaps
he is never less man than at that moment. We are
apt to think we are living intensely when we con-
gregate in numbers in drawing-rooms and gossip

164 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

about the latest publications, social and literary, and
there is a tendency in us all to look askance at the
man who likes to spend the evening alone with his
book and his cat, who looks forward to lonely holidays,
seeing in them long solitary walks in the country,
much the same walks as he enjoyed the summer
before, when he wandered through pleasantly-wooded
prospects, seeing hills unfolding as he walked mile
after mile, pleasantly conscious of himself, and of the
great harmony of which he is a part.

The man of whom I am dreaming, shy, unobtrusive
and lonely, whose interests are literary, and whose
life is ,not troubled by women, feels intensely and
hoards in his heart secret enthusiasms and senti-
ments which in other men flow in solution here
and there down any feminine gutter. I thought
of Emerson and then of Thoreau — a Thoreau of
the suburbs. And remembering how beautiful John
Eglinton's writings are, how gnarled and personal,
like the man himself, my heart went out to him a
little, and I wondered if we should ever become
friends. I liked him for his lack of effusiveness.

'The hard North is better than the soft, peaty,
Catholic stuff which comes from Connaught,' I said
to myself, turning from John Eglinton to Edward,
who had come to ask if I would go back with him
to his lodgings to smoke a cigar before going to bed.

While strolling with him, or sitting beside him
smoking cigars, listening to him talking about the
success of The Heather Field, the thought often

AVE 165

crossed my mind that his life had flowered in the
present year, and that after it all would be decline.
He was to me a pathetic figure as he sat sunning
himself in the light of Ibsen and Parnell, his exterior
placid as a parish priest's ; for knowing him from
the very beginning of his life, and having seen the
play written, I was not duped like the others.
^ He is thinking that his dreams are coming to pass,
and believes himself to be the Messiah — he who will
give Ireland literature and her political freedom';
and I wondered how far he would go before
puncturing like the others.

He was talking about his new comedy. The Tale
of a Town. Politicians were satirized and things
were said in it that might create a riot, and the riot
in the theatre might spread to the streets, and a
flame run all over Ireland. 'We cannot afford,
Edward, to have the Gaiety Theatre wrecked.' A
shadow used to come into his face at the moral
responsibility he was incurring by writing The Tale
of a Town ; but heresies frighten him more than the
destruction of property; he was prepared to risk
the play, and took refuge in generalities, saying he
was no good at telling a plot. A doubt rises up in
my mind always when I hear an author say he cannot
tell his plot, for if there be one, a baby can tell it,
and it is the plot that counts ; the rest is working
out, and can be accomplished if one is a writer. All
I could learn from him was that the play was nearly
finished. He was going down to Galway to work
over the dialogue for the last time, and then the
manuscript would be sent to Yeats, and when it was
read it would be sent to London to me, for the rules

166 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

of the Irish Literary Theatre were that no play
could be performed without the approval of the
three directors.

' You may expect it in about three weeks.'

And a memorable morning it was in Victoria Street
when I received the parcel and cut the string, saying :

' We shall be able to talk about this comedy, and
to discuss its production, on our way to Bayreuth,
when we have said all we have to say about Wagner
and his Ring'

The first half-dozen pages pleased me, and then
Edward's mind, which can never think clearly, re-
vealed itself in an entanglement ; ' Which will be
easily removed,' I said, picking up the second act.
But the second act did not please me as much as the
first, and I laid it down, saying : ' Muddle, muddle,
muddle.' In the third act Edward seemed to fall
into gross farcical situations, and I took up the
fourth act sadly. It and the fifth dissipated every
hope, and I lay back in my chair thinking of the
letter that would have to be written to dear Edward
telling him that his play, in my opinion, could not
be acted, nearly in a state of coma, unable to drag
myself to the writing-table. But getting there at
last, I wrote — after complimenting him about a
certain improvement in the dialogue — that the play
seemed to me very inferior to The Heather Field and
to Maeve.

' But plainer speaking is necessary. It may well
be inferior to The Heather Field and to Maeve, and
yet be worthy of the Irish Literary Theatre.'

So I wrote : ' There is not one act in the five you
have sent me which, in my opinion, could interest

AVE 167

any possible audience — Irish, English, or Esqui-
maux. There you have it, my dear friend ; that is
my opinion. But perhaps we shall be able to
straighten it out on our way to Bayreuth, and on
our way home.'

After posting such a letter one is seized with
scruples, and I walked about the room asking myself
if a pinch of human kindness be not worth more than
a cartload of disagreeable truths. Edward was my
friend, the friend of my boyhood, and I had written
to say that the play he had been working upon for
the last two years was worthless. Why not have
saddled Yeats and Lady Gregory with the duty ?
One looks at the question from different points of
view, worrjring a great deal, coming back to the
point — that lies would not have saved our trip
abroad. Be that as it may, my letter had probably
wrecked it.

We were to meet at Victoria Station, and if
Edward were to turn ' rusty ' what would happen ?
The theatre tickets would be lost. No Bayreuth
for me that year ; impossible to travel in Germany
when one doesn't know a word of German. I
regretted again the letter I had written, and
watched the post. Letters came, but none from
Edward. This was a good sign. If he were not
coming he would let me know. All the same, the
quarter of an hour before the train started was full
of anxiety.

' Ah, there he is ! We're going to Bayreuth
after all !'

There he was — huge and puffy, his back to the
engine, his belly curling splendidly between his

168 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

short fat thighs, his straw hat perched on the top
of his head, broader at the base than at the crown,
a string dangling from it. We sat embarrassed ;
Edward did not seem embarrassed, but I suppose
he must have been ; I was embarrassed enough for
two. The play would have to be talked about.
But who would open the conversation? Edward
did not seem inclined to speak about it, and for me
to do so before Clapham Junction would be lacking
in courtesy. Ask him for a cigar ! But one cannot
talk of the quality of a cigar beyond Croydon, and
when we had passed through the station the strain
became unbearable. Besides, I was anxious to
aestheticize.

' I was sorry I didn't like your play, but you see
you asked my opinion, and there was no use my
giving you a false one.'

' I dare say you are right. I'm no critic ; all the
same, it was a great disappointment to me to hear
that you didn't like it.'

I had expected a note of agony in his voice, and
was shocked to find that he could enjoy a cigar
while I gave him some of my reasons for thinking his
play unpresentable. If he were a real man of letters
it would be otherwise — so why should I pity him ?
And the pity for him which had been gathering in
my heart melted away, and suddenly I found myself
angry with him, and would have said some unpleasant
things about his religion if he had not dropped the
phrase that my letter had entirely spoilt the pleasure
of his trip round the coast of Ireland in a steamer
with a party of archaeologists. I begged for an
account of this trip, and he told me that they had

AVE 169

visited pagan remains in Donegal and Arran, and
many Christian ruins, monasteries and round-towers,
and my naturally kind heart was touched by the
thought of Edward lagging in the rear, thinking of
his unfortunate play and the letter I had written
him, his step quickening when Coffey began his
discourses, but proving only an indifferent listener.

One would have to lack the common sympathies
not to feel for Edward, and to myself I seemed a
sort of executioner while telling him that the play
would have to be altered, and extensively altered.
It was not a matter of a few cuts ; my letter must
have made that clear ; but he had not been told the
whole truth. He probably suspected it would be
forthcoming, if not on board the train, on board the
boat. A courageous fellow is Edward before criticism,
perhaps because art is not the great concern of his
life ; and he would have listened to the bitter end ;
but it seemed to me that it would be well to allow
my criticism to work down into his mind. The
subject was dropped ; we talked about The Ring all
the way to Dover, and on board the boat he whistled
the motifs, looking over the taffrail until it was time
to go to bed. His manner was propitious, and it
seemed to me that in the morning he would listen
to the half-dozen alterations that were of an elemental
necessity, and turning these over in my mind, I fell
asleep, and awoke thinking of them, and nothing
could have prevented me from telling Edward how
the third act might be reconstructed the moment
we got on deck but the appearance of the foreland
as we steamed into Holland.

A dim hght had just begun to filter through some

170 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

grey clouds^ like the clouds in Van Guyon's pictures ;
and the foreland — sand and tussocked grass, with a
grey sea slopping about it — was drawn exactly as he
would have drawn it

' The country has never quite recovered from his
genius and the genius of his contemporaries though
two hundred years have passed away/ I said, men-
tioning, as we climbed into the train, that painting
was no longer possible in Holland.

Edward wished to know why this was, and I kept
him waiting till breakfast for an answer, saying then :
' The country is itself a picture. See ! A breeze
has just awakened a splendid Ruysdael in the bay.
A little farther on we shall pass a wood which Hob-
bema certainly painted.' We did, and we had not
got many miles before we came upon some fields
with cattle in them. ' Dujardin and Bergem.' And
afterwards the train sped through flat meadows
intersected by drains, for the country, once marish,
had been redeemed by the labour of the Dutchmen,
— ' indefatigable labour,' I said. ' When they drove
the Catholics out of Holland, art and Protestantism
began together. Look ! See those winding herds.
Cuyp! Look into the mist and you'll see him in
his leathern jerkin, and his great beaver hat with a
plume in it, stalking the cattle, drawing bits at a time —
heads and hindquarters. I don't like Holland ; it looks
too much like pictures — and pictures I have wearied of.'

It seemed to me that we were wasting time.
What was important was The Tale of a Town, for
another alteration had come into my mind ; and
anxious to know how it would strike Edward, I
asked him to give me his attention.

AVE 171

* Don't look at those fields any more; forget
Dujardin and Bergem, forget Cuyp ; let us think of
The Tale of a Town.'

His lack of eagerness was discouraging ; all the
same I began my serious criticism^ to which was
given an excellent but somewhat stolid attention.

' There is no growth in the first act, and very little
in the second, and the scene of the meeting in which
Jasper Dean makes his great speech must come in
the middle of the play, and not at the beginning of it.'

I waited for some acknowledgment from Edward,
but was unable to get from him either assent or dissent.

' You're a very good critic,' he repeated again and
again, and that irritated me, for, of course, one thinks
one is something more than a critic.

' Is it possible that he thinks his play perfect ?
Or is it that he would not like to bring any outside
influence into it, because to do so might impair its
originality ? It must be one of these things. Which ?'

Edward opened his valise, and took a book out
of it, and began to read, and I was left to continue
my meditations. Was it that Edward was what I
had often believed him to be : merely an amateur ?
An amateur of talent, but an amateur. That was
Symons' opinion. He said : ' Martyn will always
remain an amateur, whereas you, notwithstanding
your deficiencies, can be considered a writer.'

His words were remembered, for Edward's aversion
from my suggestions discovered the amateur in him.
It was not that he disapproved of the alterations,
but he did not like to accept them because they
were not his. The amateur always puts himself before
his work, and it is only natural that he should do so.

172 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

for the amateur writes or paints when he has time.
When weary of the glory that a title or a motor-car
brings him, he writes a book about Shakespeare's
Sonnets, or David Cox's slushy water-colours, or
maybe an appreciation of Napoleon ; whereas the
artist is interested in the thing itself, and will accept
readily a suggestion from anyone, if he thinks that
it will be to the advantage of the work to do so.
Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve is his device, the
motto upon his shield. Anybody who can improve
a sentence of mine by the omission of a comma or
by the placing of a comma is looked upon as my
dearest friend. But Edward . . .

The interruption in my thoughts concerning him
was caused by a sudden motion to ask him which
was our first halting-place. I expected him to
answer 'Cologne,' where we had stopped before to
hear a contrapuntal Mass ; two choirs, as well as I
remember, answering each other from different sides
of the cathedral, the voices dividing and uniting,
seeking each other along and across the aisles. It
was my first experience of this kind of music, and
I had preserved a vague, perhaps, but intense
memory of it, and feeling somewhat disappointed
that we were not going to hear another Mass by
Palestrina. I asked Edward for his reasons for this
change of route, and my astonishment was great
when he began to speak disparagingly of the Cologne
music, and my astonishment passed into amazement
when he told me that the music we had heard was
not by Palestrina at all, but only a modem imitation
of his manner. It had seemed to me so beautiful
that I did not like to hear its authenticity called

AVE 175

into question, but Edward was very firm, and it
soon became plain that he knew he had been
deceived, and that all mention of Cologne was dis-
agreeable to him. 'We shall never stop there
again,' I said to myself, and to fall in with his humour,
spoke of the cathedral, which we looked upon
as an ugly building. How could it be otherwise ?
It was begun in the Middle Ages and finished
somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century.
But the cathedral at Aix he declared to be pure
thirteenth-century, with a good deal of old gMss still
in the windows ; and he looked forward to hearing
Mass, his eyes raised to some wonderful purples
which a friend of his in London, in whom he placed
great faith, had told him to be sure not to miss seeing.

'Ugly glass, ugly vestments, ugly architecture,
distract one's attention from one's prayers. The
music is simple at Aix, but I hear it is excellent ;'
and he pressed me to go with him in the morning,
saying that I would be able to appreciate the glass
better during the service than afterwards.

'The purples you speak of must be wonderful
when there is a prayer in the heart, but I cannot
pray in a church, Edward.*

The folk were coming out when I arrived, but
Edward was not among them, and I feared that my
opportunity was lost of learning something definite
about architecture. He might, however, be in the
church, and was discovered after a long search at^the
end of a pew, in a distant corner, still praying heavily.
Reluctant to interrupt him, I stood watching,
touched by his piety. He crossed himself, came
out of the pew, genuflected before the altar, and

174 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

hastened towards me, now ready to explain the
difference between the Romanesque and the Gothic,
and that day I learned that the Romanesque windows
are round and the Gothic pointed.

It is always interesting to add to one's store of
information ; all the simple facts of the world are
not known to everybody ; and when Edward had told
me that the cathedral at Aix bore traces of both
styles, we went to study the stained glass, stopping
before a large window, the beauty of which, he said,
filled him with enthusiasm for the genius of the
thirteenth century.

^ But, my dear Edward, I'm sure that is a modern
window.'

Whereupon he blazed out. He respected my
judgment, but not about stained glass, nor about
architecture, and he reminded me that five minutes
before I did not know the difference between the
Gothic and the Romanesque.

' That is quite true ; all the same, I know that
window to be modern ;' and after a heated argument
we went in search of a beadle, who produced a
guide-book and a little English ; Edward produced
a little German, and between the three — guide-book,
German-English, and English-German — it was estab-
lished beyond doubt that the window was exactly six
years old.

But let no one conclude that this story is told in
order to show that dear Edward is one of the nine
hundred and ninety and nine who cannot distinguish
between the thirteenth century and a modern imita-
tion of it. Were the story told for this purpose
I should be a false friend, and, what is worse, a

AVE . 1T5

superficial writer. The story is told in order to
show Edward when the fog descends upon him.
His comprehension is never the same. There is
always a little mist about; sometimes it is no more
than a white, evanescent mist sufficient to dim the
outlines of things, making them seem more beautiful ;
sometimes the mist thickens into yellow fog through
which nothing is seen. It trails along the streets
of his mind, filling every alley, and then the fog
lifts and pinnacles are seen again. He is like
Ireland, the country he came from ; sometimes a
muddling fog, sometimes a deUcious mist with a
ray of light striking through ; and that is why he
is the most delightful of travelling companions. One
comes very soon to the end of a mind that thinks
clearly, but one never comes to the end of Edward.

After the cathedral we went to the picture-gallery,
and I remember a number of small rooms — hung with
pictures, of course, since it was a picture-gallery — and
going down these with Edward, and being stopped
suddenly by the sight of one picture so beautiful that
all the others are forgotten.

^ Who can have painted it ? Let us stand here —
don't go near it ; let us try to work it out.'

We stood a long time admiring one of the most
beautiful pieces of painting in the world, unable to
suggest the name of a painter — a picture, let us say,
twenty-four by thirty-six (remember, it is ten or a
dozen years since I have seen it !) painted on canvas
or on a panel ; for aught I know it may be painted
on copper ; but if I have forgotten the details that
interest the bric-a-brac hunter, I have not forgotten
the painting. But no more than this will I say about

176 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

it — that it is not by Honderhoker nor by Cuyp, who
painted barn-door fowls occasionally, nor by Snyder.
Its brilliant beauty is beyond the scope of their
palettes. Shall I satisfy the curiosity of the reader,
or shall I excite it by concealing the name ? Excite
it by telling him to be sure to stop at Aix-la-Chapelle
on his way to Bayreuth to see the most beautiful
cock that ever trod a hen on a dunghill — a glowing,
golden bird.

VI

A long train journey awaited us (and Edward
insists on travelling second-class, however hot the
weather may be), and all the way to Maintz the day
grew hotter and hotter, the carriage narrower and
narrower, and Edward's knees longer and longer.
Our carriage was filled with large-bellied Germans,
and whenever the train stopped, and any of our
travelling-companions got out, other Germans, as
large-bellied as those who left us, climbed in,
followed by their Frauen — swaying, perspiring German
females, hugely-breasted, sweating in their muslin
dresses, and tediously good-humoured. It was
necessary to find places for the new arrivals and
their luggage, and all the way to Maintz it seemed
to me that Edward was being asked to remove his
luggage, and that I was helping him to lift his
valise into the rack or out of it.

The cathedral is in red brick — rose-coloured domes
upon a blue sky — and it is said to be of very ancient
date ; whether Gothic or Romanesque I cannot re-
member. Edward seemed loath to express an opinion.

AVE 177

and he questioned me regarding the probable age of
certain walls, but not with a view to tempting me
into a trap, and so repair his own mistakes with mine ;
he is far too good-natured for that. I should like to
have shown off; faire la roue is natural to every
human being ; but fearing to lose my newly-acquired
prestige by a mistake, I assured Edward that Maintz
cathedral was ' all right/ and hurried him off to catch
the boat, anxious to get away, for Maintz is a pompous
town — imitation French, white streets with tall blue
roofs, and some formal gardens along the river.
We felt as if we were being roasted. The Rhine
itself did not look cooler than molten lead, and we
waited, limping over the burning cobble-stones and
asphalt, till our boat turned in, our intention being
to ascend the Rhine as far as the boats go.

A couple of hours of Rhenish scenery, however,
tamed our enthusiasm, and I sought Edward out
among the passengers, feeling that I must tell him at
once that I had discovered Rhenish scenery to be
entirely opposed to my temperament. As he wished
me to see Lorelei, there was nothing for it but to
remain on deck until the boat had passed the Rhine
Maiden's Rock. The harpist and the fiddler whom we
had on board might have attempted to play some
of the Rhine music ; they might at least have played
the motifs, but they continued to scrape out their
waltzes as we steamed over the very spot where
Alberich had robbed the Maidens of the Fairy Gold.

' We are in the country of Giinther and Hagen.
It must have looked better in those days than it
does now ; otherwise Siegfried would not have left
Brunnhilde.'

1 78 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' Do you really think the Rhine so ugly ?'
* Edward ! mile after mile of ugly, shapeless hills,
disfigured by ruins of castles in which one would fain
believe that robber-barons once lived, but one knows
in one's heart that they were only built to attract
tourists. And to make the hills seem still more
ugly, vines have been planted everywhere, and I
know of nothing more unpicturesque than a vineyard.
The beauty of a swelling wheat-field is obvious to
everybody, and the lesser beauty of fields of oats,
barley, and rye. I can admire a field of mustard,
though I doubt if it would find its way more easily
into a picture than a zebra or a Swiss chalet. I love
sainfoin and clover, and do not turn up my nose at
cabbages ; a potato-field in flower is a beautiful sight ;
much can be said in favour of mangolds, mangold-
wurzels ; parsnips and turnip-tops are leathery, but
under certain skies they present a pleasant variation
in the landscape. A hop-country is one of the most
beautiful things in the world, but vines are abhorrent,
— not for any moral reasons ; I appreciate good wine
with difficulty, but I'm not a teetotaller.'
^ Look ; the other bank isn't so ugly.'
^ It is higher and steeper, and there are trees.
But trees in Germany seem to lose their beauty ;
they clothe the hillside like gigantic asparagus.'

At that moment a castle rose up through the trees,
seemingly built upon the top of a crag, and we
learned from one of the officers on board that it
belonged to a certain German baron who spent some
months of every year in it ; and we wondered how he
reached it, without experiencing, however, the
slightest desire to visit him and his German family.

AVE 179

'There's Boppart/ Edward said. ' We'll stop
there.'

My heart answered yes, for my heart is full of
memories of Boppart, a charming little village on the
banks of the river, where we dine on a balcony, and,
with a bottle of Rhine wine on the table and the
thought of the bottle that will follow in our minds,
the hours dream themselves away. We awake at
midnight as from fairyland. We have been in fairy-
land, for on Boppart' s balcony we leave the casual
and inferior interests of our daily lives to mingle
with Gods and Goddesses. The story of The Ring
IS told there by him that knows it best, amid pensive
attitudes and minds uplifted to Valhalla ; and while
the telling the August dusk dies on the river, and
the song of the river is heard at last coming up
through the darkness.

All trains stop at Boppart, and Edward discovered
a good one soon after midday; so we should have
plenty of time to climb the hillside and visit the
church, which we did, and found it to be a straight,
stiff building with flying buttresses, fine in a way,
built in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, when
every building was beautiful . . . even in Germany.
And when Edward had completed his inspection of
the church we wandered about the hillside, finding
ourselves at last in some shady gardens, where we had
no right to stray. We shall never see those gardens
again, but the dim green shade of the trees and the
long grass are pleasant to remember. And it was
pleasant to lie there for an hour, out of the way of
the light. We who live under grey skies in the
North always cry out for the light, but in the South

1 80 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

we follow the shade ; and I should have been glad
to have lingered all the afternoon in that garden, but
Edward was anxious to get on to Nuremberg.

The journey is a long and tedious one, and we did
not arrive there before something had arisen as much
like a quarrel as anything that could happen between
me and Edward. A quarrel with Edward is so un-
thinkable that the reader will pardon me for telling
what happened. We were both tired of talking,
tired of holding our tongues, tired of thinking, and
for some forgotten reason, the conversation had
turned on newspapers, on their circulation, and how
they may profit the owner through the advertisements
if the circulation does not pass beyond a certain figure.

^ But as the circulation increases the loss dis-
appears.'

' Not, Edward, if a single number costs more to
produce than the price it is sold at. The illustrated
paper we are speaking of is sold at sixpence. The
editor makes a large profit if he sells twenty thousand,
because if he can guarantee that circulation he can,
let us say, get two thousand pounds of advertise-
mients — the maximum that he can get ; and as the
paper costs sixpence-halfpenny to produce, you see, it
will not do for him to sell twenty-five thousand or
thirty thousand.'

' But that is just what I don't see. I've always
heard that if you sell enough '

' That is when the cost of producing a single copy
does not exceed the price at which it is sold.'

Edward remained recalcitrant, and after many
efforts on my part to explain, he begged me not to
lose my temper.

AVE 181

' I can't see it.'

' The fog, the fog/ I said to myself, ' is descending
upon him. And never was it so thick as it is at this
moment between Boppart and Nuremberg.'

And it lasted all the evening, thickening during
dinner, no sign of a pinnacle anywhere. It was not
Until next morning after breakfast that one began to
appear.

^ That illustrated paper,' Edward began.

' You aren't going to open that discussion again,'
I replied, interrupting him.

^ It was to tell you that I have been thinking over
your argument, and that I see it all quite plainly
now. There are times when my mind is denser than
at others.'

It is charming to hear a man admit that he is
wrong — nothing is more winning ; and we went away
together, talking of Achilles and the tortoise, an
admirable fallacy, resting, it appears, upon a false
analogy which no one is able to detect. Edward,
however, had been able to unravel the other problem,
and we were going to see the old town. But on our
way there we were stopped by the most beautiful
fountain in the world, to which all the folk come to
draw water. The drawing of the water is accom-
plished by some strange medieval device which I
cannot remember, and which if I did would be
difficult to describe : a grooved iron (one cannot call
it a pipe) is tipped over, it fills with water and then
it is tipped back again, and the water runs out very
prettily.

It surprises me that I am not able to produce a
better deecription of an object that delighted and

182 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

interested me for quite a long while, compelling me
not only to drink when I was not thirsty, but forcing
me to beg Edward to do likewise. He besought me
to leave that fountain, but its beauty fascinated me.
I returned to it again and again, and I remember
yielding at last, not to exhortations that we should
be late for dinner, nor to the strength of his arm,
but to the eighteen stone to which that arm is
attached. It dragged me away, I vowing all the
while that I should never go to Nuremberg without
finding time to run down to see that fountain.
But the last time I was in Nuremberg, two years
ago, the fountain was not to be discovered, at least
by me, and after walking till we were both footsore,
the friend who set out with me to seek it declared
it to be a dream-fountain. We took a carriage and
questioned the driver. He pretended to understand
and drove us to see a number of sights, and among
them were some fountains, but not my fountain
— mere parish pumps. My friend jeered the more.
' A dream-fountain ! A dream-fountain !' So I
insisted on returning to the hotel to ask the way to
the fountain from the hotel-porter. A Continental
porter or concierge can understand trains and
luggage in all languages, and when he has learned
to do this his intellect is exhausted, like one who has
won a fellowship at Trinity. And our man, to save
himself from the suspicion that was beginning to fall
upon him that he did not understand us, said the
fountain had been abolished two years ago, an open
fountain being considered injurious to the health of
the town. It may be so. But I have much difficulty
in believing that the Nuremberg folk would permit

AVE 183

such a vandalism, and shall be glad if some reader
who knows German will inquire the matter out when
he is next in Nuremberg, and publish, if he discovers
it, the shameful order for the destruction of the
fountain.

The old citadel crowns the hill, and around many
devious streets a panting horse dragged us, through
the burning afternoon, up to the castle gateway.
We were shown the famous virgin of Nuremberg,
and all the strange instruments that the ecclesiastics
of the Middle Ages devised for the torment of their
religious enemies, together with the stuffed repre-
sentation of a robber-baron, said to have harried the
town-folk for years, he and twenty-five companions.
The tale runs that one day he failed to make good
his retreat to his cave amid the woods, and was
taken prisoner. The custom of the town was that
a man condemned to death should be allowed what-
ever enjojrment he might choose on the eve of his
execution ; a last bite of the cake of earthly satisfac-
tions should be his. The baron loved his horse, and
declared that he chose to ride him through the
town. No one divined a ruse in this choice. The
baron was free for the time being, and putting spurs
to his horse he jumped over the parapet into the
moat, and swam the animal across it, and so escaped.
But at the end of three years he was again taken
prisoner ; this time the usual gratification allowed
to prisoners was refused him ; he was put forthwith
on the wheel, and his limbs broken one by one with
an iron bar. And looking at the wheel, I said to
Edward :

'You wouldn't have been broken, but I should.

184 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

had I lived in those times ; and Luther would not
have escaped had it not been for the Elector of
Saxony.'

We discovered the great monk's portrait in the
museum, and a splendid piece of portraiture it is,
Cranach fixing upon our minds for ever a bluff face
with a fearless eye in it. We looked into the panel
tenderly, thinking of the stormy story of his life —
quite a little panel, eight or ten by six or seven inches,
containing but the head and shoulders, and so like
Luther ! Those fifteenth-century painters convince
us, giving in a picture a likeness more real than any
photograph, and doing this because they were able
to look at nature innocently. We wondered at his
Adam and Eve, two little panels, hanging close by,
single figures, covering with their hands ^ certain
ridiculous but necessary organs,* in modern pictures
generally hidden by ' somebody else's elbow, or a
flying gull, or a flying towel, or what not.' Modern
painting is uninteresting because there is no inno-
cency left in it. Blessed are the innocent, for theirs
is the kingdom of Art !

Edward admired these nudes as much as I did,
and when he said it was not a painter's but a
photographer's studio that shocked him, I muttered
to myself : ' Pinnacles ! pinnacles !' On this we went
down the galleries, discovering suddenly a beautiful
portrait by Boucher, and the question whether his
vision was an innocent one arose, and it was dis-
cussed before a portrait of a beautiful woman, looking
like some rare flower or a bird — only a head and
shoulders, with all Boucher's extraordinary handi-
craft apparent in the dress she wears — a cynical

AVE 185

thing, for the painter has told her story lightly,
gracefully, almost casually.

And I had to admit that however much we may
admire him^ we cannot describe his vision as being
as innocent as Cranach's.

All the same, these are the two painters who make
Nuremberg rememberable, and we left it full of
curiosity to see a town about sixty miles south of
Bayreuth, having heard that it is to-day exactly as it
was in the fifteenth century, less changed than any
other town in Germany. The journey there was a
wearisome one, for our train shed some of its German
peasantry at every station and gathered up more, and
it carried many creels of geese, and these cackled
monotonously, while a very small engine drew us
with so much difficulty that we feared it would break
down at the next ascent. But it reached Rothenburg
at the end of a long afternoon, blond as the corn-
fields through which we had come, and I said :

^ We might have walked, driving the geese before
us. We should have arrived in time for supper
instead of arriving in time for dinner.'

The station is about a mile distant from the town,
whither the hotel omnibus took us, and having
ordered dinner to be ready in an hour's time, we
went out to see the streets, Edward, as usual, seeking
the church, which was found at last. But I did not
follow him into it, the evening being so fine that it
seemed to me shameful to miss any moment of it.
Never were the streets of Rothenburg more beautiful
than that evening, not even when the costumes of
old time moved through them. A more beautiful
sky never unfolded, and girls, passing with alert steps

186 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

and roguish glances, answering their admirers with
sallies of impertinent humour, are always delightful.
They and the sky absorbed my attention, for it is
natural for me to admire what is permanent, whereas
Edward is attached to the transitory. He had just
come out of the church, where he had discovered
a few bits of old glass, and he was talking of these
eagerly, and congratulating himself that we had seen
everything there was to be seen in Rothenburg, and
would be able to go away next morning. His hurry
to leave shocked me not a little. It seemed indeed
like an insult to go into a town, look about one, and
rush away again without bestowing a thought upon
the people who lived in it. So did I speak to him,
telling him that while he had been poking about in
the church I had been thinking of a sojourn of six
months in Rothenburg in some pretty lodging
which one could easily find to-morrow, and the
attendance of a sweet German girl. From her it
would be possible to learn a little German, rejoicing
in her presence in the room while she repeated a
phrase, so that we might catch the sound of the
words. At the end of the day it would be plea'sant
to wander with my few mouthfuls of German into
the fields, and make new acquaintances. The
whole of my life would not be spent in Rothen-
burg, but enough of it to acquire a memory of
Rothenburg. But Edward did not understand me.
All he cared to study were the monuments and the
public buildings, and from them he could learn all
there was worth knowing about the people that had
made them, ' all people being more or less disagree-
able to him,' I said to myself ; ' especially women,' I

AVE 187

added, noticing that he averted his eyes from the girls
that passed in twos and threes ; and as if desirous to
distract my attention from them, he called upon me
to admire a very wide, red-tiled roof, and some old
lanterns hung on a chain across the street. These
things and the hillside over against our window
interested Edward more than any man or woman
could ; quaint little houses went up the hillside like
the houses in Diirer's pictures. There are quite a
number of them in his picture of ^ Fortune.' Every-
body knows the woman who stands on the world
holding a chalice in one hand ; she does not hold it
straight, as she would have done if the painter had
been an inferior artist : Diirer leaned it a little
towards the spectator. Over one arm hangs some
curious bridle, at least in the engraving it seems to
be a bridle with many bits and chains ; and every one
of these and the reins are drawn with a precision
which gives them beauty. Diirer's eyes saw very
clearly, and they had to see clearly, and steadily,
to interest us in that great rump and thigh.
One wonders who the model was, and why Diirer
chose her. Degas more than once drew a creature
as short-legged and as bulky, and the model he
chose was the wife of a butcher in the rue La
Rochefoucauld. The poor creature arrived in all her
finery, the clothes which she wore when she went to
Mass on Sunday, and her amazement and her dis-
appointment are easily imagined when Degas told
her he wanted her to pose for the naked. She was
accompanied by her husband, and knowing her to be
not exactly a Venus de Milo, he tried to dissuade
Degas, and Edward, who has had little experience

188 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL.'

of life, expressed surprise that a husband should not
guard his wife's honour more vigilantly ; but he
laughed when I told that Degas had assured the
butcher that the erotic sentiment was not strong in
him, and he liked my description of the poor, deformed
creature standing in front of a tin bath, gripping
her flanks with both hands — his bias towards eccle-
siasticism enables him to sympathize with the Middle
Ages, and its inherent tendency to regard women as
inferior, and to keep them out of sight.

' It's strange,' I said to myself, * to feel so different
from one's fellows, to be exempt from all interest
and solicitude for the female, to be uninfluenced by
that beauty which sex dowers her with, and which
achieves such marvels in the heart. We go to our
mistresses as to Goddesses, and the peasant, though
he does not think of Goddesses, thinks of the wife
waiting for him at his fireside, with a tender, kindly
emotion of which the labour of the fields has not
been able to rob him. It's wonderful to come into
the world, unconcerned with the other sex, Edward.'

' You think I hate women. You're quite wrong.
I don't hate women, only they seem absurd. When
I see them going along the streets together they
make me laugh ; their hats and feathers, everything
about them.'

' We come into the world, Edward, with different
minds ; that is a thing we can't remember too often.
What makes you laugh enchants me. Nature has
given us companions as different from us as the birds
of the air, and for that I shall always feel grateful to
Nature.'

And then, just for the sake of expressing myself,

AVE 189

though I knew that Edward would never under-
stand, I told him that the coming of a woman into
the room was like a delicious change of light.

'Without women we should be all reasonable,
Edward ; there would be no instinct, and a reason-
able world — what would it be like ? A garden
without flowers, music without melody.'

But these comparisons did not satisfy me, and
seeking for another one I hit upon this, and it
seemed to express my meaning better : without
women the world would be like a palette set in
raw umber and white. Women are the colouring
matter, the glaze the old painters used. Edward
wanted information as to the method employed by
the old painters, but I preferred to develop my
theme, telling him that a mother's affection for her
daughter was quite different from her affection for her
son, and that when a father looks upon his daughter
he hears the love that he bore her mother echoed
down the years, and muttering the old saw ' God is
Love,' I said that it would be much truer to invert
the words, considering religion as a development of
the romance which begins on earth.

To one who realizes hell more clearly than
heaven, and to one so temperamentally narrow as
my friend, it must have been disagreeable to hear
me say that religion has helped many to raise sex
from earth to heaven ; to instance Teresa as an
example, saying how she has, in hundreds of pages
of verse and prose, told her happy fate, that, by
resigning an earthly, she has acquired an eternal
Bridegroom.

It was in the second or the third century that

190 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

the Church became aware that heaven without a
virgin could not commend itself to man's imagina-
tion, but the adoration of the Virgin, said to be
encouraged by the Catholic Church, has never been
realized by any saint that I know of — not even by
St. Bernard. Nor is this altogether to be wondered
at ; the Virgin is always represented with a baby in
her arms ; motherhood is her constant occupation,
and I can imagine Edward, to whom all exhibition
of sex is disagreeable, being not a little shocked at
the insistence of certain painters on the breast, the
nipple, and the gluttonous lips of the child. The
exhibition which women make of their bosoms at
dinner-parties has always struck him as somewhat
ludicrous. ' Full-blown roses,' he used to call them,
reminding him of the flower-maidens in Klinsor's
garden.

'Who could not tempt Parsifal, and would not
tempt you, Edward. But would you have yelled as
he did when Kundry tried to kiss him ?'

By one of those intricate and elaborate analogies
of thought which surprise us, Parsifal took me back
to my chambers in King's Bench Walk, and I told
Edward how, when I was writing Esther Waters, it
was a help to me to gossip with my laundress after
breakfast, a pious woman of the Nonconformist type,
like Esther herself. Almost any topical event pro-
vided a basis for ethical discussion ; a divorce case
best of all, and the O'Shea divorce and Parnell's
complicity seemed to me to be the very tiling. But
it was impossible to engage her attention, and soon
it was evident that she was much more interested
in a certain murder case — a Mrs. Percy who had

AVE 191

murdered another woman's baby, and hidden it in a
perambulator. It was the perambulator that gave
the story the touch of realism that appealed to my
laundress's imagination. But the murder of a baby
offering little scope for ethical discussion, I took
advantage of the first break in the flow of her conversa-
tion to remind her that the crimes were not parallel.

^ Don't you think so, sir ?' And I can still see her
rolling her apron about her arms. ^ It comes to the
same thing in the end, sir, for when one party goes
away with the other party, the party that's left
behind dies.'

Her view of life interested me ; the importance of
desertion is greater among the lower classes than it
is among the upper ; but it could not be doubted
that she was telling me what she had heard from the
parson rather than any view of her own, drawn from
her experience. Therefore, to get at herself, to force
her into direct personal expression, I said :

'You can't seriously maintain, Mrs. Millar, that
adultery is as great a crime as murder ?'

Still winding her coarse apron round her arms, she
stood looking at me, her eyes perplexed and am-
biguous, and I thought of how I might move her out
of her position.

' You know your Bible, Mrs. Millar ? You know
the story of the woman of Samaria? And you
remember that Christ forbade the people to stone
her, and told her to sin no more ? . . . Mrs. Millar,
you can't deny that Christ said that . . . and you
are a Christian woman.'

' Yes, sir, he did say that ; but you must remember
he was only a bachelor.'

192 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

I think I fell back in my chair and looked at my
laundress in amazement,, until she began to wonder
what was the matter, and she must have wondered
the more when I told her she had said something
which I should never forget.

' But what I said is true, isn't it ?' she answered
shyly.

' Yes, it's quite true, only nobody ever thought of
it before, Mrs. Millar. It's true that the married
man who brings home his wages at the end of the
week is the one that understands life, and you are
quite right to condone Christ's laxity in not pro-
nouncing a fuller condemnation. You are quite
right. The bachelor may not attain to any full com-
prehension of the 'ome.'

She left the room, confused and wondering at my
praise, thinking that she had answered as everybody
would have answered, and conscious of having
expressed national sentiments.

Dear Irish Edward was shocked by Mrs. Millar's
theology at first, but hearing that she was a pious
woman, he roused a little, and lest he might reproach
Protestantism for its married clergy, I reminded him
that Rome still retained married clergy in Greece.
His answer was that he was sure the Greek priests
abstained from their wives before their ministrations,
an answer that rejoiced my heart exceedingly, and
set me thinking that the Western mind has never
been able to assimilate, or even understand the ideas
that Christianity brought from the East. Our notions
of the value of chastity are crude enough, and the
Brahmin would lift his eyes in silent contempt on
hearing from a priest that a man, if he lives

AVE 193

chastely, though he be a glutton and a drunkard,
will never descend to so low a stage of materialism
as he that lives with a woman . . . even if his life
be strict. The oddest of all animals is man ; in
him, as in all other animals, the sexual interest is
the strongest ; yet the desire is inveterate in him to
reject it ; and I am sure that Christ's words that in
heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in
marriage have taken a great weight off Edward's
mind, and must have inspired in him many prayers
for a small stool in heaven. If by any chance he
should not get one (which is, of course, unthinkable)
and finds himself among the damned, his plight will
be worse than ever, for I believe no theologian has
yet decided that the damned do not continue to
commit the sins in hell which they were damned for
committing on earth.

Edward always leads me to think of the Middle
Ages, but he also leads me to think sometimes of the
ages that preceded these. There are survivals of
pagan rites in Christianity, and in every man there is
a survival of the pagan that preceded him ; paganism
is primordial fire, and it is always breaking through the
Christian crust. We know of the eruption that took
place in Italy in the sixteenth century, and, though
the pagan Edward lies in durance vile, Edward is, in
common with every other human being, no more
than a pagan overlaid with Christianity. If three
men meet in The Heather Field to speak of the
misfortune that comes to a man when he allows
himself to be inveigled by woman's beauty, they
express, every one of them, a craving for some higher
beauty, and this craving finds beautiful expression in

194 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

the scene between Garden Tyrrell and his brother ;
and the same craving for some beauty, half imagined,
something which the world has lost, is the theme of
Maeve. She renounces earthly love, and dreams of
a hero of Celtic romance, and in her last sleep he
visits her at the head of a wonderful assemblage.
Edward's paganism finds fuller expression in The
Enchanted Sea than in any other play. In the
depths of green sea-water, we catch sight of the
face of the beautiful boy, Guy, whose drowning
causes Lord Mark such blinding despair that he
walks like one enchanted into the sea, and is carried
away by the waves. More in this play than in the
others do we catch a glimpse of the author's earlier
soul, for every soul proceeds out of paganism ; only
in Edward the twain are more distinct ; neither has
absorbed the other, both exist contemporaneously
and side by side — a Greek marble may be found
enfolded in a friar's frock.

VII

Though we could find nothing of interest to say
about Rothenburg, we did not wish to leave the
town in a slighting silence, so I asked Edward if he
thought that living among medieval aspects in-
fluenced the children playing, and if it were possible
to feel sure that the Rothenburgian mind could
be as effective in modern life as the Berlin, or the
Carlsbad, or the Dresden? Edward would like to
have indulged in the dream that life in a medieval
town could only produce a beautiful mind, and a
long discussion sprang up between us, I maintain-

AVE 195

ing that it were better to live in a modern town
like Diisseldorf, in which there is only one picture —
Holbein's ' Holy Family ' — than to live in a medieval
town like Rothenburg, where there is nothing but
roofs and old lanterns, Edward declaring that art is
traditional, and where there is no tradition there can
be no art, and, though it was not likely that Rothen-
burg would produce an impressionist painter —

'There is no saying that Rothenburg might not
produce another Cranach, or, better still, another
Luther. And you would not mind sacrificing some
red roofs to save Europe from another heresy.'

Edward did not seem to like my remark, though
he could not deny its truth. It proved me, he said,
to be a shallow nature, and whenever I was being
cornered in an argument I tried to banter my way
out.

' Continue, my dear friend ; but I don't see your
point.'

'Nor do I see yours,* he answered — I thought
somewhat testily. ' Rothenburg is a Gothic town,
and you don't approve of the Gothic. Is your
proposal to turn the people out of Rothenburg and
keep the place as a museum ? You wouldn't destroy
it, I suppose?'

' Destroy it ! No,' I answered. ' But if it can be
shown that medieval surroundings are not altogether
a healthy influence upon children, do you not think
that some opportunity should be given to them for
contrasting the old with the new, if some part of the
town, for instance, were modernized V

It is possible that the reader will think that I was
rather tiresome that day, but so was the train, and

196 * HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

to while away the time there was no resource but to
raise the question whether Rothenburg would have
produced the same Edward as Galway. But the
question did not succeed in provoking any of those
psychological admissions that make him so agreeable
a travelling companion. He was not in a com
municative mood that afternoon, and to draw him
out I was obliged to remind him that Bavaria is Pro-
testant and Catholic, and strangely intermixed, for
the two sects use the same church — service at
eleven and Mass at twelve.

' And you might have been brought up a Protestant,
Edward, or half and half.'

A grave look came into his face, and he answered
that if he hadn't been brought up a Catholic, and
severely, he might have gone to pieces altogether ;
and I sat pondering the very interesting question
whether Edward would have done better as a Pro-
testant than as a Catholic. Every man knows
himself better than anyone else can know him, and
Edward seemed to think that he needed a stay.
Perhaps so, but there is a vein of thought — perhaps
I should say of feeling — in him which Catholicism
seems to me to have restrained, and which Protes-
tantism, I like to think, would have encouraged. The
effect of religion upon character was worth con-
sidering, and as there was nothing else to do in the
train I set myself to think the matter out.

But it is hard to set bounds on one's thoughts,
and mine suddenly turned from Edward, and I found
myself wondering if the great genius towards whom
we were going could have written TV Ring in
Rothenburg. Now this was a question which had to

AVE 197

be put to Edward, and at once, and he applied
himself to it, pointing out that Bayreuth was nearly
as quaint and slumberous as Rothenburg, yet Wagner
had written part of The Ring in Ba3n:euth. True
that he had written parts of it all over Europe ; some
of it was written in Switzerland, some in Italy, some
even in Dorset Square.

' But if he had been bom in Rothenburg and had
never left it '

The noise of the train prevented me from catching
his answer, and leaning back in my seat, I fell to
thinking of the extraordinary joy and interest that
Bayreuth had been in my life ever since Edward and
I went there for the first time at the beginning
of the 'nineties, after hearing a performance of The
Ring in London.

It was the horns announcing the Rhine that re-
awakened my musical conscience. The melodies ot
my own country I had never heard. Offenbach and
Herve stirred me to music when we went to live in
London, and I carried to Paris all their little tunes in
my head. Painters are often more or less musicians :
one drifted into our studio, and he introduced me to
the Circle des Merlitons, where I heard Haydn,
Beethoven, Mozart. Classical music ousted operette ;
and as long as there were musical friends about,
music was followed with as much interest as could be
spared from the art of painting. But when the
maladministration of my affairs called me from Paris
to Ireland musical interests disappeared with my
French friends ; they were driven underground
when agrarian outrages compelled me to consider
the possibility of earning my living. The only way

198 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

open to me was literature, so I went to London to
learn to write, as has been told in an earlier chapter
and in an earlier book.

In London literature and poverty absorbed me for
several years, and I had forgotten music altogether
when Edward asked me if I would go to hear The
Rkinegold. I had consented, regretting my promise
almost as soon as it was given, for Wagner was
reputed as unmelodious and difficult to all except the
most erudite, and fearing that I should be bored for
several hours by sounds which would mean nothing
to me, I began to seek for excuses, and to ask
Edward if he could not dispose of the ticket he had
taken for me. He could not do this, and as my
plaints did not cease, he said to me, as we walked up
King's Bench Walk :

' Well, there's no use your coming. All my
pleasure will be spoilt.'

The dark theatre reminded me of the rooms at
exhibitions in which bad pictures are exhibited, no
light showing anywhere except on the picture itself;
but the moment the horns gave out the theme of
the Rhine my attention was arrested, and a few
minutes after it was clear that new birth awaited me.
A day or two later I heard Tristan, and it so happened
that there were performances at Bayreuth that year,
so Edward and I went there together, and we have
gone there many times since, each visit awakening
every little musical faculty in me, and developing it ;
and though nothing can be created, a seed can be
developed prodigiously, and a taste likewise, if the soil
be fertile and circumstances fortunate. They were
certainly favourable to my picking up this lost

AVE 199

interest. Edward is a true melomaniac, loving all
good music, and ready to travel anywhere to hear
music ; then there is Dujardin, who is always talking
to me about music ; his friends are musicians, and
whenever I go to Paris I am with musicians, talking
about music when not listening to it, so, even if my
love of music were less than it is, in self-defence
it would be necessary for me to cultivate it. And in
an atmosphere of music my life began to unfold again.
Life should continue to unfold, and it will be time
enough for Death to lower the banner when the last
stitch of canvas is reached.

Now I was going to Bayreuth again, determined
to understand The Ring a little better than heretofore.
But was this possible ? I can learn until somebody
tries to teach me ; all the same every man is at
tether, and lying back in my seat in the train from
Rothenburg, a little weary of conversation with
Edward, I relinquished myself to regrets that my ear
only allows me to hear the surface of the music, the
motives which float up to the top, the transforming
effect of a chord upon a melodic phrase. I can hear
that Wagner's melodies arise naturally one out of the
other. If I could not hear that every melody in
Tristan rises out of the one that preceded it, Wagner
would have written in vain, so far as I was concerned.
My ear is but rudimentary, an ear that will seem like
no ear to those who can hear the whole orchestra
together and in detail, seeing in their mind's eye
the notes that every instrument is playing. It is
well to have their ears, but mere ear will not carry
anybody very far; to appreciate music an intelli-
gence is necessary; and those who are not gifted

200 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

with too much ear can hear the music oftener than
those who can read it. Dukas told me last year^ in
Paris, that he would not go to hear some music with
me because he had read it, and once he had read a
piece of music there was nothing left in it for him.

Wagner is so essentially human that there is
something in his art for everybody, something in
his music for me, and a great deal for musicians ;
and besides the music, some part of which every-
body except the tone-deaf can hear, there are the
dramas, wonderful in conception and literary art ;
for him who can see beyond the text there are scenes
in The Ring as beautiful as any in Shakespeare, for
sure ; and Dujardin, were he pressed to state his
real feeling on the subject, would affirm that nothing
has been written in words as moving as the scene
when Briinnhilde goes to tell Siegmund, whom she
finds watching over the sleeping Sieglinde, that he
has been summoned to Walhalla. ' It is not the
music,' Dujardin cries — ' no, it is not the music that
counts in the scene, but the words. The music is
beautiful, of course it is — it couldn't be otherwise ;
but Wagner was aware of the beauty of the poetry,
and allowed it to transpire.'

One can think about Dujardin and Wagner for
ever and ever without the time appearing long ; it
passes without one feeling it ; and I had forgotten a
very important matter about which there had been a
great deal of correspondence, till I was suddenly
reminded of it by a slackening in the speed of the
train.

At the time I am writing of, Bayreuth was an un-
comfortable town to live in ; it has changed a good

AVE 201

deal within the last ten years, though it is still
without a large hotel full of plate-glass and ferns and
Liberty silks, with tennis-grounds and golf-links. In
the twentieth century one gets better food in the
restaurants than one did in the nineteenth, and bath-
rooms have begun to appear, and the fly-haunted
privy is nearly extinct. And this was the important
matter that the slackening of the train's speed had
reminded me of. We had written many letters, and
had many interviews with the agent who apportions
out the lodgings, and my last words had been to
him, ' A clean privy !' He had promised that he
would see to it, but from the direction in which
the coachman was driving us, it would seem that
the desirable accommodation was not procurable in
the town. It was Edward who noticed that our
coachman was heading straight for the country,
and standing up in the carriage, he began to
expostulate — ineffectually, however, for Edward's
German is limited and the driver only laughed,
pointing with a whip towards a hillside facing the
theatre, and there we saw a villa embowered and
overlooking a cornfield, a lodging so delightful that
I could not but feel interested in Edward's objection
to it.

'We shall be out of the way of everything,' was
all he shrieked.

' But not out of the way of the theatre !' I inter-
jected. 'We shall walk through the cornfields
to it.'

' The theatre isn't everything.'

' Everything in Bayreuth . . . surely.'

He spoke of his breakfast. He wouldn't be able

202 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

to get it. He must be near a restaurant, and the
cornfield did not appeal to his sense of the picturesque
as Rothenburg did. Despite my entreaty, he stood
up again in the carriage, and began to expostulate
with the driver again, who, however, only laughed
and pointed with his whip, pouring forth all the
while a torrent of Bavarian German which Edward
could not understand.

' How shall I stop him ?' he cried, turning to me,
who can speak no single word of German. After
mentioning this fact, I reminded him that the people
in the villa were waiting for us, and for us to go
away to the town without advising them might
prevent them from letting their lodgings. I said
this, knowing Edward's weak spot — his moral con-
science. He fell to my arrow, answering quietly that
he would willingly pay for the lodging on the hill-
side if I would only go with him to the town in
search of another. To this I consented, unwillingly, I
admit, but I consented. My unwillingness, however,
to live in the town, where all the decent lodgings had
long ago been taken, became more marked when we
were shown into a large drawing-room and two bed-
rooms, the cleanest we had ever seen in Bayreuth.

' We shall want a room in which to write The Tale
of a Town.'

The mention of his play did not seem to soften
Edward, and the landlord, an elderly man, who had
relinquished me because I knew no German at all,
attached himself to Edward — literally attached him-
self, taking him by the lappet of his coat; and I
remember how the old man drew him along with
him to the end of a passage, I following them, com-

AVE 203

pelled by curiosity. We came to a door, which the
old man threw open with a flourish, exhibiting to our
enchanted gaze a brand-new water-closet, all varnish
and cleanliness, and the pride of the old man,
who entered into a long explanation, the general
drift of which only pierced Edward's understanding,
^ He says he has redecorated the privy for us at the
special request of Mr. Schulz Curtis. But if we pay
him for his lodging !'

'No mere payment will recompense him. Re-
member, he asked you if you liked the wall-paper.
He may have spent hours choosing it.'

But, blind to all the allurements of the checkered
paper, Edward insisted on telling the landlord that
he wished to live near a restaurant where he could
get his breakfast. The German again caught him
by the lappet of his coat, and there was a pretty
German girl who knew a little English, the old man's
daughter, smiling in the doorway, about whom I had
already begun to think. But it was impossible to
dissuade Edward, and we drove with our luggage
here and there and everywhere, seeking a couple of
rooms. It would be inopportune to describe every
filthy suite of apartments that we visited ; but it is
not well, in a book of this kind, to omit any vivid
memory, and among my memories none is more
vivid than that of an iron railing dividing a sort ot
shallow area from the street in which some workmen
were drinking beer, and of the kitchen beyond it.
Uncouth women, round in the back as wash-tubs,
walked about with frying-pans in their hands, great
udders floating under blue blouses ; and we followed
a trail of inferior German cookery up a black slimy

204 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

staircase to the first landing, where a bald-headed
waiter, with large drops of sweat upon his brow,
opened a door, exhibiting for our inspection two
low - ceilinged rooms with high beds in the
corners.

' Ask him if we can have clean sheets.'

^ We have no others,' the waiter answered.

As I moved towards the doorway, I heard Edward
sapng that the rooms >vould do us very well, and
when I explained to him their disadvantages, he
answered that he would be able to get his breakfast.
^To get his breakfast!' The phrase seemed so
Irish, so Catholic, that for a moment it was impossible
to suppress my anger at Edward's unseemly indif-
ference to my sense of cleanliness and comfort, and
the women in the kitchen, the waiter, and the sheets
horrified me, even to the extent of compelling me to
tell him that I would sooner go back to England,
giving up The Ring, Parsifal

' I would sooner sleep anywhere, Edward ; in the
streets ! Let us get away. Perhaps we shall
find '

' No, you'll object to all.'

' But why, Edward, should you stay here ? You
can have breakfast at our lodging.'

' I shan't be able to get an omelette. Can't you
understand that people have habits ?'

' Habits !' I said.

And then he admitted — it seemed to me somewhat
unwillingly, no doubt because he was talking to a
heretic — that the villa under the lindens was two
miles from the chapel, and that he liked to go to
Mass in the morning.

AVE 205

' I see ; it is the magician and his house that
tempts you.'

^If you talk like that you'll make me regret I
came abroad with you.'

Butj unable to restrain myself, I added :

^The desire to have a magician always at one's
elbow is extraordinary.'

'I know the value of such talk as that/ he
growled, as we drove back to the villa, and he
seemed so much put about that he gained my
sympathy, almost to the extent of persuading me
that I, and not he, was the inconsiderate one ; and
I began to defend myself.

'It would have been impossible to eat any-
thing that came out of that kitchen. The
magician must have a very strong hold upon you
to '

Edward is so good-humoured that one cannot
resist the temptation to tease and to twit him,
though one knows that one will regret doing so
afterwards ; and, sorry already, seeing how seriously
he felt this unexpected dislocation in his habits, I
began to think how I might be kind, and, rightly or
wrongly, mentioned his play, asking him when he
would like to consider it with me. Without
answering my question, he went into his room
and began to rummage in his trunk, coming back,
however, with the manuscript, which he handed
to me.

' Now, Edward, there is the second act '

' You don't want to alter that, do you ? I thought
it the best act '

He did not seem to appreciate my criticism or to

206 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

pick up my suggestions. He was not very forth-
coming, and we went to bed early that evening.
'He'll be in a more literary humour to-morrow
morning/ I said, before going to sleep, and looked
forward to a long seance de collaboration after break-
fast. But Edward would accept no breakfast in the
house, only a cup of tea and a thin slice of bread
and butter. He refused to ask the landlord's
daughter, who attended upon us, if she could make
an omelette, for some reason which it is impossible
for me even to guess at. It would not be like him
to go without breakfast, so that he might make me
feel I had seriously inconvenienced him, and it
seemed difficult to understand why he should refuse
to breakfast in the house. The people were willing
to cook him anything he wanted. Was he such a
slave to habits that he had to breakfast in a
restaurant ? No, for when he was at home he had
to breakfast in his own house. He would say that
was different. So I was forced to fall back on the
theory that he was annoyed because he would have
to walk two miles to chapel to hear Mass. But
when he was in Galway he did not go to Mass
every morning. So why did he wish to go to Mass
every day in Bayreuth ? Why would he refuse to
discuss the question any further, saying that it
didn't matter, that it was all right, and, after
sipping his tea, steal away for the greater part of
the day, leaving me alone with The Tale of a Town ?
A s^,ance de collaboration would have passed the
morning nicely for me, and I muttered : 'He has
taken his soul out, or his soul has taken him out.
Would that his soul would betake itself to litera-

AVE 207

ture ! He has gone away without saymg a word
about The Tale of a Town'

It did not strike me until late in the afternoon that
he had gone away to avoid criticism of his play ; but
on reflection it hardly seemed that I was behoven to
accept literary sensitiveness as a reason for absence.
Yeats had told him^ and I had told him, and Lady
Gregory had told him^ that the play could not be acted
by the Irish Literary Theatre in its present form. It
would have to be altered, and at Aix-la-Chapelle,
at Boppart, and at Maintz, and in the long train
journey from Maintz to Nuremberg, he had seemed
willing to accept some of my criticism as just. Et
alors f Had he begun to examine my criticism,
picking it to pieces, arriving gradually at the con-
clusion that it was all wrong, and that his play was
all right ? Or was it that he had persuaded himself
that it were better to retain his own mistakes than
to accept my suggestions, even if they were improve-
ments ? A view of art for which a great deal may
be said when the artist has arrived at maturity of
thought and expression, but a very dangerous one
when the artist is but a beginner.

^ And Edward is a beginner, and he isn't progress-
ing,' I said, ^and may remain a beginner.' For he
came into the world a sketch, une dhauche by a great
master, and was left unfinished, whether by design
or accident it is impossible to say. A delightful
study he is ! And in the embowered villa I sat,
looking into his mind, interested in its unmapped
spaces (Australia used to interest me in much the
same manner when I was a child) until the young
girl came upstairs to tell me it was time to go to the

208 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

theatre. One knows a single word — Spielhaus. My
eyes went to the clock, the hands pointed to four, and
from four to five is the hottest hour of a summer's
day. By four the sun, blazing forth from a cloudless
sky, has sucked all the cool of the night away, and
heated unendurably every brick and tile and stone
it can strike with a ray. Even in the shady villa
under the lindens one could not think of the tall
gables in the town, the fierce sun beating on them,
or of the cobble-stones in the streets, without con-
gratulating oneself that Edward's inclinations had
been resisted. Those low-ceilinged rooms above the
kitchen would stifle on such a day, and I was able to
look back on my courage with admiration. It had
given me a splendid view of a cornfield with reapers
working in it, the sun shining on their backs — that
one straightening himself to wipe the sweat from his
brow with a ragged sleeve.

And while walking through the cornfield I re-
membered a letter to Biilow in which the Master
says : ' One thing is certain — I am not a musician,'
meaning thereby that music was only part of his
message. He tells in these words that his art
enjoined separation from the drone of daily life,
and that is why he chose Bayreuth, a small Bavarian
town difficult to get at, but not impossible to reach.
It had a train service even in Wagner's time, and
there were a sufficient number of dirty inns and
lodgings in the town to house the pilgrims.
Humanity was an open book to the Master, and the
hardships he was inflicting on his pilgrims he knew
to be for their good, for it would induce in them the
disposition of mind suitable for the reception of the

AVE 209

sacramental Ring. And while building his theatre
on the brow of the hill in the shade of the pines,
there can be no doubt that he foresaw the added
charm it would be to the pilgrim to leave the town
and plod through the glare up the long street past
the railway-station into the avenue of chestnut-trees.
He foresaw them, pausing in their ascent, leaning upon
their staves ; and the restaurant which he allowed to be
built next his theatre is a tribute to his perfect under-
standing of men, for however beautiful his music
might be he knew that none could listen to it for
five hours upon an empty belly. He liked, I am
sure, the little green-painted restaurant higher up the
hill in the orchard close, and must have gone there
himself and sat under the trees, drinking Rhenish
wine mixed with cool water from stone jars. The
Master, who thought of everything, must have fore-
seen the great charm it would be to walk through the
pine-wood, seeing beyond the red bark of the trees the
purple ranges of hills that enclose the great plain,
slope after slope rising at evening, and no one too far
distant for the eye to follow the noble shapes and all
the delicate sinuosities travelling down the skyline.
Every shape and every outline are visible between
the acts of The Valkyrie, Siegfried, and the Gbtter-
dammerung. The village standing in the middle of
the plain is often lighted by a last ray. Between
the acts an extraordinary harmony gathers ; art and
Nature abandon their accustomed strife, and with
ears filled with calm, exalted melodies, our eyes
follow the beautiful landscape in which Bayreuth
stands.

There are off-days at Ba3rreuth when there are no

210 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!*

performances, and these are pleasant days of rest,
that give us time to think of what we have heard,
and what we are going to hear, and time to stroll
about the town admiring its German life. The town
is more interesting than Rothenburg — to me at
least — for it is less archaic. One cannot imagine
oneself living in the fifteenth century, whereas one
can imagine oneself living at the end of the
eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth.
Bayreuth is out-of-date. Suranne, as the French
say. A sorrow clings about the word, it conveys
a sense of autumn, of ' the long decline of the
roses.' And there is something ghostlike in the
' out-of-date.' The great gables which show them-
selves against the blue skies at Bayreuth mean more
to me than the red-tiled roofs with the dormer
windows in Rothenburg, for I can imagine myself
born in Bayreuth, or growing up in it, and living
there, seeing the Margreave and his Court. It
would be pleasant to live under the protection of
a Margreave. One asks the name of the last, and
wonders what he was like in his Schloss, a melan-
choly building full of tall official portraits and heavy
German furniture, surrounded by gardens full of
trees in which there is artificial water and swans.
The year I am writing of the swans were followed
by a brood of cygnets, and we used to watch these,
not Edward and I, but myself and the daughter of a
great painter, one who has inherited some of the
intensity of her father's early pictures — a woman
loving music dearly, and travelling with her husband
in search of it.

It was pleasant to leave The Tale of a Town and

AVE 211

visit her, and to walk about under the sunlit trees,
or through the town, or to visit with her the old
Court Theatre, perhaps picking up Edward on the
way there and taking him along with us.

He will always go to see a building, and though
we had both visited the Court Theatre many times
before, it was pleasant to see it again, and she and
he and I together admired its pillared front and its
quaint interior, German rococo, clumsy, quaint, heavy,
but representative of the German mind. And to-
gether we admired the gilded cupids, the garlands
of flowers and the little boxes on either side of the
stage, whence the Margreave's trumpeters used to
appear to announce his arrival — a theatre not in-
tended for the populace, but for the Court, containing
only fifty or sixty stalls, beautifully designed and
comfortable withal. The gilded balconies reminded
us of drawing-rooms ; we spoke of the courtly air of
the theatre, now forbidden to the mime for many a
day. A beautiful little theatre, we said — a theatre
designed for the performance of Mozart or Gluck's
operas, and I think Edward would have given up
some performances of Parsifal to hear Gluck or
Mozart in this out-of-date theatre.

In the afternoon my friends suggested to us that
we should accompany them to a village some six or
seven miles distant, and we went there in a carriage
drawn by two long-tailed Bavarian horses, that drew
us slowly but surely out of Bayreuth along smooth
white roads, every one lined with apple-trees and
loaded with fruit. It was a wonder to us how these
trees were not despoiled by thieves, so easy would it
be to carry away the fruit by night. In England, in

212 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!*

Ireland, or in Scotland a great deal of the fruit
would certainly have been robbed, and we asked our-
selves if the Bavarian peasants are more naturally
honest than the English, or if it were mere custom
that prevented the waggoner from gathering as
many apples as he pleased. The lady's husband,
who is a politician, suggested that these wayside
trees belonged to the community, and he is no doubt
right ; and we accepted his explanation that the
honesty of the Bavarian is to be found in the fact
that everybody shared in the fruit, and this being
so, it was nobody's interest to strip the trees.

Behold the trees, and the long undivided plain
stretching away to the foot of the hills, without
wall or hedge, and we asking ourselves how do the
peasants distinguish between the different farms,
and somebody telling how one of his farmers had
called another to admire a fence he had put up
between their lands. ' I'd like the fence, aye, twice
as well, if thee 'ad not taken in some six or seven
inches of my land.' In our appreciation of the
German landscape there isTto be reckoned our dis-
appointment at seeing nowhere beautiful English
trees — ash, elm, beech and oak — only the pine, and
we, being tree-lovers, think the pine a tedious tree, if
it can be called a tree ; it isn't in our apprehension
of one, only being intended by Nature for what the
French call hois charpentier. No man would care to
sit under a pine (and a woman still less), needles
underfoot and needles overhead. To us English folk
the beauty of a wood is as much in the underwoods
as in the tall trees, and the pine allows no under-
wood. In a pine-wood one meets few birds. A

AVE 213

goshawk, startled from the branches, flees quickly
down the long aisles. The pine is cultivated in
Germany ; the unfortunate pine, ugly by nature, is
made still more ugly by cultivation. Pines cover
the lower hills, forming black stains in the landscape
and disfiguring their purple.

The long-tailed Bavarian horses walked up some
steep ascent, trotted down a hill, at the bottom of
which a pretty brook purls through an orchard, and
the village was reached at last, built under the foot
of a steep black hill, on which stand the ruins of a
castle. There are paths through the woods, and one
becomes conscious of the ceaseless change in human
life as one follows the paths to the gateway of the
robber-baron who lived there three centuries ago,
defying Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North,
until his castle was battered with cannon. It was
fortunate for Adolphus that he had cannon to batter
it with, for without cannon he would not have
captured it.

We came upon a ravine, and on each hillside a
wooden platform had been built; the orchestra
playing in the pit between, no doubt, as in the
theatre at Bajrreuth. We strolled up and down the
steep paths, wondering if the players were heard
from hillside to hillside, inclining to the belief that
human voices would not carry so far, and to put the
natural acoustics of the wood to a test, some went
to the other hillside and spoke to us. But what play
had been acted in this wood ? Somebody suggested a
miracle play, and leaping at the suggestion, I spoke
of the miracle plays in Oberammergau.

' Some pious people of your sect, Edward,' I said.

214 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

taking his arm, ' who would set Asiatic gods against
native divinities.'

My aphorism was not at first understood, and I
explained it — how| Bavaria comprises two spectacles :
the Asiatic gods in the South on the Tyrolean
frontier, while the original Rhine gods display
themselves in the North at Bayreuth — Wotan, Loki,
Donner, Froh, and the goddesses Frika, Erda, and
Freia. My remark had some success, and we walked
on, wondering how it was that this division of the
deities had not been remarked^ before. All were
interested except Edward, who said he did not care
to listen to blasphemy.

' But, my dear Edward, it cannot be blasphemy to
tell the truth, and surely the gods that Oberam-
mergau exhibits are Asiatic. And there can be no
doubt that the gods that Bayreuth exhibits are
German and Scandinavian;' and I pressed Edward
to explain to me how a mere statement of fact, the
truth of which could not be contested, could be
called blasphemous, falsehood being implicit in
every blasphemy. To escape from this quandary
Edward began to argue that the Rhenish gods had
come from Asia, too, by way of Scandinavia, finding
solace, apparently, in the belief in the Asiatic origin
of all gods. We laughed at this novel defence of
divinity.

' It is like China tea,' I answered, ^ only grown in
Asia.' Somebody else spoke of Havana cigars, and
very soon all interest died out of the argument.
We were but vaguely interested in it, for none
amongst us, perhaps not even the youngest, was
entirely free from the thought inspired by the empty

AVE 215

platforms. We were all thinking how every genera-
tion is but a pageant, that all is but pageant here
below. Part of our excursion was already behind
us, and in later years how little of it would be
remembered ! Such philosophies are soon exhausted,
and we sympathized with a lady who was anxious
about her daughter and husband. They were walk-
ing in the woods, and she feared they might be
overtaken by the coming darkness. But we assured
her there would be light for many hours still, and
whistled the motives of The Ring. . . .

We returned through the hilly country, with the
wide, sloping evening above us, and apple-trees lining
the roads, all the apples now reddened and ready for
gathering. We admired the purple crests illumin-
ated by the sunset, as millions of men and women
had done before us, and as millions of men and
women shall do after us. Voices dropped and faces
grew pensive. We asked if we should ever meet at
Bayreuth again, and our thoughts turned towards the
great Master lying in his grave, whose dreams had
given us such sweet realities.

'^Too soon over,' somebody said. In a few days
Bayreuth would be a deserted town, deserted like
the platforms we had found in the wood. The long
distance we had come was mentioned, and somebody
asked if the pleasure we had received were worth
the journey. The answer made to this — and it was
a woman who made it — was that the journey would
be more real in six months' time than it was to-day,
and picking up the thought, I answered quickly :

* So you think that we must live not so much for
the moment as for the sake of the memory of it ?'

216 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

Somebody answered that memory was, perhaps,
half of life, and this was denied.

^ He who cannot enjoy things as they go by is but
a poor companion.'

'A poor lover/ I suggested. And soon after
found myself arguing that the great gift Nature has
bestowed upon woman is the power of enjoying
things as they go by — a great gift truly it is, and
sufficient compensation for lack of interest in religion
and morals. It may be that that is why women
have not written a great book, or painted a great
picture.

^ Or invented a religion,' someone interjected.

' Women are not idealists,' Edward said, speaking
out of his remembrance of his play The Heather
Field.

In the evening we were all going to the house
that Wagner had lived in, and in which he had written
the last act of Siegfried, the Gotterdammerung, and
Parsifal. Everyone who goes to Bayreuth is asked
there if he leaves a card upon Madame Wagner.
Such, at least, used to be the custom. One pre-
sented an invitation card at the door and walked
about the music-room and into Wagner's library.
Edward was much moved to see the Master's books
and his writing-table. Things interest him more
than human beings, whereas Wagner's books and
writing-table merely depressed me, and refusing to
follow Edward to the grave, I sought for a friend
who might introduce me to Madame Wagner.

A tall, thin woman, nearer sixty than seventy,
very vital, with a high nose like her father's, came
forward to meet me, full of cordiality, full of con-

AVE 217

versation and pleasant greeting. ^ Liszt lives again
in her/ I said, ' the same inveigling manner ; she

casts her spells like her father, and ' Well,

there is no way of telling my impression except to
tell the thought that passed through my mind : it
was. But how is all this to end ? Am I going to run
away with her? And when we arrive somewhere,
what am I to do with her ? A woman nearly seventy
years ! And I thought what an extraordinary
fascination she must have been when she heard
Tristan for the first time, and felt she could no
longer live with Biilow.

^It is always pleasant,' she said, 'to welcome to
Bayreuth strangers who come to hear "our art." '

The arrogance of the expression amused me, but
after all music is the art of Germany just as poetry
is art of England ; and feeling in the next five
minutes that I must either take her hand or in-
terrupt the conversation, I chose the latter course,
and asked her to introduce me to her son. She
hastened to comply with my wish, and put herself to
some trouble to find him. He was found at last, and
I was introduced to him.

My impression of Madame Wagner is compressed
in the ' Am I going to run away with her ?' And
the same words, with a change of preposition and
pronoun, will describe the impression that Siegfried
Wagner produced upon me. The son is the father
in everything except his genius — the same large
head, the same brow, the same chin and jaw. ' A
sort of deserted shrine!' I cried to myself, and
gasped for words.

Van Roy was singing at the time, and I succeeded

218 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

at last in asking Siegfried Wagner who had com-
posed the song.

^I do not know, but it should be by Grandpapa
Liszt.'

I bowedj thanked him, and moved away, glad
to escape from his repelling blankness. Shyness it
may have been, or perhaps boredom. If we had met
at Venice or in London — anywhere except in that
crowd, we might have become friends. So I was
glad to meet him on the bench in front of the
theatre, and to find him slightly more forthcoming
than he had shown himself to me in his mother's
house. We spoke about his opera, and about Ellis,
who had translated his libretto, and for a moment
it looked as if we were going to know each other,
to become acquainted, for in answer to my question
whether he thought it was of advantage that the
musician should write his own libretto, he answered
that he thought it was, for while writing the libretto
the musician sang his first ideas of the music.

Meeting me again on the same seat at the same
hour, he asked me why I was not in the theatre,
and it only occurred to me to tell the mere truth,
that I came to Bayreuth to hear The Ring and not
Parsifal. ' Perhaps if you knew the score of Parsifal'

' I can never know a score, for I'm not a musician,
but I've heard it many times, and it makes no
personal appeal as do the other works.'

The explanation was received in silence, and I
thought how I might have better explained my
position if I had said that, though I recognized
Milton to be a great poet, he wrote in vain so far as
I was concerned. But Siegfried's manner checks the

AVE 219

words upon one's lips^ and the people began to come
out of the theatre soon after.

We parted^ and all the way to the cafe where
Edward and I went to have supper I turned Sieg-
fried over in my mind and understood him to be
a man of talent, for he is the son of a man of genius.
One must be a man of talent to conduct The Ring
as I had heard him conduct it, bearing the last
scene of The Valkyrie along with him like a banner.
A man of talent, the son of a man of genius without
sufficient vitality to be very much interested in any-
thing ; his life a sort of diffused sadness like a blank
summer day when the clouds are low ; and he must
be conscious, too, that there is no place on earth
where he can lay his head and call it his own.

' If the physical resemblance were not so marked,'
I said to myself as we entered the cafe.

That little cafe ! What enchanting hours Edward
and I have spent in it between half-past ten and one
in the morning, amid beer and cigars and endless
discussions as to the values of certain scenes" and
acts, of singers and conductors ! The year that I am
now referring to Parsifal was conducted in turn by
Fischer, Mottl, and Seidl, Wagner's favourite pupil
and disciple. He sat in the far end of the cafe by
himself, and I often wondered why his society was
not more sought after. Although he was an old
man, and in declining health, it was a pleasure for
me to sit with him and engage him in conversation,
telling him that under his direction the first act of
Parsifal played ten minutes quicker than it did
under Mottl, and that Mottl was five minutes
quicker than Fischer.

220 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' So much as that ?'

' Yes, I took the time. And how much better I
like your conducting of The Flower Maidens ! Mottl
gets a crescendo in the middle.'

^ Whereas there is no necessity. It goes as well
without, doesn't it ?'

A thin, spare man, quiet, speaking but little — a
kindly man, as the reader has already guessed from
the few phrases exchanged between him and me,
and an unassuming man, apparently taking an
interest even in such appreciations as Edward's and
mine ; a man between sixty and seventy, at the time
I am speaking of, and as I write this line I can see
his small, refined features and his iron-grey hair,
which once must have been black. My thoughts
pause, and I like to indulge myself in the regret
that I did not walk home with him in the evenings
to his lodgings. He might have asked me to come
to see him in the morning, and over the piano,
perhaps, would have told me many things of interest
regarding his relations with Wagner and his under-
standing of the music, and things about himself, for
Seidl lived among great men, and looked upon him-
self as a failure, and that is just the man that is so
interesting to inveigle into confessions.

He died a year or two later, and the cafe is no
longer as interesting as it was when all the actors
came down from the theatre to eat their supper there.
Klafsky was my first Briinnhilde; when she died
Gulbranson took her place, and the moment she
came into the cafe all eyes went towards her, and
I may say all hearts, for very soon a beautiful
smile would light up a round, rosy, very ordinary

AVE 221

face^ suffusing it^ transforming a plain woman into
one to whom one's heart goes instinctively, convinced
that all that is necessary to be happy is to be with
her.

VIII

We take tickets for a cycle, a Ring, and as many
Parsifals as we have appetite for, and when the last
performance is over the railway-station is crowded ;
no longer with the Bohemianism of London and
Paris, but with the snobbery (I use the word in its
French sense) of both capitals. The trolleys are
piled with aristocratic luggage, and the porters are
followed by anxious valets; ladies in long, fashion-
able dust-cloaks are beset by maids with jewel-cases
in their hands. Among this titled crowd one can
still pick out the student (the professional musician
still goes to Bayreuth) and those who really love
music, and who go to Bayreuth for the art of the
Master — like our friends, the politician and his wife
and daughter.

Between the acts of the Gdtterddmmerung we had
heard arrangements being made to be present at
other music festivals. It seemed that a consider-
able part of the audience was going to Munich to
hear Mozart. For the last day or two everybody
seemed to be muttering Cosi fan Tutti, an opera
never given in England. On a former occasion
Edward and I had gone to Munich, but we had not
heard it ; and I would have preferred to follow Mozart,
but we were going in a different direction, in quest of
other music — northward, a long and tedious journey.

222 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

For Edward had decided that the revival of drama
which the success of The Heather Field had started
in Ireland must be accompanied by a revival of all
the arts — painting, sculpture, and music. For land-
scape and portrait painting he thought he could rely
on Dermod O'Brien, who had decided to come to
Ireland. A number of chapels had been spoilt by
German stained glass, but Miss Purser had promised
to engage a man whose father had been intimately
connected with the Pre-Raphaelite movement in
England, and under her direction ecclesiastical art
would flourish again in Ireland. John Hughes
would revive Donatello and Edward Palestrina. He
told me that Archbishop Walshe had been ap-
proached, and that he thought he would be able
to persuade him to accept a donation of ten
thousand pounds to establish a choir in the cathedral
upon the strict understanding, of course, that the
choir was only to sing Vittoria, Palestrina, Orlando
di Lasso, Francesca de Pres, and the other writers,
bearing equally picturesque names, that had, if I
may borrow a phrase from Evelyn Innes, gravitated
round the great Roman composer.

It seemed to me that the analogy he drew between
the Italian Renaissance and the Irish was a false one.
The Italians had imported nothing, but had re-created
all the arts simultaneously. This view was, however,
not acceptable, and in the return journey between
Nuremberg and Maintz, Edward pointed out that the
Italian Renaissance was not as original as it seemed
at first sight. It was indebted largely to antiquity,
and its flavour was due to the spirit of the Middle
Ages which still lingered in the sixteenth century.

AVE 223

and in support of this theory he affirmed that Pales-
trina had used plain chant melodies in all his
Masses.

'Turning them into pattern music/ I interjected.
' If you want religion in music, let your choir sing
only plain chant.'

Edward feared that the congregation would deem
that monotonous, and I said, 'If concessions are
going to be made / and the conversation dropped.

We were going to a festival of pattern music far away
in the North of Germany, to a town called Munster,
whither, I venture to say, very few have ever
wandered, though it is well known by name, on
account of Meyerbeer's opera Le Propkete. We all
know the prayer that the prophet sings at the end
of the third act before he enters the town, and the
great beauty of the fourth act — the cathedral scene
in which John of Lydon refuses to recognize his
mother. A great act! It was not the fashion of
those times to write fifth acts, and Meyerbeer
finished his opera with a couple of songs of no great
merit, and the blowing up of the town by John of
Lydon, who perishes amid the ruins.

But in history he perished quite differently. After
a few weeks of revelry Munster was taken by assault,
and John of Lydon and his companions were put
into iron cages, in which they could neither stand,
nor sit, nor lie, and in them they remained on
exhibition, hung up some thirty feet above the
pavement of the principal street, for three days,
before they were torn to pieces with red-hot hooks,
by order of the good Bishop. These cages still hang
in the principal street, regarded, no doubt, as objects

224 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

of great historical interest. That they are that no
one will contest^ yet one cannot help feeling that
they would be better out of sight in a museum, for
they certainly inspire hatred of the Roman Church
in the heart of every passer-by, and it is hardly
going too far to say that to these cages, and to the
memories which they evoke, are owing the preserva-
tion of all the original aspects of the town, so grey
and austere, without a sign anywhere of life, of
modern thought or aspiration, without a picture-
gallery, without a painter, without a writer, a fitting
town, indeed, for a festival of archaic music.

Edward had written to his conductor, the man to
whom the revival of Palestrina was to be entrusted,
to come over, and when we were not in the cathedral
— which was not often — we used to spend the time
wandering about the grey, calico-coloured streets,
Edward admiring the fifteenth-century roofs, of
which there are a great many, and the arcades, the
conductor and myself thinking how^ the minutes were
bringing us nearer another concert. He was a man
of quiet and neutral intelligence, and it would have
been pleasant to go away for a walk in the country
with him. He would have liked to escape from the
patter of this archaic music which he already foresaw
it was his fate to teach and conduct till the end of his
days. But to slip away between a Gloria and a Credo
(my suggestion to him) would have offended his
burly task-master and perhaps have lost him his job.
He dared not even show for one instant that the
music bored him, and I hardly dared either, and
resisted Edward with difficulty at the door of the
cathedral. The choice lay between a motet by

AVE 225

Josquin des Pres and The Tale of a Town. The third
act needed revision, and I not infrequently took the
manuscript away with me and forgot it in the pleasant
shade of the avenue that encircles the town ; and
sometimes I took the manuscript with me to the
Zoological Gardens, beguiled there by the finest lion
ever known, that is to say, the finest ever seen or
imagined by me — an extraordinary, silent and
monumental beast that used to lie, his paw tucked
in front of him, a gazing-stock for me and a group
of children. We moved on subdued by his wonder-
ful presence, majestic, magnificent, forlorn, ashamed
before his great, brown, melancholy eyes, full ot
dreams of the desert of long ago, perhaps of the
very day when an Arab held him, a whelp, well
above the high, red-pommelled saddle, and the
dam was speared and shot by other Arabs in the
melee that happened amid some loose rocks and
brushwood.

The blue sky of Miinster,and the dust of Miinster,
and the silence and the loneliness of Miinster, often
made me think I should like to enter his cage. It
was such a splendid one ! — built out into the garden,
a little park with two tree-trunks and some rocks, a
dome-shaped cage in which the great beast could
trot or climb, if he were so disposed, but I never saw
him except sunning himself in front of his bars. He
seemed as lonely as myself, and I often imagined us
two together, side by side. The Tale of a Town in my
left hand, reading it aloud, while with the right I
combed his great brown mane for him. Which
would he resent — the reading or the combing ?
Speculation on this point interested me, and urged

22(5 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

me towards the risk^ and perhaps might have induced
me to undertake it^ if I had not met a fox in the
circular avenue. The red^ bushy animal used to
come there on a chain with his master^ a young
peasant. His master sat on the other end of the
bench on which I was sitting, and the fox often hopped
up between us, treating me with the politeness due
to a visitor, a politeness which was requited next day
by a cutlet. On cutlets our friendship throve until
the end of the week, and had I known German it
might have become permanent. The fox seemed
quite willing, for though well-behaved with his
master, his affection for me was so spontaneous that I
think it would have lasted. The peasant, too, might
have been persuaded to sell his fox, and if he
refused a sovereign it would be because he did not
know its value, or because he would not include the
chain. As this point could not be settled without
some knowledge of German, I strove to explain to
him by signs that he was to remain where he was,
until I brought back somebody who could sprecken
Deutsch, There was no hope of a passer-by who
could speak English — there were no passers-by ; the
whole population of Miinster was in the cathedral.
It had been going there all the morning, headed
by Edward and his conductor, to hear several
Masses by Palestrina, and they had started off
again in the afternoon to listen to Orlando di
Lasso. Edward had pressed me to accompany them,
saying that the opportunity might not occur again to
hear a work by that great Fleming ; but one concert
a day of contrapuntal music was enough for me, and
I had pleaded my duty regarding a possible recon-

AVE 227

struction of the third act, which I was anxious to
submit to him in the evening.

'He is in the cathedral, listening/ I said. 'He
must be tired by this of Orlando di Lasso, and will
be glad of an excuse to get away.'

When I arrived a motet by Orlando was being sung.
My curiosity was awakened ; I listened, forgetful of
the fox, and very soon it began to seem to me
strange that so beautiful a name should be allied to
such ugly music. So I fell to thinking how a theory
often goes down before a simple fact. It had been
mine this long while that a man's work proceeds
from his name ; and still forgetful of the fox, I
pondered the question whether Orlando di Lasso
was, or was not, a beautiful name, deciding at last
that it was an affected name, and therefore not
beautiful ; whereas Palestrina is naturally beautiful,
like his music. Palestrina ! There is a sound of
strings in the name, and he could not have failed to
write beautifully for the strings if he had written
for instruments. ' Palestrina ! Strings ! Strings !'
I murmured, seeking Edward, and finding him with-
out much difficulty, so striking is his appearance
when he sits listening, his hand to his ear, an old
melomaniac, drinking in the music. As soon as my
errand was whispered he shook his head, sajring that
he could not leave just now, for the choir were going
to sing another motet by Orlando di Lasso, and when
that motet was finished there was one by Nannini,
which he would not like to miss.

' The peasant will never wait so long,' I said many
a time as I lingered about the church ; and when all
the motets were finished, and we returned to the

228 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

avenue, the peasant and his fox were far away, and
there was no means of discovering them. The lion ?
Well, he is dead now — dead and buried ; and that is
all I remember of a town which I praise God I shall
never see again !

As a recompense for having accompanied him to
hear the contrapuntalists, Edward was coming with
me to see Rubens. We should not arrive in Antwerp
until late that night. Edward lay sleeping opposite ;
it seemed strange that anyone should be able to
sleep while on his way to Rubens ; and I thought of
the picture we were going to see. It seemed extra-
ordinary, inconceivable, impossible that to-morrow I
should walk down a street into a cathedral, and find
myself face to face with ^ The Descent from the Cross.'
' Edward sleeps, but art keeps me awake.'

My thoughts turned to Florence and Stella, whom
I had arranged to meet in the cathedral ; and to pass
the time I very soon began to ask myself which I
would retain, if the choice were forced upon me — the
immense joy of the picture, or the pleasure of meeting
two amiable and charming women ? In the ordinary
course of my days there could be no hesitation, but
Edward had been my sole companion for the last six
weeks, and in our journeys abroad he imposed
acceptance of this rule upon me — that no acquaint-
ances should be made among the flocks of English
and American women that congregate in the Con-
tinental hotels. I had always abided by this rule of
the road, leaving him when the strain became too
great — at Dresden some years before, and some
years later again at Munich. Those separations had
been effected without difficulty. Edward never

AVE 229

complains ; only once did he mention that I had
broken up our tours, as he would put it, for the
pleasure of some abandoned woman ; and so in this
tour it had been a point of honour with me to allow
it, at all costs to my feelings, to run its natural course.
As it was to end at Antwerp I was well within my
rights to arrange to meet Florence and Stella in the
cathedral. I say 'well within,' for my friends did
not belong to the class of women to which Edward
took special objection — women whose sole morality
seemed to him to be to yield to every impulse of the
heart. My friends were painters, and of consider-
able talent, and in Edward's eyes art redeems sex of
much of its unpleasantness. He knew nothing of
the meeting, and it did not seem to me worth while
to mention it as we walked down the street. It
would be stupid to interrupt our emotion by intro-
ducing any contentious question. We were going to
see Rubens, in what is perhaps his lordliest achieve-
ment; and when the cathedral came in sight, I laid my
hand suddenly on Edward's shoulder, stopping him
to say :

'Edward, isn't it wonderful that we should this
moment be walking down a street to see Rubens ?
Let us never forget it. Let us try to fix it in our
memories now before we enter.'

Rubens for the moment blotted out all remem-
brance of Florence and Stella, but as we wandered
round the cathedral, memory of them returned to
me, and my heart misgave me, for I was beginning
to think of Stella perhaps more than was altogether
fair to Florence. To confide such scruples as these
to Edward would at once prejudice him against

230 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

both women, and I wanted him to like them.
So, with the intention to deceive, I continued to
sestheticize, speaking of the beauty of the drooping
body as it slips down the white sheet into the arms
of devoted women. The art of Greece, we said,
re-arisen in Florence, and carried to Antwerp on
the calm, overflowing genius of a Fleming. We
contrasted this picture, so restrained and concen-
trated, with the somewhat gross violence of ' The
Ascent of the Cross,' painted immediately on his
return from Italy, his first abandonment to his native
genius, before he had discovered himself. ^The
Crowning of the Virgin ' is said to have been
repainted in some places. Edward was anxious to
know if it were so, but art-criticism is difficult when
one is expecting two ladies. Though one knows
they will not wilfully disappoint, there is always a
danger that something may happen to prevent
them coming. The picture is one of the most
enchanting that Rubens ever painted. He seems to
have forgotten the theological aspects of the subject,
and to have remembered only that much of it which
is nearest to his heart — a beautiful woman surrounded
by beautiful children — and to have painted with no
other intention than to make beautiful fair faces,
clouds and pale draperies seem more beautiful. The
ease and grace of his incomparable handicraft held
my attention while looking round for Stella, tall and
shapely, and Florence, whom Nature has not made
less well, but on a smaller scale. At last two backs
were perceived in a distant chapel. The moment had
therefore come to tell Edward that I had just caught
sight of two ladies, acquaintances, artists both of them.

AVE 231

' I must go and speak to them. Shall I bring
them back and introduce them ? They are artists.'

Somewhat to my surprise, Edward did not raise any
objection to meeting them ; on the contrary, he said
that it would be interesting to hear them talk about
the pictures. He showed himself very affable to
both, speaking to Florence about the supposed re-
painting of ^The Crowning of the Virgin/ and to
Stella about the quality of the black behind the
Magdalen's head in ' The Descent from the Cross.'
At the door of the cathedral I mentioned that I
was lunching with the ladies, and he consented to
join us, and when the ladies left us, he made compli-
mentary observations regarding their demeanour and
intelligences, asking several questions about their
work, and not one about their private lives.

After lunch we went to the exhibition of Van
Dyck's works which was being held at Antwerp that
year, and after viewing his monotonous portraits one
after the other, the residual impression left on the
mind was of a painting lackey, an impersonal mind
transcribing an impersonal world. Something less
vulgar, more individual, I declared, we should find
at Ghent, a small town in Flanders, renowned
because of its possession of one of the world's
masterpieces. Van Eyk's ' Adoration of the Lamb.'
And we went thither accompanied by Edward, who
had not seen the picture. It astonishes the painter
as nothing else in the world can, except, perhaps,
the miracle that decrees to flowers their shapes and
hues. We visited other towns and saw some fine
Memlings ; but better than those do I remember
the afternoon that I walked with Stella up a long

232 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

grey platform (Edward walked with Florence), telling
her that I should deem my life worthless if she did
not allow me to accompany her to Holland. As I
have said, my tour with Edward had been arranged
to end at Antwerp, so the change from Edward's
society to that of these ladies would prove beneficial
to me, as much for intellectual as for sensuous
reasons. I am penetrated through and through by an
intelligent, passionate, dreamy interest in sex, going
much deeper than the mere rutting instinct; and
turn to women as a plant does to the light, as
unconsciously, breathing them through every pore,
and my writings are but the exhalation that follows
the inspiration. I am in apposition to Edward, an
essentially social being, taking pleasure in, and
deriving profit from, my fellows. But he is inde-
pendent of society, and we both suffer from the
defects of our qualities. The moments of loneliness
that fall upon me at the close of a long day's work
are unknown to him. He has never experienced
that spiritual terror which drives me out after dinner
in search of somebody to talk to. A book and a
cigar (I have never been able to smoke a pipe) are
not enough for me, and the hours between nine and
midnight are always redoubtable hours. How they
are to be whiled away is my problem. I admire and
envy Edward's taste for reading. That bulky man
can return to his rooms, even in the height of summer,
light half a dozen candles (he does not like a lamp)
and sit down behind a lofty screen (draughts give
him colds) with a long clay between his teeth and a
book on aesthetics in his hand, and read till midnight.
And that, night after night, his life going by all the

AVE 23S

while. It is true that he pays for his contentment.
His mind began to harden before he was forty, and
I had to warn him of the precipice towards which
he was going : ' One cannot change oneself,' he
answered. He is glad to see me if I call, but he
feels no special need of my society. One day I
said : ' Edward, which would you prefer to spend the
evening with — a very clever woman, or a stupid
man?' After three or four puffs at his pipe he
answered : ' With the stupid man.'

But man, no more than woman, is necessary to
him. Is not his self-sufficientness (if I may coin a
word) admirable } Never have I known it fail him.
At Dresden, it is true that he expressed regret that
I was leaving him in the middle of our tour ; but
how shallow that regret was can be gathered from
the indifference with which he accepted the news
of my decision to accompany the ladies to Holland.
We asked him if he would come with us, but he
said that important business awaited him in Ireland ;
and he told me privately that he was not frightened
away by the ladies, but he did not care to go to a
Protestant country, for he never felt at home in one,
and he did not even seem to understand when I
asked him if he minded the long journey to Ireland
alone.

' I shall be with you in Till3n*a a month later, and
we shall then be able to make the necessary altera-
tions in The Tale of a Town.'

At the mention of the alterations in his play his
face clouded, but he did not betray that anxiety
which would have approven him a true artist.
' Only an amateur,' I said, and went away with the

234 < HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

ladies^ our intention being to study the art of the
Low Countries in Amsterdam, in Harlem, and the
Hague ; to stop at every town in which there was
a picture-gallery. An account of our aesthetic and
sentimental tour would make a charming book ;
our appreciations of Ruysdael, Hals, Rembrandt and
Van de Meer, and Florence's incautious confession
that no more perfect mould of body than Stella's
existed in the flesh — perhaps in some antique statues
of the prime, though even that was not certain.

IX

' The scene you want me to write isn't at all in
character with the Irish people.'

' So you've said, Edward. We talked the matter
out at Rothenburg, but men's instincts are the same
all over the world. If you don't feel the scene,
perhaps it would be as well if you allowed me to
sketch it out for you. It is all quite clear. . . . Just
as you like.'

Edward said he didn't mind, and I went up to my
bedroom, and came down about tea-time to look for
him, anxious to read the pages I had written. He
consented to hear the scene, but it seemed to me
that he listened to it resentfully ; and when I had
finished, it did not surprise me to hear that he didn't
like it at all ; and then he begged of me, almost
hysterically, not to press my alteration upon him,
crjdng aloud, 'Leave me my play!' Then, turning
suddenly, he thanked me effusively for the trouble
I had taken, and besought me to try to understand
that he couldn't act otherwise, assigning as a reason

AVE 235

that I was giving the play a different colour from
what he intended.

' I'm sorry. But what is to be done ? You admit
the play requires alteration ?'

*Yes^ but I can make the alterations myself.'
And away he went up the slippery staircase of the
old castle to his study.

For it is in the old castle that he prefers to
live ; the modern house^ which he built some five-
and-twenty years ago, remaining always outside his
natural sympathies, especially its drawing-room.
But one cannot have a modern house without a
drawing-room, or a drawing-room without up-
holstered furniture, and the comfort of a stuffed
armchair does not compensate Edward for its lack
of design; and he prefers that his hinder-parts
should suffer rather than his spirit. Every drawing-
room is, in the first glance, a woman's room — the
original harem thrown open to visitors — and his
instinct is to get away from women, and all things
which evoke intimacy with women. He was always
the same, even in his hunting days, avoiding a
display of horsemanship in front of a big wall, Mf
women were about.' It was in these early days,
when the stables were filled with hunters, that I
first went to Tillyra ; and walking on the lawn, I re-
member trying to persuade him that the eighteenth-
century house, which one of his ancestors had built
alongside of the old castle, on the decline of
brigandage, would be sufficient for his wants.

^ For you don't intend to become a country gentle-
man, do you ?'

That he might escape from Tillyra had clearly

236 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

never occurred to him, and he was startled by the
idea suggested by me that he should follow his
instinct. But the sea sucks back the wave, and he
murmured the old house had decayed and a new one
was required.

' If you spend a few hundred pounds upon the old
house it will last your lifetime, my dear friend ; and
it is in much better taste than any house you will
build. You think that modem domestic Gothic will
be in keeping with the old fortress !'

He must have suspected I was right, for his next
argument was that the contract had been signed, and
to break it would cost several hundred pounds.
' Better pay several hundred than several thousand,
and your Gothic house will cost you twenty, and
never will it please you.'

For a moment it seemed as if he were going to re-
consider the matter, and then he adduced a last argu-
ment in favour of the building : his mother wished it.

^ But, my dear friend, unless you're going to marry,
so large a house will be a burden.'

' Going to marry !'

^ Well, everybody will look upon you as an engaged
man.'

A shadow crossed his face, and I said : 'I've
touched the vital spot,' and rebellion against all
authority being my instinct, I incited him to rebel.

' After all, your mother has no right to ask you to
spend so much money, and she wouldn't do so unless
she thought you were going to marry.'

' I suppose she wouldn't.'

But not on that occasion, nor any other, could I
induce him to throw the architect's plans into the fire.

AVE 237

and why blame him for his lack of courage ? For it is
natural to man to yield something of himself in order
that there may be peace in his home. (Edward yields
completely to authority once he has accepted it.) His
mother's clear and resolute mind was perhaps more
sympathetic to me than to him, and turning to her,
in my officiousness, I said, thinking to frighten her :
' Will that house be finished for fifteen thousand ?'

' The painting and the papering aren't included in
the estimate ; but a few thousands more will finish
it, and I have promised to finish it for him.'

That the spending of so much money should cost
her no scruple whatever surprised me, and to explain
her to myself I remembered that she belonged to a
time when property was secured to its owner by
laws. The Land Acts, which were then coming into
operation, could not change her point of view.
Edward must build a large and substantial house of
family importance, and when this house was finished
he could not do otherwise than marry. She would ask
all the young ladies of her acquaintance to come to
see them, and among the many Edward might find
one to his liking. This hope often transpired in her
talks about Edward, and she continued to cherish it
during the building of the house, in spite of her suspi-
cions that Edward's celibacy was something more
than the whim of a young man who thinks that a
woman might rob him of his ideals. She could not
admit to herself any more than you can, reader, or
myself, that we come into the world made as it were
to order, contrived so that we shall run down certain
lines of conduct. We are not determinists, except in
casual moments of no importance, and like to attri-

238 ^ HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

bute at least our misfortunes to circumstance, never
looking beyond the years of childhood, just as if the
greater part of man's making was not done before he
came into the world. Edward was a bachelor before
he left his mother's womb. But how was his mother
to know such a thing — or to sympathize with such an
idea ? All the instruction we get from the beginning
of our lives is to the effect that man is free, and our
every action seems so voluntary that we cannot under-
stand that our lives are determined for us. Another
illusion is that nothing is permanent in us, that all
is subject to change. Edward's mother shared this
illusion, but for a much shorter time than many
another woman would have done, partly because
her intelligence allowed her to perceive much, and
to understand much that would have escaped an
inferior woman, and partly because Edward never
tried to hide his real self, wearing always his aversion
on his sleeve. So it could not have been later than
two years after the building of the house that the
first thought crossed her mind, that, though she had
ruled Edward in every detail of his daily life since
he was a little boy, she might still fail to reach the
end which she regarded as the legitimate end of
life — a wife for her son, and grandchildren for
herself.

' He has built a modern house, but before it is
quite finished he has decided to live in the old
tower,' she said to me, and the furniture which had
been made for his sitting-room filled her, I could see,
with dread. A less intelligent woman would have
drawn no conclusions from the fact that a table
taken from a design by Albert Diirer, and six oaken

AVE 239

stools with terrifying edges, were to be the furniture
of the turret chamber, reached by cold, moist, wind-
ing stairs, and that his bedroom, too, was to be
among the ancient walls. ^Look at his bed,' she
said, ^ as narrow as a monk's ; and the walls white-
washed like a cell, and nothing upon them but a
crucifix. He speaks of his aversion from upholstery,
and he can't abide a cushion.'

'She has begun to understand that there are
certain natures which cannot be changed,' I said to
myself. ' She understands in her subconscious nature
already, soon she will understand with her intellect,
that he, who lies in that bed by choice, will never
leave it for a bridal chamber.'

Life aifords no more interesting drama than when
the fate of temperament irrevocably separates two
people bound together by the closest natural ties,
and the charm is heightened when each is sensitive
to the duty which each bears the other, when each
is anxious to perform his or her part of the contract ;
and the drama is still further heightened when
both become aware that they must go through life
together without any hope that they will ever under-
stand each other better. This drama is curious and
interesting to the looker-on, who is able to appreciate
the qualities of the mother and the son ; the son's
imaginative temperament always in excess of, and
overruling, his reason, and his mother's clear, practical
intelligence, always unable to understand that her
son must live the life that his nature ordained him
to live. Again and again, in the course of our long
friendship, he has said : ' If you had been brought
up as severely as I was . . .' A sudden scruple

240 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

of conscience^ or shyness of soul, stays the end ot
the phrase on his large loose mouth. But by brood-
ing on his words I understand them to mean that his
mother imposed obedience upon him by appealing
to his fear of God, and aggravating this fear by a
severe training in religious dogma. It is easy to
do this ; a little child's mind is so sensitive and so
unprotected by reason that a stern mother is one
of the great perils of birth. If the boy is a natural
boy with healthy love of sex in his body, the wife
or mistress will redeem him from his mother, but
if there be no such love in him he stands in great
danger ; for from woman's influence the son of man
may not escape ; and it would seem that whoever
avoids the wife falls into the arms of the mistress,
and he who avoids the wife and the mistress becomes
his mother's bond-slave.

Edward was in his tower, and wandering about
the park, I thought how he had gone back to his
original self since his mother's death. The school-
boy was a Republican, but the Church is not friendly
to free-thought, and the prestige of his mother's
authority had prevented him from taking any active
part in Nationalist politics during her lifetime.
^ The wild heather,' I said, ^ is breaking out again ;'
and I stopped in my walk, so that I might think
how wonderful all this was — the craving of a some-
what timid nature for independence, yet always held
back, never being able to cast out of the mouth the
bit that had been placed in it. These weak, am-
biguous natures lend themselves so much more to
literature, and, indeed, to friendship, than the
stronger, who follow their own instincts, thinking

AVE 241

always with their own brains. They get what they
want, the others get nothing ; but the weak men are
the more interesting : they excite our sentiments,
our pity, and without pity man may not live.

Then, a little weary of thinking of Edward, my
thoughts turned to Yeats. He had come over to
Tillyra from Coole a few days before, and had read
us The Shadowy Waters, a poem that he had been
working on for more than seven years, using it as
a receptacle or storehouse for all the fancies that
had crossed his mind during that time, and these
were so numerous that the pirate-ship ranging the
Shadowy Waters came to us laden to the gunnel
with Fomorians, beaked and unbeaked, spirits of
Good and Evil of various repute, and, so far as we
could understand the poem, these accompanied a
metaphysical pirate of ancient Ireland cruising in
the unknown waters of tlie North Sea in search of
some ultimate kingdom. We admitted to Yeats,
Edward and I, that no audience would be able to
discover the story of the play, and we confessed
ourselves among the baffled that would sit bewildered
and go out raging against the poet. Our criticism did
not appear to surprise Yeats ; he seemed to realize
that he had knotted and entangled his skein till no
remedy short of breaking some of the threads would
avail, and he eagerly accepted my proposal to go
over to Coole to talk out the poem with him, and to
redeem it, if possible, from the Fomorians. He
would regret their picturesque appearance ; but
could I get rid of them, without losing the poetical
passages? He would not like the words 'poetical
passages ' — I should have written ' beautiful verses.'

Q

242 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

Looking up at the ivied embrasure of the tower
where Edward was undergoing the degradation of
fancying himself a lover so that he might write
the big scene between Jasper and Millicent at the
end of the third act, I said : ' He will not come
out of that tower until dinner-time, so I may as
well ride over to Coole and try what can be done.
But the job Yeats has set me is a difficult one.'

Away I went on my bicycle, up and down the
switchback road, trying to arrive at some definite
idea regarding Fomorians, and thinking, as I rode
up the long drive, that perhaps Yeats might not be
at home, and to return to Tillyra without meeting
the Fomorians would be like riding home from
hunting after a blank day.

The servant told me that he had gone for one of
his constitutionals, and would be found about the
lake. The fabled woods of Coole are thick hazel
coverts, with tall trees here and there, but the paths
are easy to follow, and turning out of one of these
into the open, I came upon a tall black figure stand-
ing at the edge of the lake, wearing a cloak which
fell in straight folds to his knees, looking like a
great umbrella forgotten by some picnic party.

* I've come to relieve you of Fomorians, and when
they've been flung into the waters we must find
some simple and suggestive anecdote. Now, Yeats,
I'm listening.*

As he proceeded to unfold his dreams to me I
perceived that all doors were locked and windows
barred.

' The chimney is stopped,' I said, ' but a brick seems
loose in that corner. Perhaps by scraping '

AVE 243

And we scraped a little while ; but very soon a
poetical passage turned the edge of my chisel like
a lump of granite, and Yeats said :

' I can't sacrifice that.'

' Well, let us try the left-hand comer.'

And after scraping for some time we met another
poetical passage.

' Well, let us try one of the tiles under the bed ;
we might scrape our way into some drain which will
lead us out.'

But after searching for a loose tile for an hour,
and finding none, all proving more firmly cemented
than any reader would think for, the task of getting
Yeats out of the prison-house which he had so
ingeniously built about himself, began to grow
wearisome, and my thoughts wandered from the
Fomorians to the autumn landscape, full of wonderful
silence and colour, and I begged Yeats to admire
with me the still lake filled with the broad shadow
of the hill, and the ghostly moon high up in the
pale evening, looking down upon a drift of rose-
coloured clouds. A reed growing some yards from
the shore threw its slender shadow to our feet, and
it seemed to me that we could do nothing better
than to watch the landscape fixed in the lake as in a
mirror.

But Yeats' mind was whirling with Fomorians,
and he strove to engage my attention with a new
scheme of reconstruction. He had already proposed,
and I had rejected so many that the last one was
undistinguishable in my brain from those which had
preceded it, and his febrile and somewhat hysterical
imagination, excited as if by a drug, set him talking,

244 HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

and so volubly, that I could not help thinkmg of the
old gentleman that Yeats had frightened when he
was staying last at Tillyra. The old gentleman had
come down in the morning, pale and tired, after
a sleepless night, complaining that he had been
dreaming of Neptune and surging waves.

' Last night,' said Yeats, looking up gloomily from
his breakfast, ' I felt a great deal of aridness in my
nature, and need of moisture, and was making most
tremendous invocations with water, and am not
surprised that they should have affected the adjoining
room.'

The old gentleman lent back in his chair, terror-
stricken, and taking Edward aside after breakfast he
said to him : ' A Finnish sorcerer ; he has Finnish
blood in him ; some Finnish ancestor about a thousand
years ago.' And with the old gentleman's words
in my head, I scrutinized my friend's hands and
face, thinking them strangely dark for Ireland. But
there are Celts with hair of Oriental blackness, and
skins dyed with Oriental yellow. All the same, the
old gentleman's reading of Yeats' prehistoric ancestry
seemed to me like an intuition. His black hair and
yellow skin were perhaps accidents, or they might
be atavisms. It was not the recurrence of any
Finnish strain of a thousand years ago that tempted
me to believe in a strain of Oriental blood ; it was
his subtle, metaphysical mind, so unlike anything I
had ever met in a European, but which I had once
met in an Oriental years ago in West Kensington, in
a back drawing-room, lecturing to groups of women —
an Indian of slender body and refined face, a being
whose ancestry were weaving metaphysical arguments

AVE 245

when painted savages prowled in the forests of
Britain and Ireland. He seemed to be speaking out
of a long metaphysical ancestry; unpremeditated
speech flowed like silk from a spools leading me
through the labyrinth of the subconscious, higher
and higher, seemingly towards some daylight finer
than had ever appeared in the valleys out of which
I was clambering hurriedly, lest I should lose the
thread that led me. On and on we went, until at
last it seemed to me that I stood among the clouds ;
clouds filled the valleys beneath me, and about me
were wide spaces, and no horizon anywhere, only
space, and in the midst of this space light breaking
through the clouds above me, waxing every moment
to an intenser day ; and every moment the Indian's
voice seemed to lead me higher, and every moment
it seemed that I could follow it no longer. The
homely earth that I knew had faded, and I waited
expectant among the peaks, until at last, taken with
a sudden fear that if I lingered any longer I might
never see again a cottage at the end of an embowered
lane, I started to my feet and fled.

But the five minutes I had spent in that drawing-
room in West Kensington were not forgotten ; and
now by the side of the lake, hearing Yeats explain
the meaning of his metaphysical pirate afloat on
Northern waters, it seemed to me I was listening
again to my Indian. Again I found myself raised
above the earth into the clouds ; once more the light
was playing round me, lambent light like rays,
crossing and recrossing, waxing and waning, until I
cried out, ' I'm breathing too fine air for my lungs.
Let me go back.' And, sitting down on a rock, 1

246 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

began to talk of the fish in the lake, asking Yeats if
the autumn weather were not beautiful, saying any-
thing that came into my head, for his thoughts were
whirling too rapidly, and a moment was required for
me to recover from a mental dizziness.

In this moment of respite, without warning, I
discovered myself thinking of a coachman washing
his carriage in the mews, for when the coachman
washes his carriage a wheel is lifted from the ground,
and it spins at the least touch of the mop, turning
as fast as Yeats' mind, and for the same reason, that
neither is turning anything. I am alluding now to
the last half-hour spent with Yeats, talking about his
poem ; and thinking of Yeats' mind like a wheel
lifted from the ground, it was impossible for my
thoughts not to veer round to Edward's slow mind,
and to compare it to the creaking wheel of an
ox-waggon.

' If one could only combine these two — one is an
intellect without a temperament to sustain it, the
other is a temperament without an intellect to guide
it ;' and I reflected how provokingly Nature separates
qualities which are essential, one to the other ; and
there being food for reflection in this thought, I
began to regret Yeats' presence. Very soon his
mind would begin to whirl again. * The slightest
touch,' I said, 'of the coachman's mop will set it
going, so I had better remain silent.'

It was then that I forgot Yeats and Edward and
everything else in the delight caused by a great
clamour of wings, and the snowy plumage of thirty-
six great birds rushing down the lake, striving to
rise from its surface. At last their wings caught the

AVE 247

air, and after floating about the lake they settled in
a distant corner where they thought they could rest
undisturbed. Thirty-six swans rising out of a lake,
and floating round it, and settling down in it is an
unusual sight ; it conveys a suggestion of fairyland,
perhaps because thirty-six wild swans are so different
from the silly china swan which sometimes floats and
hisses in melancholy whiteness up and down a stone
basin. That is all we know of swans — all I knew
until the thirty-six rose out of the hushed lake
at our feet, and prompted me to turn to Yeats,
saying, ^You're writing your poem in its natural
atmosphere.' To avoid talking about the poem
again, and because I am always interested in natural
things, I begged of him to tell me whence this flock
had come, and if they were really wild swans ; and
he told me that they were descended originally from
a pair of tame swans who had re-acquired their
power of flight, and that the thirty-six flew back-
wards and forwards from Coole to Lough Couter,
venturing farther, visiting many of the lakes of
Galway and Mayo, but always returning in the
autumn to Coole.

We struck across the meadows to avoid the corner
of the lake where the swans had settled, and Yeats
proposed another scheme for the reconstruction of
his poem, and it absorbed him so utterly that he
could feel no interest in the smell of burning weeds,
redolent of autumn, coming from an adjoining field.
Yet it trailed along the damp meadows, rising into
the dry air till it seemed a pity to trouble about a
poem when Nature provided one so beautiful for our
entertainment — incense of weeds and faint colours.

248 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

and every colour and every odour in accordance with
my mood.

How pathetic the long willow leaves seemed to me
as they floated on the lake ! and I wondered, for there
was not a wind in the branches. So why had they
fallen? . . . Yeats said he would row me across,
thereby saving a long walk, enabling us to get to
Tillyra an hour sooner than if we followed the lake's
edge. Remember, it was still day, though the moon
shed a light down the vague water, but when we
reached the other side the sky had darkened, and it
was neither daytime nor night-time. The fields
stretched out, dim and solitary and grey, and seeing
cattle moving mysteriously in the shadows, I thought
of the extraordinary oneness of things — the cattle
being a little nearer to the earth than we, a little
farther than the rocks — and I begged of Yeats to
admire the mystery. But he could not meditate ;
he was still among his Fomorians ; and we scrambled
through some hawthorns over a ruined wall, I think-
ing of the time when masons were building that
wall, and how quaint the little leaves of the haw-
thorns were, yellow as gold, fluttering from their
stems.

'A ruined country,' I said, 'wilderness and weed.'

Yeats knew the paths through the hazel-woods,
and talking of the pirate, we struck through the
open spaces, decorated with here and there a thorn-
tree, and much drooping bracken, penetrating into
the silence of the blood-red beeches, startled a little
when a squirrel cracked a nut in the branch above
us, and the broken shells fell at our feet.

' I thought there were no squirrels in Ireland ?'

AVE 249

' Twenty years ago there was none, but somebody
introduced a pair into Wexford, and gradually they
have spread all over Ireland.'

This and no more would he tell me, and falling
into another broad path, where hazels grew on either
side, it seemed to me that I should have walked
through those woods that evening with some quiet
woman, talking of a time long ago, some love-time
which had grown distinct in the mirror of the years,
like the landscape in the quiet waters of the lake.
But in life nothing is perfect ; there are no perfect
moments, or very few, and it seemed to me that I
could no longer speak about Fomorians or pirates.
Every combination had been tried, and my tired
brain was fit for nothing but to muse on the beauty
that was about me, the drift of clouds seen through
the branches when I raised my head. But Yeats
would not raise his eyes ; he walked, his eyes fixed
on the ground, still intent upon discovering some
arrangement which would allow him to write his
poem. Before we reached the end of the alley his
whirling brain shot out another arrangement of the
story, which it was impossible for me to advise him
to adopt, it differing nowise from the fifty which
had preceded it, and in despair I ran over the story
again, just as one might run one's fingers down the
keys of a piano, with this result — that in a hollow of
the sloppy road which we were following he agreed
to abandon the Fomorians ; and discussing the harp
of apple-wood, which could not be abandoned, we
trudged on, myself interested in the stern line of
the Burran Mountains showing on our left, and the
moon high above the woods of Tillyra. ^ How much

250 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

more interesting all this is than his pirate/ I thought.
A shadowy form passed us now and then ; a peasant
returning from his work^ his coat slung over his
shoulder ; a cow wandering in front of a girl, who
curtseyed and drew her shawl over her head as she
passed us.

' YeSj that will do/ Yeats answered. ' I shall lose
a good many beautiful verses, but I suppose it can't
be helped. Only, I don't like your ending.'

The poem has since those days been reconstructed
many times by Yeats, but he has always retained the
original ending, which is, that after the massacre of
the crew of the merchant galley, the Queen, who lay
under the canopy when the vessel was boarded, was
forced by spells, shed from the strings of a harp made
of apple-wood, into a love so overwhelming for the
pirate, that she consents to follow him in his quest of
the ultimate kingdom in the realms of the Pole. My
ending was that her fancy for the pirate should jdeld
before his determination to go northward, and that
he should bid her step over the bulwarks into the
merchant galley, where the pirates were drinking
yellow ale ; and then, cutting the ropes which lashed
the vessels together, he should hoist a sail and go
away northward. But Yeats said it would be a
disgraceful act to send a beautiful woman to drink
yellow ale with a drunken crew in the hold of a
vessel.

So did we argue as we went towards Tillyra, the
huge castle now showing aloft among the trees, a
light still burning in the ivied embrasure where
Edward sat struggling with the love-story of Jasper
and Millicent.

AVE 251

^ He, too, is an inferior artist ; he will not yield
himself to the love-story. Both of these men in
different ways put their personal feelings in front of
their work. They are both subaltern souls.' And
my thoughts turned from them to contemplate the
huge pile which Edward's Norman ancestor had
built in a hollow. 'Why in a hollow?' I asked
myself, for these Norman castles are generally built
from hillside to hillside, and were evidently intended
to overawe the country, the castles lending each
other aid when wild hordes of Celts descended from
the Burran Mountains ; and when these raids ceased,
probably in the seventeenth century, the castle's
keep was turned into stables, and a modern house
run up alongside of the central tower. Ireland is
covered with ruins from the fifth to the eighteenth
century.

' A land of ruin and weed,' I said, and began to
dream again a novel that I had relinquished years
ago in the Temple, till rooks rising in thousands
from the beech-trees interrupted my thoughts.

' We'd better go into this wood,' I said. . ' Our
shadows will seem to Edward from his casement
window '

' Somewhat critical,' Yeats answered ; and we
turned aside to talk of The Tale of a Town, Yeats
anxious to know from me if there was any chance of
Edward being able to complete it by himself, and if
he would accept any of the modifications I had
suggested.

252 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

X

The castle hall was empty and grey ; only the
autumn dusk in the Gothic window, and the shuffle
of the octogenarian butler sounding very dismal as
he pottered across the tessellated pavement. On
learning from him that Mr. Martyn was still writing,
I wandered from the organ into the morning-room,
and sat by the fire, waiting for Edward's footstep. It
came towards me about half an hour afterwards,
heavy and ponderous, not at all like the step of the
successful dramatist ; and my suspicions that his
third act was failing him were aggravated by his
unwillingness to tell me about the alterations he was
making in it. All he could tell me was that he had
been in Maynooth last summer, and had heard the
priests declaring that they refused to stultify them-
selves ; and as the word seemed to him typical of the
country he would put it frequently into the mouths
of his politicians.

How drama was to arise out of the verb ' to
stultify ' did not seem clear, and in the middle of my
embarrassment he asked me where I had been all the
afternoon, brightening up somewhat when I told him
that I had been to Coole. In a curious detached
way he is always eager for a gossip, and we talked of
Yeats and Lady Gregory for a long time, and of our
walk round the lake, Edward rousing from my
description of the swans to ask me where I had left
the poet.

' At the gate.'

' Why didn't you ask him to stay for dinner ?'

AVE 253

And while I sought for an answer,, he added : ^ Maybe
it's just as well you didn't, for to-day is Friday and
the salmon I was expecting from Galway hasn't
arrived.'

' But Yeats and I aren't Catholics.'

' My house is a Catholic house, and those who
don't care to conform to the rule '

' Your dogmatism exceeds that of an Archbishop ;'
and I told him that I had heard my father say that
the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. McHale, had meat
always on his table on Friday, and when he was
asked how this was, he answered that he didn't know
who had gotten dispensations and who hadn't.
Edward muttered that he was not to be taken in by
such remarks about dispensations ; he knew very
well I had never troubled to ask for one.

' Why should I, since I'm not a Catholic ?'

' If you aren't a Catholic, why don't you become a
Protestant ?'

' In the first place one doesn't become a Protestant,
one discovers oneself a Protestant ; and it seems to
me that an Agnostic has as much right to eat meat
on Friday as a Protestant.'

'Agnosticism isn't a religion. It contains no
dogma.'

' It comes to this, then : that you're going to
make me dine off a couple of boiled eggs.' And I
walked about the room, indignant, but not because
I care much about my food — two eggs and a potato
are more agreeable to me in intelligent society than
grouse would be in stupid. But two eggs and a
potato forced down my throat on a theological fork
in a Gothic house that had cost twenty thousand

254 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

pounds to build — two eggs and a potato, without
hope of cheese ! The Irish do not eat cheese, and
I am addicted to it, especially to Double Gloucester.
In my school-days that cheese was a wonderful
solace in my life, but after leaving school I asked
for it in vain, and gave up hope of ever eating it
again. It was not till the 'nineties that a waiter
mentioned it. 'Stilton, sir; Chester, Double Glou-
cester ' ' Double Gloucester ! You have Double

Gloucester! I thought it extinct. You have it?
Then bring it,' I cried, and so joyfully that he
couldn't drag himself from my sight. An excellent
cheese, I told him, but somewhat fallen from the
high standard it had assumed in my imagination.
Even so, if there had been a slice of Double Gloucester
in the larder at Tillyra, I should not have minded
the absence of the salmon, and if Edward had
pleaded that his servants would be scandalized to
see anyone who was supposed to be a Catholic eat
meat on Fridays, I should have answered : ' But
everybody knows I'm not a Catholic. I've written
it in half a dozen books.' And if Edward had said :
' But my servants don't read your books ; I shall be
obliged if you'll put up with fasting fare for once/
I would have eaten an egg and a potato without
murmur or remark. But to be told I must dine off
two eggs and a potato, so that his conscience should
not be troubled during the night, worried me, and I
am afraid I cast many an angry look across the table.
An apple-pie came up and some custards, and these
soothed me ; he discovered some marmalade in a
cupboard, and Edward is such a sociable being when
his pipe is alight, that I forgave his theological

AVE 255

prejudices for the sake of his aesthetic. We peered
into reproductions of Fra Angelico's frescoes^ and
studied Leonardo's sketches for draperies. Edward
Uked Ibsen from the beginning, and will like him to
the end, and Swift. But he cannot abide Schu-
mann's melodies. We had often talked of these
great men and their works, but never did he talk as
delightfully as on that Friday evening right on into
Saturday morning. Nor was it till Sunday morning
that his soul began to trouble him again. As I was
finishing breakfast, he had the cheek to ask me to
get ready to go to Mass.

' But, Edward, I don't believe in the Mass. My
presence will be only '

^ Will you hold your tongue, George . . . and not
give scandal,* he answered, his voice trembling with
emotion.

' Everybody knows that I don't believe in the Mass.*

' If you aren't a Catholic, why don't you become a
Protestant.^' And he began pushing me from
behind.

* I have told you before that one may become a
Catholic, but one discovers oneself a Protestant.
But why am I going to Gort .'''

'Because you had the bad taste to describe our
church in A Drama in Muslin, and to make such
remarks about our parish priest that he said, if
you showed yourself in Ardrahan again, he'd throw
dirty water over you.'

' If you send me to Gort, I shall be able to describe
Father 's church.'

' Will you not be delaying .^'

'One w^ord more. It isn't on account of my

^56 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

description of Father 's church that you won't

take me to Ardrahan : the real reason is because, at

your request, mind you, I asked Father not

to spit upon your carpet when he came to dinner
at Tillyra. You were afraid to ask a priest to refrain
from any of his habits, and left the room.'

'^I only asked you to draw his attention to the
spittoon.'

^ Which I did ; but he said such things were only
a botheration, and my admonitions on the virtue of
cleanliness angered him so that he never *

' You'll be late for Mass. And you, Whelan ;
now, are you listening to me ? Do you hear me ?
You aren't to spare the whip. Away you go ; you'll
only be just in time. And you, Whelan, you're not
to delay putting up the horse. Do you hear me ?'

Whelan drove away rapidly, and when I looked
back I saw my friend hurrying across the park,
tumbling into the sunk-fence in his anxiety not to
miss the Confiteor, and Whelan, who saw the acci-
dent, too, feared that ' the masther is after hurting
himself.' Happily this was not so. Edward was
soon on his feet again, running across the field ' like
a hare,' the driver said — out of politeness, I suppose.

^ Hardly like a hare,' I said, hoping to draw a
more original simile from Whelan's rustic mind ; but
he only coughed a little, and shook up the reins
which he held in a shapeless, freckled hand.

' Do you like the parish priest at Gort better than
Father at Ardrahan ?'

'They're well matched,' Whelan answered — a
thick-necked, long-bodied fellow with a rim of faded
hair showing under a bowler-hat that must have

AVE 257

been about the stables for years, collecting dust
along the corn-bin and getting greasy in the harness-
room. One reasoned that it must have been black
once upon a time, and that Whelan must have been
a young man long ago; and one reasoned that he
must have shaved last week, or three weeks ago, for
there was a stubble on his chin. But in spite of
reason^ Whelan seemed like something that had
always been, some old rock that had lain among the
bramble since the days of Finn MacCoole, and his
suUenness seemed as permanent as that of the rocks,
and his face, too, seemed like a worn rock, for it was
without profile, and I could only catch sight of a great
flabby ear and a red, freckled neck, about which was
tied a woollen comforter that had once been white.

He answered my questions roughly, without
troubling to turn his head, like a man who wishes
to be left to himself ; and acquiescing in his humour,
I fell to thinking of Father Jaines Browne, the parish
priest of Camacun in the 'sixties, and of the day that
he came over to Moore Hall in his ragged cassock
and battered biretta with Mc Hale's Irish transla-
tion of Homer under his arm, saying that the
Archbishop had caught the Homeric ring in many
a hexameter. My father smiled at the priest's
enthusiasm, but I followed this tall, gaunt man,
of picturesque appearance, whose large nose with
tufted nostrils I remember to this day, into the
Blue Room to ask him if the Irish were better
than the Greek. He was a little loath to say it
was not, but this rustic scholar did not carry
patriotism into literature, and he admitted, on being
pressed, that he liked the Greek better, and I listened

R

258 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

to his great rotund voice pouring through his wide
Irish mouth while he read me some eight or ten
lines of Homer, calling my attention to the famous
line that echoes the clash of the wave on the beach
and the rustle of the shingle as the wave sinks back.
My curiosity in McH ale's translation interested him
in me, and it was arranged soon after between him
and my father that he should teach me Latin, and
I rode a pony over every morning to a thatched
cottage under ilex-trees, where the pleasantest hours
of my childhood were spent in a parlour lined with
books from floor to ceiling, reading there a little
Virgil, and persuading an old priest into talk about
Quintilian and Seneca. One day he spoke of Pro-
pertius, and the beauty of the name led me to ask
Father James if I might read him, and not receiving
a satisfactory answer, my curiosity was stimulated and
Caesar studied diligently for a month.

' Shall I know enough Latin in six months to read
Propertius ?'

' It will be many years before you will be able to
read him. He is a very difficult writer.'

^ Could Martin Blake read Propertius ?'

Martin Blake was Father James's other pupil, and
these Blakes are neighbours of ours, and live on the
far side of Carnacun. Father James was always
telling me of the progress Martin was making in the
Latin language, and I was always asking Father James
when I should overtake him, but he held out very
little hope that it would be possible for me ever to
outdo Martin in scholarship. He may have said
this because he could not look upon me as a promising
pupil, or he may have been moved by a hope to start

AVE 259

a spirit of emulation in me. He was a wise old man,
and the reader will wonder how it was that, with
such a natural interest in languages and such ex-
cellent opportunities, I did not become a classical
scholar; the reader's legitimate curiosity shall be
satisfied.

One day Father James said the time would come
when I would give up hunting — everything for the
classics, and I rode home, elated, to tell my mother
the prophecy. But she burst out laughing, leaving me
in no doubt whatever that she looked upon Father
James's idea of me as an excellent joke ; and the
tragedy of it all is that I accepted her casual point
of view without consideration, carrying it almost at
once into reality, playing truant instead of going to
my Latin lesson. Father James, divested of his
scholarship, became a mere priest in my eyes. I
think that I avoided him, and am sure that I hardly
ever saw him again, except at Mass.

A strange old church is Camacun, built in the
form of a cross, with whitewashed walls and some
hardened earth for floor ; and I should be hard set
to discover in my childhood an earlier memory than
the panelled roof, designed and paid for by my
father, who had won the Chester Cup some years
before. The last few hundred pounds of his good-
fortune were spent in pitch-pine rafters and boards,
and he provided a large picture of the Crucifixion,
painted by my cousin, Jim Browne, who happened to
be staying at Moore Hall at the time, from Tom Kelly
the lodge-keeper, the first nude model that ever
stood up in Mayo (Mayo has always led the way —
Ireland's vanbird for sure). It was taken in great

260 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

pomp from Moore Hall to Carnacun ; and the hanging
of it was a great and punctilious affair. A board had
to be nailed at the back whereby a rope could be
attached to hoist it into the roof, and lo ! Mickey
Murphy drove a nail through one of the gilt leaves
which served as a sort of frame for the picture. My
father shouted his orders to the men in the roof that
they were to draw up the picture very slowly, and,
lest it should sway and get damaged in the swaying,
strings were attached to it. My father and mother
each held a string, and the third may have been held
by Jim Browne, or perhaps I was allowed to hold it.
Some time afterwards a ' Blessed Virgin ' and a ' St.
Joseph' came down from Dublin, and they were
painted and gilded by my father, and so beautifully,
that they were the admiration of everyone for a very
long while, and it was Jim Browne's ' Crucifixion '
and these anonymous statues that awakened my first
aesthetic emotions. I used to look forward to seeing
them all the way from Moore Hall to Carnacun — a
bleak road as soon as our gate-lodge was passed : on
one side a hill that looked as if it had been peeled ;
on the other some moist fields, divided by small stone
walls, liked by me in those days, for they were ex-
cellent practice for my pony. Along this road our
tenantry used to come from their villages, the women
walking on one side (the married women in dark
blue cloaks, the girls hiding their faces behind their
shawls, carrying their boots in their hands, which
they would put on in the chapel-yard), the men walk-
ing on the other side, the elderly men in traditional
swallow-tail coats, knee-breeches, and worsted stock-
ings ; the young men in corduroy trousers and frieze

AVE 261

coats. As wej passed, the women curtseyed in their
red petticoats ; the young men hfted their round
bowler-hats; but the old men stood by, their tall
hats in their hands. At the bottom of every one was
a red handkerchief, and I remember wisps of grey
hair floating in the wind. Our tenantry met the
tenantry of Clogher and Tower Hill, and they all col-
lected round the gateway of the chapel to admire the
carriages of their landlords. We were received like
royalty as we turned in the gates and went up the
wooden staircase leading to the gallery, frequented
by the privileged people of the parish — by us, and by
our servants, the postmaster and postmistress from
Ballyglass, and a few graziers. In the last pew were
the police, and after the landlords these were the
most respected.

As soon as we were settled in our pew the
acolytes ventured from the sacristy tinkling their
bells, the priest following, carrying the chalice
covered with the veil. As the ceremony of the
Mass was never of any interest to me, I used to
spend my time looking over the pew into the body
of the church, wondering at the herd of peasantry,
tryuig to distinguish our own serfs among those
from the Tower Hill and Clogher estates. Pat
Plunket, a highly respectable tenant (he owned a
small orchard), I could always discover; he knelt
just under us, and in front of a bench, the only one
in the body of the church, and about him collected
those few that had begun to rise out of brutal in-
digence. Their dress and their food were slightly
diiferent from the commoner kind. Pat Plunket
and Mickey Murphy, the carpenter, not the sawyer,

262 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

were supposed to drink tea and eat hot cakes.
The others breakfasted off Indian-meal porridge.
And to Pat Plunket's bench used to come a tall
woman, whose grace of body the long blue-black
cloak of married life could not hide. I liked
to wonder which among the men about her might
be her husband. And a partial memory still lingers
of a cripple that was allowed to avail himself of Pat
Plunket's bench. His crutches were placed against
the wall, and used to catch my eye, suggesting
thoughts of what his embarrassment would be if
they were taken away whilst he prayed. A great
unknown horde of peasantry from Ballyglass and
beyond it knelt in the left-hand corner, and after
the communion they came up the church with a
great clatter of brogues to hear the sermon, leaving
behind a hideous dwarf whom I could not take my
eyes off, so strange was his waddle as he moved
about the edge of the crowd, his huge mouth grin-
ning all the time.

Our pew was the first on the right-hand side, and
the pew behind us was the Clogher pew, and it was
filled with girls — Helena, Livy, Lizzy, and May — the
first girls I ever knew ; and these are now under the
sod — all except poor Livy, an old woman whom I
sometimes meet out with her dog by the canal. In
the first pew on the left was a red landlord with
a frizzled beard and a perfectly handsome wife, and
behind him was Joe McDonnell from Camacun
House, a great farmer, and the wonder of the
church, so great was his belly. I can see these
people dimly, like figures in the background of a
picture ; but the blind girl is as clear in my memory

AVE 263

as if she were present. She used to kneel behind
the Virgin's altar and the Communion rails, almost
entirely hidden under an old shawl, grown green
with age ; and the event of every Sunday, at least
for me, was to see her draw herself forward when
the communion bell rang, and lift herself to receive
the wafer that the priest placed upon her tongue,
and having received it, she would sink back, over-
come, overawed, and I used to wonder at her piety,
and think of the long hours she spent sitting by
the cabin-fire waiting for Sunday to come round
again. On what roadside was that cabin ? And
did she come, led by some relative or friend, or
finding her way down the road by herself ? Ques-
tions that interested me more than anybody else,
and it was only at the end of a long inquiry that I
learnt that she came from one of the cabins opposite
Camacun House. Every time we passed that cabin
1 used to look out for her, thinking how I might
catch sight of her in the doorway ; but I never saw
her except in the chapel. Only once did we meet
her as we drove to Ballyglass, groping her way,
doubtless, to Camacun. Where else would she be
going ? And hearing our horses' hooves, she shrank
closer to the wall, overawed, into the wet among the
falling leaves.

As soon as the Communion was over Father James
would come forward, and thrusting his hands under
the albe (his favourite gesture) he would begin his
sermon in Irish (in those days Irish was the language
of the country among the peasantry), and we would
sit for half an hour, wondering what were the terrible
things be was saying, asking ourselves if it were

264 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

pitchforks or ovens, or both, that he was talking ;
for the peasantry were groaning aloud, the women
not infrequently falling on their knees, beating their
breasts ; and I remember being perplexed by the
possibility that some few tenantry might be saved,
for if that happened how should we meet them in
heaven ? For heaven's sake would they pass us by
without lifting their hats and crying : ' Long life to
yer honour'?

My memories of Carnacun Chapel and Father
James Browne were interrupted by a sudden lurch-
ing forward of the car, which nearly flung me into
the road. Whelan apologized for himself and his
horse, but I danmed him, for I was annoyed at being
awakened from my dream. There was no hope ot
being able to pick it up again, for the chapel bell
was pealing down the empty landscape, calling the
peasants from their desolate villages. It seemed to
me that the Carnacun bell used to cry across the
moist fields more cheerfully ; there was a menace in
the Gort bell as there is in the voice of a man who
fears that he may not be obeyed, and this gave me
an interest in the Mass I was going to hear. It
would teach me something of the changes that had
happened during my absence. The first thing I
noticed as I approached the chapel was the smallness
of the crowd of men about the gate-posts ; only a
few figures, and they surly and suspicious fellows,
resolved not to salute the landlord, yet breaking
away with difficulty from traditional servility. Our
popularity had disappeared with the laws that
favoured us, but Whelan' s appearance counted for
something in the decaying sense of rank among the

AVE 265

peasantry, and I reproached Edward for not putting
his servant into livery. It interested me to see that
the superstitions of Carnacun were still followed :
the peasants dipped their fingers in a font and
sprinkled themselves, and the only difference that I
noticed between the two chapels was one for the
worse ; the windows at Gort were not broken, and
the happy, circling swallows did not build under the
rafters. It was easier to discover differences in the
two congregations. My eyes sought vainly the long
dark cloak of married life, nor did I succeed in
finding an old man in knee-breeches and worsted
stockings, nor a girl drawing her shawl over her
head.

'The Irish language is inseparable from these
things,' I said, 'and it has gone. The sermon will
be in English, or in a language as near English as
those hats and feathers are near the fashions that
prevail in Paris.'

The Gort peasants seemed able to read, for they
held Prayer-books, and as if to help them in their
devotion a harmonium began to utter sounds as
discordant as the red and blue glass in the windows,
and all the time the Mass continued very much as I
remembered it, until the priest lifted his albe over
his head and placed it upon the altar (' Father James
used to preach in the vestment,' I said to myself) ;
and very slowly and methodically the Gort priest
tried to explain the mystery of Transubstantiation
to the peasants, and they listened to him with such
indifference that it were difficult not to think that
Father James's sermons, based on the fear of the
devil, were more suitable to Ireland.

266 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

A Mass only rememberable for a squealing har-
monium, some panes in terrifying blues and reds,
and my own great shame. However noble my
motive may have been, I had knelt and stood with
the congregation ; I had even bowed my head,
making believe by this parade that I accepted the
Mass as a truth. It could not be right to do this,
even for the sake of the Irish Literary Theatre, and
I left the chapel asking myself by what strange
alienation of the brain had Edward come to imagine
that a piece of enforced hypocrisy on my part could
be to anyone's advantage.

It seemed to me that mortal sin had been com-
mitted that morning; a sense of guilt clung about
me. Edward was consulted. Could it be right for
one who did not believe in the Mass to attend
Mass ? He seemed to acquiesce that it might not
be right, but when Sunday came round again my
refusal to get on the car so frightened him that I
relinquished myself to his scruples, to his terror, to
his cries. The reader will judge me weak, but it
should be remembered that he is my oldest friend,
and it seemed to me that we should never be the
same friends again if I refused ; added to which he
had been telling me all the week that he was getting
on finely with his third act, and for the sake of a
hypothetical act I climbed up on the car.

' Now, Whelan, don't delay putting up the horse.
Mind you're in time for Mass, and don't leave the
chapel until the last Gospel has been read.'

' Must we wait for Benediction ?' I cried ironically.

Edward did not answer, possibly because he does
not regard Benediction as part of the liturgy, and is.

AVE 267

therefore^ more or less indifferent to it. The horse
trotted and Whelan clacked his tongue^ a horrible
noise from which I tried to escape by asking him
questions.

' Are the people quiet in this part of the country ?'

' Quite enough/ he answered, and I thought I
detected a slightly contemptuous accent in the
syllables.

' Not much life in the country ? I hear the hunt-
ing is going to be stopped ?'

' Parnell never told them to stop the hunting.'

' You're a Parnellite ?'

' He was a great man.'

^ The priests went against him/ I said, ' because
he loved another man's wife.'

' And O'Shea not living with her at the time.'

^ Even if he had been/ I answered, ' Ireland first
of all, say I. He was a great man.'

' He was that.'

' And the priest at Gort — was he against him ?'

' Wasn't he every bit as bad as the others ?'

' Then you don't care to go to his church ?'

'I'd just as lief stop away.'

' It's strange, Whelan ; it's strange that Mr. Martyn
should insist on my going to Gort to Mass. Of what
use can Mass be to anyone if he doesn't wish to
hear it ?'

Whelan chuckled, or seemed to chuckle.

'He will express no opinion,' I said to myself,
' and abstractions don't interest him.' So, turning
to the concrete, I spoke of the priest who was to say
Mass, and Whelan agreed that he had gone ' agin '
Parnell.

268 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

* Well, Whelan, it's a great waste of time going to
Gort to hear a Mass one doesn't want to hear, and I
have business with Mr. Yeats.'

' Maybe you'd like me to turn into Coole, sur ?'

' I was thinking we might do that . . . only you
won't speak to Mr. Martyn about it, will you ?
Because, you see, Whelan, everyone has his pre-
judices, and I am a great friend of Mr. Martyn, and
wouldn't like to disappoint him.'

' Wouldn't like to contrairy him, sur ?'

' That's it, Whelan. Now, what about your dinner ?
You don't mind having your dinner in a Protestant
house ?'

^ It's all one to me, sur.'

' The dinner is the main point, isn't it, Whelan ?'

' Begad it is, sur,' and he turned the horse in
through the gates.

^ Just go round,' I said, ' and put the horse up and
say nothing to anybody.'

' Yes, sur.'

After long ringing the maidservant opened the
door and told me that Lady Gregory had gone to
church with her niece ; Mr. Yeats was composing.
Would I take a seat in the drawing-room and wait
till he was finished? He must have heard the
wheels of the car coming round the gravel sweep,
for he was in the room before the servant left it —
enthusiastic, though a little weary. He had written
five lines and a half, and a pause between one's
rhymes is an excellent thing, he said. One could
not but admire him, for even in early morning he
was convinced|irf the importance of literature in our
national life. He is nearly as tall as a Dublin

AVE 269

policeman, and preaching literature he stood on the
hearthrug, his feet set close together. Lifting his
arms above his head (the very movement that
Raphael gives to Paul when preaching at Athens),
he said what he wanted to do was to gather up a
great mass of speech. It did not seem to me clear
why he should be at pains to gather up a great mass of
speech to write so exiguous a thing as The Shadowy
Waters ; but we live in our desires rather than in
our achievements, and Yeats talked on, telling me
that he was experimenting, and did not know
whether his play would come out in rhyme or in
blank verse : he was experimenting. He could write
blank verse almost as easily as prose, and therefore
feared it; some obstacle, some dam was necessary.
It seemed a pity to interrupt him, but I was
interested to hear if he were going to accept my
end, and allow the lady to drift southward, drinking
yellow ale with the sailors, while the hero sought
salvation alone in the North. He flowed out into
a torrent of argument and explanation, very in-
genious, but impossible to follow. Phrase after
phrase rose and turned and went out like a vsreath
of smoke, and when the last was spoken and the idea
it had borne had vanished, I asked him if he knew the
legend of Diarmuid and Grania. He began to tell
it to me in its many variants, surprising me with
unexpected dramatic situations, at first sight con-
tradictory and incoherent, but on closer scrutiny
revealing a psychology in germ which it would
interest me to unfold. A wonderful hour of litera-
ture that was, flowering into a resolution to write an
heroic play together. As we sat looking at each

270 < HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

other in silence^ Lady Gregory returned from
church.

She came into the room quickly, with a welcoming
smile on her face, and I set her down here as I see
her : a middle-aged woman, agreeable to look upon,
perhaps for her broad, handsome, intellectual brow
enframed in iron-grey hair. The brown, wide-open
eyes are often lifted in looks of appeal and inquiry,
and a natural wish to sympathize softens her voice
till it whines. It modulated, however, very pleasantly
as she yielded her attention to Yeats, who insisted
on telling her how two beings so different as myself
and Whelan had suddenly become united in a con-
spiracy to deceive Edward, Whelan because he could
not believe in the efficacy of a Mass performed by an
anti-Parnellite, and I because — Yeats hesitated for a
sufficient reason, deciding suddenly that I had
objected to hear Mass in Gort because there was no
one in the church who had read Villiers de I'lsle
Adam except myself ; and he seemed so much amused
that the thought suddenly crossed my mind that
perhaps the cocasseries of Connaught were more
natural to him than the heroic moods which he
believed himself called upon to interpret. His
literature is one thing and his conversation is
another, divided irreparably. Is this right ? Lady
Gregory chattered on, telling stories faintly farcical,
amusing to those who knew the neighbourhood, but
rather wearisome for one who didn't, and I was wait-
ing for an opportunity to tell her that an heroic drama
was going to be written on the subject of Diarmuid
and Grania.

When my lips broke the news, a cloud gathered

AVE 271

in her eyes, and she admitted that she thought it
would be hardly wise for Yeats to undertake any
further work at present ; and later in the afternoon
she took me into her confidence, telling me that Yeats
came to Coole every summer because it was necessary
to get him away from the distractions of London,
not so much from social as from the intellectual
distractions that Arthur Symons had inaugurated.
The " Savoy " rose up in my mind with its translations
from Villiers de I'lsle Adam, Verlaine, and Maeter-
linck ; and I agreed with her that alien influences
were a great danger to the artist. All Yeats' early
poems, she broke in, were written in Sligo, and among
them were twenty beautiful lyrics and Ireland's one
great poem. The Wanderings of Usheen — all these had
come straight out of the landscape and the people he
had known from boyhood.

' For seven years we have been waiting for a new
book from him ; ever since The Countess Cathleen we
have been reading the publisher's autumn announce-
ment of The Wind among the Reeds. The volume
was finished here last year ; it would never have
been finished if I had not asked him to Coole, and
though we live in an ungrateful world, I think some-
body will throw a kind word after me some day, if
for nothing else, for The Wind among the Reeds.'

I looked round, thinking that perhaps life at
Coole was arranged primarily to give him an oppor-
tunity of writing poems. As if she had read my
thoughts. Lady Gregory led me into the back
drawing-room, and showed me the table at which
he wrote, and I admired the clean pens, the fresh
ink and the spotless blotter ; these were her

272 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !*

special care every morning. I foresaw the strait
sofa lying across the window, valued in some future
time because the poet had reclined upon it between
his rhymes. Ah me ! the creeper that rustles an
accompaniment to his melodies in the pane will
awaken again, year after year, but one year it will
awaken in vain. . . . My eyes thanked Lady
Gregory for her devotion to literature. Instead of
writing novels she had released the poet from the
quern of daily journalism, and anxious that she
should understand my appreciation of her, I spoke
of the thirty-six wild swans that had risen out of the
lake while Yeats and I wandered all through the
long evening seeking a new composition for The
Shadowy Waters.

She did not answer me, and I followed her in
silence back to the front room and sat listening to
her while she told me that it was because she
wanted poems from him that she looked askance at
our project to write a play together on the subject of
Diarmuid and Grania. It was not that the subject
was unsuited to his genius, but she thought it should
be written by him alone ; the best of neither would
transpire in collaboration, and she lamented that
it were useless to save him from the intellectual
temptations of Symons if he were to be tossed into
more subtle ones. She laughed, as is her way when
she cozens, and reminded me that we were of different
temperaments and had arisen out of different literary
traditions.

' Mayo went to Montmartre, and Sligo turned into
Fleet Street.'

Suspicious in her cleverness, my remark did not

AVE 273

altogether please her^ and she said something about
a man of genius and a man of talent coming together,
speaking quickly under her breath, so that her
scratch would escape notice at the time ; and we
were talking of our responsibilities towards genius
when the door opened and Yeats came into the
room.

He entered somewhat diffidently, I thought, with
an invitation to me to go for a walk. Lady Gregory
was appeased with the news that he had written
five-and-a-half lines that morning, and a promise that
he would be back at six, and would do a little more
writing before dinner. As he went away he told me
that he might attain his maximum of nine lines that
evening, if he succeeded in finishing the broken
line. But S must never meet S ; * for his sake ' was
inadmissible, and while seeking how he might avoid
such a terrifying cacophony we tramped down wet
roads and climbed over low walls into scant fields,
finding the ruined castle we were in search of at the
end of a long boreen among tall, wet grasses. The
walls were intact and the stair, and from the top we
stood watching the mist drifting across the grey
country, Yeats telling how the wine had been drugged
at Tara, myself thinking how natural it was that
Lady Gregory should look upon me as a danger to
Yeats' genius. As we descended the slippery stair
an argument began in my head whereby our project
of collaboration might be defended. Next time I
went to Coole I would say to Lady Gregory : ' You
see, Yeats came to me with The Shadowy Waters
because he had entangled the plot and introduced
all his ideas into it, and you will admit that the plot

274 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

had to be disentangled?' To conciliate her com-
pletely I would say that while Yeats was rewriting
The Shadoivy Waters I would spend my time writing
an act about the many adventures that befell Diar-
muid and Grania as they fled before Finn. It was
in the ruined castle that Yeats began to tell me the
story of their wanderings ; and I gave him all the
attention that I could spare from Lady Gregory,
who, I was thinking, might admit my help in the
arrangement of some incidents in The Shadowy Waters,
but would always regard our collaboration in Diar-
muid and Grania with hostility. And for this it
seemed to me I could not blame her. She had put
her case very well when she had said that her fear
was that my influence might break up the mould of
his mind ?

The car waited for me at the end of the boreen,
and I got on it trying to persuade Yeats to come to
Tillyra with me, but he said he could not leave Lady
Gregory alone, and before we parted I learnt that
she read to him every evening. Last summer it was
War and Peace, and this summer it was Spenser's
Faerie Queene. He was going to publish a selection
and write an Introduction, and must get back to
Coole for the seventh canto.

' Good-bye,' and springing up on the car, I was
driven by Whelan into the mist, thinking Yeats the
most fortunate amongst us, he having discovered
among all the others that one who, by instinctive
sympathy, understood the capacity of his mind, and
could evoke it, and who never wearied of it, whether
it came to her in elaborately-wrought stanzas or in
the form of some simple confession, the mood of last

ATE 275

night related as they crossed the sward after break-
fast. As the moon is more interested in the earth
than in any other things there is always some woman
more interested in a man's mind than in anything
else, and is willing to follow it sentence by sentence.
A great deal of Yeats' work must come to her in frag-
ments— a line and a half, two lines — and these she
faithfully copies on her typewriter, and even those
that his ultimate taste has rejected are treasured up,
and perhaps will one day appear in a stately variorum
edition.

' Well she may say that the future will owe her
something/ and my thoughts moved back to the
first time I saw her some twenty-five years ago.
She was then a young woman, very earnest, who
divided her hair in the middle and wore it smooth
on either side of a broad and handsome brow. Her
eyes were always full of questions, and her Pro-
testant high-school air became her greatly and
estranged me from her.

In her drawing-room were to be met men of
assured reputation in literature and politics, and
there was always the best reading of the time upon
her tables. There was nothing, however, in her
conversation to suggest literary faculty, and it was a
surprise to me to hear one day that she had written
a pamphlet in defence of Arabi Pasha, an Egyptian
rebel. Some years after she edited her husband's
memoirs, and did the work well. So at core she
must have been always literary, but early circum-
stances had not proved favourable to the develop-
ment of her gift, and it languished till she met
Yeats. He could not have been long at Coole before

276 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

he began to draw her attention to the beauty of the
literature that rises among the hills and bubbles
irresponsibly, and set her going from cabin to cabin
taking down stories, and encouraged her to learn the
original language of the country, so that they might
add to the Irish idiom which the peasant had already
translated into English, making in this way a
language for themselves.

Yeats could only acquire the idiom by the help of
Lady Gregory, for although he loves the dialect
and detests the defaced idiom which we speak in
our street parlour, he has little aptitude to learn
that of the boreen and the fair. She put her
aptitude at his service, and translated portions of
Cathleen ni Houlihan into Kiltartan (Kiltartan is the
village in which she collects the dialect) ; and she
worked it into the revised version of the stories
from The Secret Rose, published by the Dun Emer
Press, and thinking how happy their lives must be at
Coole, implicated in literary partnership, my heart
went out towards her in a sudden sympathy. ' She
has been wise all her life through,' I said ; ' she
knew him to be her need at once, and she never
hesitated . . . yet she knew me before she knew
him.'

XI

While Edward revised his play Yeats and I talked
of The Shadowy Waters, and the Boers crossed one
of our frontiers into Cape Colony or Natal — I have
forgotten which ; but I remember very well my
attitude of mind towards the war, and how I used

AVE 277

to walk every day from Tillyra to Ardrahan, a dis-
tance of at least two Irish miles, to fetch the
newspaper, so anxious was I to read of a victory for
our soldiers.

Before starting I would pay Edward a visit in his
tower, and after a few words about the play, I would
tell him that the way out of our South African
difficulties was simple — the Government should arm
the blacks ; and this would make Edward growl out
that the English Government was beastly enough to
do it ; and I remember how I used to go away,
pleased that I had always the courage of my morality.
Other men do what they know to be wrong, and
repent, or think they repent; but as* it would be
impossible for me to do what I believe to be wrong,
repentance is for me an idle word ; and, thinking that
to raise an army of seventy thousand blacks would
be a fine trick to play upon the Boers, I often
returned through the park full of contempt for my
countrymen, my meditations interrupted occasionally
by some natural sight — the beauty of the golden
bracken through which the path twisted, a crimson
beech at the end of it, or the purple beauty of a line
of hills over against the rocky plain freckled with the
thatched cabins of the peasantry. Nor do I re-
member more beautiful evenings than these were ;
and as the days drew in, the humble hawthorns
shaped themselves into lovely silhouettes, and a
meaning seemed to gather round the low, mossy
wall out of which they grew, until one day the
pictorial idea which had hitherto stayed my steps
melted away, and I became possessed by a senti-
mental craving for the country itself. After all, it

278 ♦ HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

was my country, and, strangely perturbed, I returned
to the castle to ask Edward's opinion regarding the
mysterious feeling that had glided suddenly into my
heart as I stood looking at the Burran Mountains.

It is difficult for anybody to say why he loves his
country, for what is a country but a geographical
entity ? And I am not sure that Edward was listen-
ing very attentively when I told him of a certain
pity, at variance with my character, that had seemed
to rise out of my heart.

' It would be strange if Cathleen ni Houlihan were
to get me after all. That is impossible . . . only
a passing feeling ;' and I sat looking at him,
remembering that the feeling I dreaded had seemed
to come out of the landscape and to have descended
into my heart. But he was so little interested in
what seemed to me oraculous that I refrained from
further explanation, concluding that he was thinking
of his play, which had gone to Coole yesterday. I
was led to think this, for he was sitting at the
window as if watching for Yeats. We were expecting
our poet.

' Here he is. I wonder what he thinks of your

revisions

And to save Edward from humiliation I asked
Yeats as soon as he came into the room, if he liked
the new third act.

' No, no ; it's entirely impossible. We couldn't
have such a play performed.' And dropping his
cloak from his shoulders, he threw his hair from his
brow with a pale hand, and sank into a chair, and
seemed to lose himself in a sudden meditation. It
was like a scene from a play, with Yeats in the

AVE 279

principal part ; and admiring him, I sat thinking of
the gloom of Keen, of the fate of the Princes in the
Tower, headsmen, and suchlike things, and thinking,
too, that Yeats, notwithstanding his hierarchic airs,
was not an actual literary infallibility. The revised
third act might not be as bad as he seemed to think
it. He might be mistaken ... or prejudiced.
Yeats' literary integrity is without stain, that I
knew. But he might be prejudiced against Edward
without knowing it. The success of The Heather
Field had stirred up in Edward, till then the most
unassuming of men, a certain aggressiveness which,
for some time past, I could see had been getting on
Yeats' nerves. Nor am I quite sure that myself at
that moment would not have liked to humble
Edward a little . . . only a little. But let us not
be drawn from the main current of our resolution,
which is entirely literary, by a desire to note every
sub-current. Yeats looked very determined, and
when I tried to induce him to give way he answered :

' We are artists, and cannot be expected to accept
a play because other plays as bad, and nearly as bad,
have been performed.'

'Saints,' I said, 'do not accept sins because sins
are of conunon occurrence.'

He did not answer, but sat looking into the fire
gloomily.

' He takes a very determined view of your play,
Edward. It may not strike me in the same light.
If you will give me the manuscript I'll just run
upstairs with it. I can't read it in front of you
both.'

There was no reason why 1 should read the first

280 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

two acts ; Edward had not touched them. What he
had engaged to rewrite was the last half of the
third act, and a few minutes would enable me to
see if he had made sufficient alterations for the play
to be put forward — not as a work of art — i.e., as
something that would be acted in fifty years for the
delight of numerous audiences, as proof of the talent
that existed in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth
century — but as a play to which literary people
could give their attention without feeling ashamed
of themselves afterwards. There was no reason why
we should ask for more ; for the subject of the
play was merely one of topical interest, and it is a
mistake — I pointed this out to Yeats — to be very
particular about the literary quality of such a play.
All the same it would have to be 'put right/ and
this Edward could not do. It was more a matter
for a cunning literary hand than for a fellow like
Edward with an original streak of genius in him,
and very little literary tact.

On these reflections I sat down to read, and a very
few minutes sufficed to show me that the play was
no better than before. It was crude enough to make
one wonder, and Yeats must have wondered while
he read it. Still, he should not have spoken so
arrogantly ; he should have remembered that
Edward was a liuman being ; and he had alluded to
the play contemptuously, as being no better than
the literary effort of the local schoolmaster, etc. ; and
his manner was equivalent to saying, ' Your soul is
inferior, and beneath my notice. Take it away.'

Yeats' treatment of Edward, because Edward had
written a somewhat crude play, enabled me to carry

AVE 281

my appreciation of the poet one step farther than I
had done that afternoon as we collaborated round
the edge of the lake. The new fact was like a
lamp put into my hand, and I began to understand
how abstract thinking kills the human sympathies.

' The metaphysician/ I said, ' has absorbed the
human being. Yeats is no longer capable of under-
standing anything but the literary valuelessness
of Edward's play. The man behind the play is
ignored . . . Yeats can no longer think with his
body; it is only his mind that thinks. He is all
intellect, if that isn't too cardinal a word.' And
seeing before me quite a new country of conjecture,
one which I had never rambled in, I sat thinking of
the cruelty of the monks of the Middle Ages, and
the cruelty of the nuns and the monks of the present
day. Their thoughts are abstracted from this world,
from human life — that is why ; and Yeats was a sort
of monk of literature, an Inquisitor of Journalism
who would burn a man for writing that ^ education
was progressing by leaps and bounds.' Opinions
make people cruel — literary as well as theological.
Whereas the surgeon, whose thought is always of
the flesh, is the kindliest of creatures. It is true
that one sometimes hears of surgeons who, in the
pursuit of science, willingly undertake operations
which they know to be dangerous, and we know
that the scientists in the laboratory are indifferent
to the sufferings of the animals they vivisect. Even
so. Nature thinks like the surgeon who risks an
operation in order that he may discover the cause of
the disease. The knowledge he gathers from the
death of the patient is passed on, and it saves the

282 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

life of another. But the artist cannot pass on any
portion of his art to his pupil ; his gift lives in him-
self and dies with him^ and his art comes as much
from his heart as from his intellect. The intellect
outlives the heart, and the heart of Yeats seemed
to me to have died ten years ago ; the last of it
probably went into the composition of The Countess
Cathleen.

Yesterevening, when we wandered about the
lake, talking of The Shadowy Waters, trying to free it
from the occult sciences that had grown about it,
Fomorians beaked and unbeaked, and magic harps
and Druid spells, I did not perceive that the diffi-
culties into which the story had wandered could be
attributed to a lack of human sympathy. But Yeats'
treatment of Edward proved it to me. The life of
the artist is always at difficult equipoise ; he may
fail from lack of human sympathies, or he may yield
altogether to them and become a mere philanthro-
pist ; and we may well wonder what the choice of
the artist would have been if he had to choose
between the destruction of Messina and Reggio or
Herculaneum and Pompeii. Were he to choose the
ancient ruins in preference to the modern towns, he
might give very good reasons for doing so, saying
that to prolong the lives of a hundred thousand
people for a few years would not be, in his opinion,
worth a bronze like the Narcissus. A very specious
argument might be maintained in favour of the
preservation of the bronze, even at the price of a
hundred thousand lives. Perhaps he might let the
bronze go, but if all Greek art were added he
would hesitate, and when he had let one hundred

AVE 283

thousand men and women go to their doom he
would probably retire into the mountains to escape
from sight of every graven thing. To write a play
our human and artistic sympathies must be very
evenly balanced, and I remembered that among my
suggestions for the reconstruction of The Shadowy
Waters, the one that Yeats refused most resolutely
was that the woman should refuse to accompany the
metaphysical pirate to the ultimate North, but return
somewhat diffidently, ashamed of herself, to the
sailors who were drinking yellow ale.

' 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 bad as he ? Am I not worse than he ?
Edward is my oldest friend.'

The manuscript fell from my hand, and I sat for
a long time thinking ; and then, getting up, I wan-
dered out of my room and hung over the banisters,
looking down into the central hall. ' What can
Yeats be saying to Edward.^ The interview must
be a strained one, so contemptuously did he speak
just now. The sooner I go down and bring it to
an end the better.'

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.'

284 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' 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 some-
thing 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 his failure. I expected
Yeats to say something sympathetic, but all he said
was: 'We couldn't produce such a play as that.'

AVE 285

It was perhaps the wisest thing he could say under
the circumstances. For what use is there in senti-
mentaUzing over the lamb whose throat is going to
be cut in the slaughterhouse ?

' The sooner the alterations are made the better.'

And I asked Yeats to come over to-morrow.

' You see^ you'll have to help me with this adapta-
tion, 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 forenoon, 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
realized that the tray would bring home to him in a
very real and cruel way the fact that his play was

286 < HAIL AND FAREWELL !*

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 blue-bottle. True that the
blue-bottle's plight is worse than Edward's, for the
insect does not know why it is being experimented
upon. Edward, at all events, had the consolation
that he was sacrificing himself for his country. It
is well known that the idea of sacrifice produces a
great exaltation of mind, and is, in fact, a sort of
anaesthetic. Let it be admitted that we were cruel,
but give us credit for our intentions.

When Yeats tarried as late as seven o'clock in
order to finish a scene, Edward would ask him to
stay to dinner, and we were so eager about our work
that we lacked tact, discussing before Edward the
alterations we were going to make, and one morning
reading what we had written to him. 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

AVE 287

from Lady Gregory in the course of the afternoon,
saying that she was leaving Coole. Would it be con-
venient to Edward to allow Yeats to stay at Tillyra
for a few days by himself? He would like to con-
tinue the composition of The Shadowy Waters in
Galway.

Lady Gregory's request seemed to me an extra-
ordinary 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 he had already forgiven Yeats his
literary arrogance. Noticed it he certainly had. A
nice point in psychology this was for me, and I
turned it over many times before I discovered that it
was not Edward's natural amiability, nor because he
is predisposed to forget and to forgive, but because
he believed Yeats to be Ireland's poet, and would not
like to do anything that might prevent him writing
a masterpiece which would redound to Ireland's credit
in the future.

^ Extraordinary !' I said to myself. ' These people
are willing to sacrifice everything for Ireland — a
strange country, demanding sacrifices always. If it
were human lives to defend it against the foreigner, I
should understand. 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.

288 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

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 oj
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 with the country enough 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

AVE 289

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 f

^ The Tale of a Torvn 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 !' 1 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
there 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.

T

290 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

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 1 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 super-
stition, 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 figlTt and keep their country ;
and ijb 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

AVE 291

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 folk-lore,
and therefore, in some respects, 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 j
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 rudi-
ments 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 T^athleen 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 anyone.'

The morning paper was picked up from the hearth-
rug, and the news of the capture of our troops read

292 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

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 after-
noon 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 Hfe 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

AVE 293

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 to-morrow. Such a thing could
not be. A new self had grown up within me, or
had taken possession of me. It is hard to analyze 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 recognizable upon
my face ; but the mirror does not give back charac-
teristic 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

294 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

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 along the street in
goloshes if the weather be wet, and in the studio in
carpet slippers. Long white hands droop from 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 sympathized 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.

' Steer's pictures are the best he has done,' Tonks
said, as soon as we had left our friend's doorstep.

AVE 295

and he asked me if I liked the wooded hillside
better than the ruins.

^I can't talk of pictures just now^ Tonks. The
war has put pictures clean out of my head, and I
don't mind telling you that Steer's indifference to
everything except his values has disgusted me. I
don't know if you noticed it, I hardly looked at
an3rthing. Were you interested }'

' Well, Moore, I can always admire Steer's pictures,
but it is difficult to detach oneself from the war to
admire them sufficiently. I'm sure we shall admire his
work more at some other time ; so far I am with you.'

' Only as far as that ? Can't you see that the war
has changed me utterly ?'

^ I can see that you take it very much to heart.'

' I don't mean that, Tonks ; it seems to me to
have changed me outwardly. I can't believe that
I present the same appearance. After all, it is the
mind that makes the man. Tell me, hasn't the war
put a new look on my face ?'

' When you mention it, you change ; there's no
doubt about it, you seem a different person. I'll
say that.'

' Do tell me.' And Tonks tried to describe the
scowl that overspreads my face.

' I'll do a drawing of it, and then you'll see. You
glare at us across the dinner-table. Steer and I
were talking about it only yesterday, and Steer said :
' Moore looks like that when he remembers we are
Englishmen. Now, isn't it so ?'

* I shouldn't like to say it wasn't, though it seems
silly to admit it. You don't approve of the war, do
you, Tonks .'''

296 ^ HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' 1 think it is a very unfortunate affair.'

' Those concentration camps !'

At the words the kind melancholy of the surgeon
appeared in Tonks' face. He was a surgeon before
he was a painter, and, seeing that he was genuinely
afflicted, I told him the Ebury Street episode, and
my fears lest my life had been changed, and radically,
and that there was no place now in it for admiration
of pictures or of literature.

^But what will you do, my dear Moore?' Tonks
asked, his voice tight with sympathy.

^ I don't know ; anything may happen to me, for
I don't think as I used to. When it is assumed that
justice must give way to expediency, concentration
camps are established and women and children kept
prisoners so that they may die of typhoid and
enteric'

' No, Moore, it isn't as bad as that. They couldn't
be left on the veldt; we had to do something with
the women and children.'

^ Tonks, I'm ashamed of you ! After having burnt
down their houses you had to keep them, and as it
would be an advantage to you to destroy the Boer
race, you keep them in concentration camps where
they drop off like flies.'

^ Now, my dear Moore, I'm not going to quarrel
with you. I'm quite ready to admit '

^ When I think of it I feel as if I were going mad,
and that I must do something. This evening when
I jumped up from my chair and walked about the
room I could hardly keep myself from breaking Steer's
Chelsea china ; those shepherds and shepherdesses
were too cynical. Men and women in roses and
ribbons twanging guitars ! Why '

AVE 297

^ Of course, I can' see what you mean, but I can't
help laughing when you say you were tempted to
break Steer's Chelsea figures.'

' It is easy, Tonks, to see an absurdity ; very little
intelligence is required for that ; much more is
required to see the abomination of '

At that moment we were joined by Sickert. He
had stopped behind to exchange a few words with
Steer.

* You really shouldn't, Sickert,' Tonks said. ' The
last time you detained him on the doorstep he was
laid up with influenza.'

'An attack of influenza! And thousands of
women and children kept prisoners in concentra-
tion camps — children without milk to drink ; water,
perhaps, from springs fouled with the staling of
mules !'

' But if we had Steer laid up, what would happen
to the models ?' Sickert asked. ' One is coming at
ten to-morrow. Who would support the models ?
Would you ? And the New English Art Club with-
out a work by Steer ! Six feet by four ; a fine Old
English prospect with a romantic castle in the fore-
ground. An august site. As soon as the war is over,
one of those sites will be bought for the Pretoria Art
Gallery, and the taxpayer will be charged an extra
halfpenny in the pound for improving the intel-
lectual status of the Kaffirs, which will be indefinitely
raised.'

There was a moment's hesitation between anger
and laughter, but no one is angry when Sickert is by.
He has kept in middle age a great deal of his youth,
and during dinner I had noticed that not a streak of
grey showed in the thick rippling shock of yellow-

298 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

brown hair. The golden moustache has been shaved
away, and the long mouth and closely-set lips give
him a distinct clerical look. ' There was always
something of the cleric and the actor in him/ I
thought, as I overlooked his new appearance, draw-
ing conclusions from the special bowler-hat of French
shape that he wore. He had just come over from
Dieppe, and his trousers were French corduroy,
amazingly peg-top, and the wide braid on the coat
recalled I860. He was, at this time, addicted to
I860, living in a hotel in the Tottenham Court Road
in which all the steads were four-posted and all the
beds feather, and he was full of contempt for Steer's
collection of Chelsea china, and in favour of wax
fruit and rep curtains, and advocated heavy mahogany
sideboards.

He was as Pro-Boer as myself, with less indigna-
tion and more wit, and Tonks and I yielded that
night, as we always do, to the charm of his whimsical
imagination, and we laughed when he said :

* Our latest casualties are the capture of four
hundred Piccadilly dandies who had been foolish
enough to go out to fight the veterans of the veldt.
They were stripped of their clothes, patted on their
backs, and sent home to camp in silk fleshings 'and
embroidered braces. . . . Hope Bros., Regent
Street.'

Sickert's wide, shaven lip laughed, and he looked
so like himself in his overcoat and his French bowler-
hat that we walked for some yards delighting in his
personality — Tonks a little hurt, but pleased all the
same, myself treasuring up each contemptuous word
for further use, and considering at which of my

AVE 299

friends' houses the repetition of Sickert's wit would
give most offence.

Tonks bade us good-night in the King's Road.
Sickert came on with me ; his way took him through
Victoria Street, and we stopped outside my doorway,
drawn into tense communion by our detestation of
the war.

' I'm so glad to have met you after this long while/
he said, ' for I wanted to know if you held the same
opinion of Mr. Gladstone. Do you remember how
we used to laugh at him ? Now we see what a great
man he was.'

* England is, at present, the ugliest country. Oh,
I have changed towards England. I try to forget
that I once thought differently, for when I remember
myself (my former self) I hate myself as much as I
hate England.'

* Doesn't the lack of humour in the newspapers
surprise you ? This morning I read in the Pall Mall
that we are an Imperial people, and being an
Imperial people we must think Imperially, and pre-
sumably do everything else Imperially. Splendid,
isn't it ? Everything, the apple-trees included, must
be Imperial. We won't eat apples except Imperial
apples, and the trees are conjured to bear no others,
but the apple-trees go on flowering and bearing the
same fruit as before,' and Sickert burst into joyous
laughter in which I joined.

We bade each other good-night, and I went up
to my bed looking forward to the morning paper.
* Which may bring us some further news of the
Piccadilly dandies,' I muttered into my pillow.

In old times my servant would find me in my

300 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

drawing-room looking at a picture that I had bought
a few days before at Christie's, or at one that had
been some time in my possession, uncertain whether
I liked it as much as last year ; but, as I told Tonks,
art and literature had ceased to interest me, and
now she found me every morning in the dining-
room reading the paper. The morning after Steer's
dinner-party she came upon me in a very exultant
mood. ' Another win for the Boers,' I told her, and
took the paper back to bed with me, thinking how
I should go down and humiliate my tobacconist.
The day before he had said : ' Buller has trapped the
Boers ; we shall see a change within the next few
days.' He was right. 'A very nice change, too,*
and I went out to ask him if he had any new cigars
that would suit me. I did not like his cigars, and
told him so after a ten minutes' discussion as to the
reason for our defeat at Spion Kop. From the
tobacconist's I went to the Stores in the hope of
waylaying a friend or two there. A lady that I
knew very well always shopped there in the morning,
and it would be only a kindness to advise her to
take her money out of South African mines.

Parents take pleasure in putting a horrible powder
called Gregory into a spoon, and covering it with
jam, and telling the unfortunate child that he must
swallow it; and that afternoon I called on all my
friends, taking a grim pleasure in watching their
faces while I assured them that the recall of our
troops would be the wisest thing we could do.

Love of cruelty is inveterate in the human being,
and remembering this, remorse would sometimes
overtake me in the street, and a passionate resolution

AVE 301

surge up not to offend again, and it often happened
to me to go to another house to approve myself ; but
some chance phrase would set me talking again ; my
tongue could not be checked, not even when the
lady, to distract my attention from De Wet, asked my
opinion of some picture or knick-knack. She did not
succeed any better when she strove to engage my
attention by an allusion to a book. Not only books
and pictures had lost interest for me, but human
characteristics; opinions were what I demanded,
and from everybody. I remember coming from the
North of England in company with a prosaic middle-
aged man who had brought into the carriage with
him for his relaxation three newspapers — the Builder,
the Athenoeum, and Vanity Fair — and in the long
journey from Darlington to London I watched him
taking up these papers, one after the other, and
reading them with the same interest. At any other
time I should have been eager to make the acquaint-
ance of one that could find something to interest
him in these papers, and should have been much
disappointed if I did not succeed in becoming
intimate with him by the end of the journey. But,
strange as it will seem to the reader, who by this
time has begun to know me, I am forced to admit
that I was only anxious to hear his opinion of the
war, and my curiosity becoming, at last, intolerable,
I interrupted his architectural, social or literary
meditation with the statement that the Daily
Telegraph contained some very grave news. Two
eyes looked at me over spectacles, and on the phrase,
^ Well, the war was bound to come sooner or later,'
we began to argue, and it was not until we readied

302 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !*

Finsbury Park — he got out there — that I remem-
bered I had forgotten to ask him if he were a con-
stant reader of the three newspapers that he rolled
up and put away carefully into a black bag.

The incident is one among hundreds of similar
incidents, all pointing to the same fact that nothing
but the war interested me as a subject of conver-
sation or of thought. Every day the obsession
became more terrible, and the surrender of my
sanity more imminent. I shall try to tell the story
as it happened, but fear that some of it will escape
my pen ; yet it is all before me clear as my reflec-
tion in the glass : that evening, for instance, when I
walked with a friend through Berkeley Square and
fell out with my friend's appearance, so English did
it seem to me to be, for he wore his clothes arro-
gantly; yet it was not his clothes so much as his
sheeplike face that angered me. We were dining at
the same house that night, and on looking round the
dinner-table I saw the same sheep in everybody, in
the women as much as in the men. Next day in
Piccadilly I caught sight of it in every passer-by ;
every man and woman seemed to wear it, and every-
body's bearing and appearance suggested to me a
repugnant, sensual cosmopolitanism ; a heartless lust
for gold was read by me in their faces — ' for the
goldfields of Pretoria which they haven't gotten yet,
and never will get, I hope.'

In the dusk England seemed to rise up before me
in person, a shameful and vulgar materialism from
which I turned with horror, and this passionate
revolt against England was aggravated by memories
of my former love of England, and, do what I would,

AVE 303

I could not forget that I had always met in England
a warm heart, a beautiful imagination, firmness and
quiet purpose. But I just had to forget that I ever
thought well of England, or to discover that I had
been mistaken in England. To bring the point as
clearly as I may before the reader, I will ask him
to think of a man who has lived happily and success-
fully with a woman for many years, and suddenly
discovers her to be a criminal or guilty of some
infidelity towards him ; to be, at all events, one whose
conduct and capacities are not those that he had
credited her with. As his suspicions multiply, the
beauties which he once read in her face and figure
fade, and her deportment becomes aggressive, till she
can no longer cross the room without exciting angry
comment in his mind. A little later he finds that
he cannot abide in the house, so offensive is it to
him ; the disposition of the furniture reminds him of
her; and one day the country through which they
used to walk together turns so distasteful that he
longs to take the train and quit it for ever. How
the change has been accomplished he does not know,
and wonders. The hills and the woods compose the
landscape as they did before, but the poetry has
gone out of them ; no gleam of sunlight plays along
the hillsides for him, and no longer does the blue
hill rise up far away like a land out of which dreams
come and whither they go. The world exists only
in our ideas of it, and as my idea of England changed
England died, so far as I was concerned ; an empty
materiaUsm was all I could see around me ; and with
this idea in my mind my eyes soon saw London as a
great sprawl of brick on either side of a muddy river

304 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

without a statue that one could look upon with
admiration.

And then I grew interested in my case, and went
for long walks with a view to discovering how much
I had been deceived^ taking a certain bitter pleasure
in noticing that Westminster Abbey was not com-
parable to Notre Dame (nobody ever thought it was,
but that was a matter that did not concern me);
Westminster was merely an echo of French genius^
the church that a Norman King had built in a
provincial city ; and, going up Parliament Street, I
shook my head over my past life, for there had been
a time when the Horse Guards had seemed no mean
structure. The National Gallery was compared to
the Madeleine and to the Bourse ; St. Martin's
Church roused me to special anger, and I went down
the Strand wondering how anyone who had seen
the beautiful French churches could admire it. I
walked past St. Clement Danes, thinking it at best
a poor thing. The Temple Church was built by
Normans, and it pleased me to remember that there
were no avenues in London, no great boulevards.
There are parks in London, but they have not been
laid out. Hyde Park is no more than a great
enclosure, and St. James's Park, which used to
awaken such delicate sympathies in my heart as
I stood on the bridge, seemed to me in 1900 a
rather foolish counterfeit, ^shamming some French
model,' I said. 'The detestable race has produced
nothing original : not one sculptor, nor a great painter,
except, perhaps, John Millais. He came from one
of the Channel Islands. A Frenchman !' If Eng-
lish painting can be repudiated, English literature

AVE 305

cannot: Shakespeare, Shelley, and Wordsworth —
above all, Shelley, whose poetry I loved more than
anything else in the world. Was he free from the
tamt of England ?

The question occupied my thoughts one evening
all the way home, and after dinner I took down a
volume and read, or looked through, the last act of
Prometheus. I cast my eyes over ' The Sensitive Plant ' ;
it might have been beautiful once, but all the beauty
seemed to have faded out of it, and I could discover
none in ' The Ode to the West Wind.' Nor did any
of the hymns interest me, not even the ^ Hymn to Pan,'
the most beautiful lyric in the world. My indiffer-
ence to English poetry invaded the language itself;
English seemed to me to lack consistency that even-
ing— a woolly language without a verbal system or
agreement between the adjectives and nouns. So
did I rave until, wearied of finding fault with every-
thing English, my thoughts melted away into
memories of the French poets.

XIII

It would be better to get away from London and
waste no more time joining people in their walks, to
try to persuade them that London was an ugly city,
or to wring some admission from them that the Boer
War was shameful, and that England was on her
knees, out-fought, vanquished by a few thousand
Boers, about as many able-bodied men as one would
find in the Province of Connaught.

It was in such empty conflict of opinion that I had
u

306 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

spent yesterevening all the way along the King's
Road, having button-holed a little journalist as he
came out of Sloane Street railway-station. He
seemed to be laughing at me when we parted, some-
where in the Grosvenor Road, and I had returned
home full of the conviction that I must get away
from opinions. My condition would welcome a
pastoral country, and a vision of a shepherd following
his flock rose before my eyes. The essential was a
country unpolluted by opinions, and hoping to find
this in Sussex, I got into the train at Victoria one
afternoon, rapt in a memory of some South Saxon
folk that lived in an Italian house under the downs.

They had come into my life when I was a boy, and
had been always the single part of me that had
never changed ; ideas had come and gone, but they
had remained, and it was pleasant to ponder on this
friendship as I returned to them and to seek out the
secret reason of my love of these people — the very
last that anybody would expect to find me among.
So it was clear that there was nothing superficial in
our affection ; it was at the roots of our nature, and
I could only think that I had not wearied of these
South Saxons because they were so like themselves,
exemplars of a long history, a great tradition ; and
as the train passed through Haywards Heath I could
see them coming over with Hengist and Horsa
Ever since they had been on their land, cultivating it,
till it had taken on their likeness, or else they had
taken on the likeness of the land. Which had
happened I did not know, nor did it matter much.

Hundreds of had come and gone, but the type

remained, affirming itself in habits and customs.

AVE 307

' It is my love of what is permanent that has drawn
me to them again and again/ 1 said, and I thought
of that sweet returning, when, coming back from
France after a pursuit of painting through the Latin
Quarter and Montmartre, I had met Colville in
Regent Street ; and without reproaching me for my
long desertion, he had asked me when it would be
convenient for me to come down to Sussex to see
them. All my love of them had sprung up on the
instant, and we had gone away together that very
afternoon. My visit, intended to last for two or
three days, had lasted two or three years . . . perhaps
more.

One reads one's past life like a book out of which
some pages have been torn and many mutilated, and
among many scattered and broken sentences I come
upon a paragraph telling of a summer spent in South-
wick, writing the Confessions of a Young Man, in a
lodging overlooking the green. We all remember
that wonderful Jubilee summer, when the corn was
harvested at the end of July; and nearly every
evening of summer-time I had followied the winding
road under the downs until I came to a corner where
the sunk fence could be climbed. As I walked
across the park I could see the lights in the dining-
room. Kind, homely, hospitable folk, always glad to
see me, among whom the pleasantest years of my
life were passed ; so it is a pity that so much text
should be missing or indecipherable. A continuous
narrative is not discoverable until the evening when
Colville brought back two Belgian hares, and asked
his mother to look after them. I recall our first
solicitudes, our eagerness to poke lettuces into their

308 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL

hutch ; and when some young rabbits appeared there
was no end to our enthusiasm.

Colville's project of a rabbit-farm was largely his
mother's, I think ; be this as it may, by identifying
herself with it she had persuaded herself at the end
of two years that she alone could feed rabbits. It
was plain to us she was working beyond her strength ;
there could be no doubt about that, and very often I
would plead my right to reprove her and take a
heavy barrowful of turnips out of her hands, and
insist on wheeling it across the garden into the
rabbit-yard. Everybody knows how quickly rabbits
breed ; before three years were out there were four
hundred rabbits in the yard ; one could hardly walk
into it for fear of treading on the little ones ; the
outhouses were absorbed one by one, and in the
fourth year there were rabbit-hutches in the stables,
in the coal- and in the wood-sheds, and we used to
say that in another six months they would be in the
kitchen and coming up the stairs into the drawing-
room, if the masons that were building Colville's
house on the downs and the maker of the iron
hurdles at Wolverhampton did not hasten. And
every time Colville returned from London he was
asked if he had been able to extract a definite
promise from his ironmonger. At last the poor man,
plagued and frightened, went himself to Wolver-
hampton, and came back joyful, saying that the
manager at the works had given him special assur-
ances that we might look forward to the exportation
of the rabbits to the downs at the end of the month.
The end of the month seemed a long while, but we
understood that if the rabbits were turned out on the

AVE 309

downs before the ground was enclosed, the stoats
and the foxes would get a great number, and
poachers the rest. A poaching raid would certainly
be organized at Beading, and the labour of years
would be wasted.

The last delay was happily not a long one ; a few
weeks afterwards the house was declared ready to
receive us, and the rabbits went away in several
vans, Colville and I following on foot, talking, as we
went by Thunders Barrow Barn, of the great fortune
that always lay about waiting to be picked up by the
adventurous.

Again a great gap comes in my narrative. Memory
chooses to retain certain scenes and to allow others
to perish, and her choice often seems arbitrary and
unreasonable. Why should I, for instance, remember
Knight, the keeper at Freshcombe Lodge ? A spare,
silent man is before me as I write, and m my memory
he still goes about his work just as he used to do
twenty years ago. He strides along, a typical game-
keeper, stopping by the thorn-tree to see if there is
anything in his traps. A red and white animal is
struggling in one of them, and is killed with a blow
of his stick and hung up in the thorn-tree. Knight
saying that the young stoats will come there looking
round after her, and that he expects to get the
whole litter by the end of the week.

Every morning as I sat at my window writing I
used to see Knight taking food to the great mastiff
that was kept some twenty yards from the house : a
poor silent animal, always on a chain, to whom the
glory of strangling a poacher never came. Colville
bought a bloodhound ; it was thought she might be

310 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

useful for tracking, but she was a useless, timid bitch,
to whom we could never teach anything, but some
of her puppies learned to follow a trail in Fresh-
combe Bottom. Close to the house there were ten
couples of beagles — hard, wiry, blue-haired beagles ;
and all these are forgotten but Sailor Lad, who could
find his way over any fence, and would put his nose
down and trail a rabbit when he could run no faster
than a hedgehog. We all loved him for his clever-
ness, and waited eagerly for the first shooting, feeling
sure that he would lead the pack; but Sailor Lad
was gun-shy.

The squire and I were very fair shots ; we could
be counted upon to shoot well forward, hitting the
rabbit in the head, spoiling him as little as possible
for the market ; but in spite of our careful shooting,
Colville soon found that the profit that could be
made on shot rabbits would not pay the interest of
the large sum of money that had been spent on the
house and hurdles. He determined to make an end
of the shooting-parties, and told me one night how
he thought the rabbits might be netted. The furze
must be planted in strips with eighty yards of feed-
ing ground between each strip. The rabbits would
leave the furze at dawn, and the nets could be lifted.
It would not be difficult to invent some mechanism
to lift them quickly, so that the rabbits would not
have time to get back into the furze.

' But the replanting of the furze,' I said, ' would
keep the whole of the Sussex militia at work for '

I was about to say for ten years, but Colville,
interrupting me, said that he did not propose the
work should be done all at once, and I answered

AVE Sll

that I hoped he did not propose to himself any
such job. It is not wise to argue with a man who
has just risen from an unsatisfactory examination
of his accounts, and later, after some tactless advice
of mine to leave such matters as the catching of the
rabbits to his keeper, he lost his temper, and, rushing
to the door, threw it open and begged of me to retire
to my own apartments.

When he called me down to breakfast next morn-
ing I heard a tremor in his voice, and after some
injudicious attempt at explanation we seemed to
come to a tacit understanding that it would be
better to let the matter drop. He was very
wrathful, his temper had been sorely tried, and for
a week at least I am sure that I must have seemed
to him a cruel, imsympathetic fellow. It is not to
be doubted that I was in fault. But Colville could
not see that it was my overflowing sympathy that
prevented me from observing that rule of conduct
which must be observed if two men would live
together ; each must keep from asking the other
questions, and from criticizing the other's projects.
It would have been interesting to debate this point
with him, but Colville was not much interested at
any time in criticism of the human mind. He had
an ear, however, for music, and whistled beautifully
going up and down stairs ; and a few days after,
hearing that the nightingales were singing in the
coombe, we went out to listen to them.

' In yon thorn you'll find him,' Knight said, and
we moved on quietly till we came within sight of
the insignificant brown bird that had just arrived,
possibly from Algeria. Not a wind stirred in the

312 ^ HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

tall grass, nor was there a cloud in the sky ; a dim
gold fading into grey and into blue, darkening over-
head. A ghostly moon floated in the south, and the
blue sailless sea was wound about the shoulders of
the hills like a scarf. A fairer evening never breathed
upon this world, nor did a lovelier prospect ever
enchant human eyes, and Colville and I sat, a twain
enchanted. It was one of those evenings when con-
fidences rise to the lips, and Colville, as if to show
me that he had forgotten our quarrel, confided new
projects to me. In years to come he hoped to fill
the coombes with apple-trees ; they would cost from
half a crown to three and sixpence apiece to buy,
and in some twenty years or more orchards would
blossom every May from Thunders Barrow Barn all
the way to the foot of the downs.

My imagination was touched, and we returned
through the blue dusk delighted with each other,
fearful lest our lives should not continue to be lived
at Freshcombe till the end ; we may have even
dreamed of our graves under the apple boughs, and
when we reached the top of the hill we had reached
also the top of our friendship.

A few days afterwards the evenings began to seem
a little tedious ; all I had to say to Colville I had
said, for the time being, at least, and his sisters and
his mother and his father, whom I loved well, were
always glad to see me, and the walk was pleasant
along the hillsides, and it was pleasant to enter that
Italian house under the ilex-trees and to find them
all glad of my company. The squire liked me to
stay on after dinner to play billiards with him, and
to keep to the sheep path without missing it on a

p AVE 313

dark night was difficult, so I was often persuaded to
stay the night. These visits became more numerous,
and I went to London more frequently. Life,
although pleasant at the top and at the foot of the
downs, was too restricted in view for the purpose of
my literature. 'If one wants to write, one has to
live where writing is being done,' I said, and again
I left my friends, this time for a still longer absence,
and I might never have returned to them if the
Boer War had not brought me down to Sussex to
find out if there were anything in England, in the
country, in the people with whom I could still
sympathize.

The train that I was returning to my friends by
did not pass through Brighton, but came through
Preston Park by what is known as the loop-Une, and
as we approached Shoreham my thoughts were bent
on that house far away among the hills. It was
not likely that I should find Colville as Pro-Boer
as myself: his long militia service would render
an active Pro-Boer policy impossible, but he might
regard the war as a mistake ; and, feeling myself to
be in a distinctly reasonable mood, I decided that if
Colville would agree to regard the war as a mistake
we might come to terms.

About a quarter of a mile lay between their house
and the station, and up that straight road I walked,
wondering if a great deal of my admiration for the
country might be attributed to my love of the people
who lived at the foot of those hills, and catching
sight of a somewhat shapeless line, nowise beautiful
in itself, I said : ' It may be so ; but the downs must
not be judged by one hillside. The squire will lend

314 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

me a horse^ and over to Findan I will go to-morrow.
Only after a long ride shall I know if I still love the
downs.' And as this resolution formed in my mind
I heard the squire calling me.

He was on the top of the stile, coming out of the
cornfield, ai;id it was pleasant to see him cross it so
easily, and to see him still dressed in breeches and
gaiters, hale as an old tree, and not unlike one— just
as spare and as rugged. He gave me a hand covered
with a hard reddish skin, like bark, and the shy
smile that I knew so well trickled down his wide
mouth.

We walked on together in delightful sympathy,
but had not gone very far when we caught sight of
Colville coming down the drove-way, walking very
fast, his shoulders set well back, his toes turned out
militia fashion. As the drove-way led only to the
downs, it could hardly have been otherwise than
that he had been to Freshcombe, so I asked after
the rabbits. He said that he was thinking of letting
the place, and his voice and manner left me in no
doubt that he did not wish to talk about business,
a thing that never happens when business is going
well with a man. It may, therefore, have been to
escape. from further questions that he begged me to
excuse him if he walked on in front, saying he
had some letters to write which he wished to go
away by the night's post. But he had not gone
very far when the squire said, in that low, sad voice
which is the best part of my recollection of him,
that Colly had gone to work too expensively, and
had left too many rabbits on the ground. All my
sympathy was aroused on the instant, but the

AVE 315

squire's talk was always in sudden remarks, and as
he required a long silence between each, we had
passed through the gate leading to the lawn before
he spoke again. Something was preparing in his
mind, but before he could utter it we met Florence
and Dulcie, whom I had hitherto thought of as
blond Saxon girls ; they were now middle-aged
women, Dulcie looking as old as Florence, though
younger by a couple of years ; silent women, a little
abrupt in their speech, more like their father than
their mother.

Their mother's portrait might be introduced into
the present text if it had not been written years
ago and published in a volume entitled Memoirs of
My Dead Life. My portrait is too long for quota-
tion ; it cannot be curtailed by me, at least ; and
paraphrase is out of the question to a man who has
written something that he felt deeply, and written,
he thinks, truly. The pages entitled A Remembrance
would have enhanced any charm that my narrative
may have, but the omission cannot be avoided. My
reader must read them in the Memoirs, and I doubt
not that when he has read them he will ask himself
the question which I am now asking myself : would
her gay, kindly mind have saved me from the folly of
talking of the Boer War during dinner ? If he has
learned to know me at all, he will probably think she
would have failed. The fact that I had come down
to Sussex to escape from opinions did not save me
from talking of the value of small nationalities before
the soup tureen was removed from the table, and to
the dear squire, who thought without circumlocutions,
plain simple south-Saxon that he was. It was enough

316 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

for him to know that his country was at war, and he
answered :

' My dear Rory, the Boers invaded our territory.'

'Invaded our territory!' I cried. 'Yes, when
Chamberlain declared that he would settle all differ-
ence without further parley and called out the
reserves. It was not till then that the Boers crossed
your frontiers.'

Colville, who had twenty years of militia service
behind him, curled his long moustache, and I could
see that he was deeply shocked to hear a friend openly
espouse the cause of England's enemies. Dulcie and
Florence finished their dinners in a more complete
silence than was usual even for them ; they were not
company women, of little use in chorus, only in
duologues.

The squire sat holding a piece of cake in both his
hands, as if he were afraid that somebody would take
it from him, and as he munched it he kept his eyes
fixed on the cake itself with an expression on his face
that plainly read, 'I'll have another piece presently.'
Colville and I had often noticed this little trick of his,
and had laughed over it. The charm of domestic
life is its intensity ; each learns to know the other
in his or her every peculiarity, physical and mental.
We had often noticed the little habit of the squire's
of waggling his foot from time to time when he lay
back in his armchair in the billiard-room after
dinner, puffing at his pipe in silence. Colville had
drawn my attention to it, and to the old slippers and
the grey socks. Colville was a friendly fellow, with a
good deal of the squire's natural kindness in him and
a disposition for a pleasant talk ; but when 1 went

AVE 31 7

to for the last time I found him more morose

than ever I had seen him before. It was the rabbit
farm much more than my remarks of the Enghsh
Generals in South Africa that rendered him so
solemn. The squire was often silent, but he was
never solemn ; and he often broke the silence
abruptly with a remark that showed we had never
been far from his thoughts. But Colville was so
preoccupied with his business that as soon as he
had finished his pipe he went to his brown-paper
parcel, which he untied, and produced his diary. His
entries were in arrear, he said, and began his prepara-
tions for transcribing his life. They were always the
same : First he sought for scribbling-paper, and
taking his letters from his breast pocket he utilized
the envelopes, cutting them open carefully. It took
him some time to unclasp his penknife, and to
sharpen the pencil with which he drafted out the
events of the last three days. Then he tramped out
of the room, his toes well turned out, returning with
pen and ink and blotting-paper. The diary was
unlocked, and getting it well before him he copied
his notes in a caligraphy that would have honoured a
medieval scrivener.

' Rory, what has become of the chest of cigars ?'
With this remark the squire broke the silence
abruptly and laughed — timidly, for he was conscious
of a change in the atmosphere. All the same, he
laughed, for he liked to remember how on the occa-
sion of my first visit he had offered me a cheroot, but
I had gone upstairs saying, ^ Perhaps you would like
one of my cigars,' and returned with an oaken chest
containing about a thousand of all kinds. My visit

318 'HAIL AND FAREWELL 1*

was only for a few days, and in the squire's recol-
lection I had said : ' Well, you see, one can only
carry half a dozen cigars in a case, and if one
brings a box one never knows if anyone will care
for that brand, so I thought it safer to bring the
chest.'

When the squire spoke of this chest of cigars ot
thirty years ago, he never failed to speak of my
adventure that very same evening at Shoreham
Gardens, whither I had insisted on going, though
Colville had refused to accompany me ; nothing
should induce him to set foot, he said, in the place
again, and he strove to dissuade me with the assur-
ance that on Saturday nights it was frequented by
London roughs come down for the day, and that I
would certainly get into some trouble ; but I had
gone there in spite of all his warnings. The family
had sat up waiting my return, anxious for my safety,
and it appears from the squire's narrative that I had
returned about midnight with a long tale of adventure
and an eye that was closing rapidly.

It was a little boring to me to listen to these
stories of long ago ; they had lost all interest for me,
and the squire's next anecdote I had clean forgotten :
how on the Monday his keeper had been peppered by
me — it is true at eighty yards — because he persisted
in paunching rabbits while still alive, though I had
told him I did not approve of such cruelty. The
squire was in a loquacious mood that evening, and
added some hunting anecdotes, in which Colville had
a share, and the relation of these interrupted his
son's caligraphy. A little later we went to our
several beds, myself depressed and hopeless, anxious

AVE 319

to forget in sleep that I had been unable to keep
the Boer War out of the conversation.

Sleep closed over me, and next morning I awoke
thinking that perhaps it might be as well to go back
to London by the twelve o'clock from Brighton ; but
the ride to Findan had been mentioned overnight,
and just as if nothing had happened, the squire told
me after breakfast that he had ordered his horse to
be saddled for me. Colville said he would not be
able to meet me at Freshcombe, and in a voice that
did not seem altogether friendly. He gave me his
hand, however, saying that he would bid me good-
bye, since I was going away by the five o'clock. His
sisters went to their different occupations, expecting
me back for lunch, Florence hoping I would not talk
any more about that horrid war, Dulcie lingering to
ask me why I wanted to go to Findan, and on such a
day ! I mentioned a horse, but did not know what
answer to give back when she reminded me that the
horse fair is in May, and reading suspicions of some
woman in her eyes, I sprang into the saddle and
rode away.

' A new nag,' the squire had said ; ' she goes easily
on the roads, but pulls a bit on the downs.' A
rushing, querulous animal, lean as a rake, I soon dis-
covered her to be. A hide hardly thicker than a
glove saved her but little from the cold showers and
the hard winds that rushed down upon us from the
hills. ' A very different day,' I said as I pulled at
her, ^ from the day that the squire and I rode over to
Findan to the fair.' One of my pleasantest recollec-
tions was that ride, and despite my exasperated
humour it was impossible for me to resist the tempta-

320 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

tion, as I rode down the valley, to recall how the
squire and myself had gone out on horseback one
morning in May, looking, as we jogged along side by
side by the edge of the valley through which the
Adur flows, like figures out of an old ballad. Never
did larks rise out of the grass and soar roystering as
abundantly as they did that morning. We walked,
we trotted, we cantered our horses till we came to
Findan's sunny hollow filled with its fair. Many
horses were at tether, some were being trotted up
and down by the gipsies. We reined in to see a boy
ride a bay pony on a halter over a gate held up for
the jump in the middle of the field, and while the
squire talked with an acquaintance, I sat at gaze, lost
in admiration of a group of comely larches ; they
seemed to me like women engaged with their own
beauty, so gracefully did they loll themselves on the
sweet wind, every one, I felt sure, aware of her own
long shadow on the grass. Our returning, though
less vividly remembered, was not less pleasing than
our going forth, and my humour must have been
harsh indeed that February day to have imperilled
so delightful a recollection by riding to Findan alone
under dark skies and through bitter winds along grey
river lands. It was not in my intention, I suppose,
to find Sussex beautiful, and the dun tumult of the
downs showing against the rainy sky suggested the
welcome thought that I had been befooled, and that
this English country was the ugliest in the world,
and its weather the worst.

' Not a living thing in sight, not even a stray
sheep in the wintry hollow,' I said, and turned my
horse's head towards Freshcombe, asking myself how

AVE 321

I ever could have thought the downs beautiful. By
what distortion of sight ? By what trick of the
brain ? Because of her ? And 1 rode thinking of
her presence in one room and in another, until the
day described in A Remembrance floated by, and we
following all that remained of her to Shoreham
churchyard.

Death is in such strange contradiction to life that
it is no matter for wonder that we recoil from it,
and turn to remembrances, and find recompense in
perceiving that those we have loved live in our
memories as intensely as if they were still before
our eyes ; and it would seem, therefore, that we
should garner and treasure our past and forbear to
regret partings with too much grief, however dear
our friends may be ; for by parting from them all
their imperfections will pass out of sight, and they
will become dearer and nearer to us. The present
is no more than a little arid sand dribbling through
the neck of an hour-glass ; but the past may be
compared to a shrine in the coigne of some sea-cliff,
whither the white birds of recollections come to
roost and rest awhile, and fly away again into the
darkness. But the shrine is never deserted. Far
away up from the horizon's line other white birds
come, wheeling and circling, to take the place of
those that have left and are leaving. So did my
memories of her seem to me as they came to me
over the downs ; her unforgettable winsomeness, her
affection for me, her love of her husband and of her
children, were remembered, and the atrocious war
which forbade me to love them in the present could
not prevent me from loving them in the past.

X

322 'HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

My meditations were suddenly interrupted by the
scratched and deserted appearance of the hillside,
and on looking through the iron hurdles I could see
that what the squire had said was true ; in trying to
find the most profitable way of catching his rabbits
Colville had allowed too many to remain on the
ground. Knight had rid the warren of every stoat,
and the foxes had been driven out, but one cannot
disturb the balance of Nature with impunity, and
after eating all the grass the rabbits had eaten the
bark of the furze, and now there were only a few dry
sticks left. I found another desert in the coombe ;
the rabbits had climbed into the thorn-trees and
barked them. 'These will never blossom again,' I
said, as I rode amid sand-heaps and burrows in-
numerable, without, however, seeing anywhere a
white scut. ' Only rabbits can destroy rabbits ; and
the Belgian hares — what has become of them.-*' I
asked, remembering how haplessly they used to hop
about after the keeper, unable to thrive on the down
grass. Every season saw fewer of them, and it is
doubtful if any had mated with the wild rabbit, so
all our labour in the back-yard had been in vain.

The lambs bleated after the ewes, a raven balanced
himself in the blast on the lookout for carrion, and
after watching the bird for some time I rode along
the iron fence. The lodge seemed deserted, and I
asked myself what would become of the iron hurdles.
' Will he sell them as scrap-iron and allow Nature to
redeem the hills from trace of our ambitions ?' I
wondered, and rode away upon my own errand,
which, I reminded myself, was not to muse over the
destruction of Freshcombe, but to find out if there

AVE 323

were one spot on the downs which still appealed to
my sympathies. An ugly^ rolling country it all
seemed : hill after hill rolled up from the sea with
deep valleys set between^ in which the flock follows
the bell-wether. It was annoying to think that
these valleys had once inspired thoughts of the
patriarchal ages — a vulgar valley only a few miles
from Brighton.

But if the downs didn't please me the weald
would, and I rode by the windmill, its great arms
roaring as they went round in the blast, frightening
my horse, and sat for a long time studying, with
hatred, the dim blue expanse that lay before me like
a map : Beading, Edburton, Poynings, New Horton,
I knew well ; Folking and Newtimber far away, lost
in violet haze. And I could see, or fancied I could
see, the brook which Colville had jumped years ago
— some twelve or fourteen feet of water ; he had
described it many a time as we sat over the fire
smoking our pipes in Freshcombe.

^A landscape,' I said, ^that Rubens might have
thought worth painting, but which Ruysdael would
have turned from, it being without a blue hill or
melancholy scarp or torrent, or anything that raises
the soul out of an engulfing materialism ;' and all
the things that I used to love — a red-tiled cottage
at the end of a lane with a ponderous team coming
through a gateway, followed by a yokel in a smock
frock — I hated, and in pursuit of my hatred I
resolved to visit Beading, a town that I had once
loved.

' But of what use to descend into it ?' I asked
myself; and without knowing why 1 was going

324 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

there, I let my mare slide herself down the steep
chalk path on her haunches. A straggling village
street was all I could discover in Beading. '^An
ugly brick village/ I said, and interested in my
unrelenting humour, began the ascent of the downs
instead of returning home by the road, so that I
might give the restive mare the gallop she was
craving for. She plunged her way up the hillside.
Lord Leckonsfield's lands were crossed at a hand-
gallop, and looking back at the windmill, I cursed it
as an ugly thing, and remembering with satisfaction
that there is none in Ireland, I reined up and over-
looked the great space from Chantonbury Ring past
Lancing, whither Worthing lies, seeking to discover
the reason why I liked the downs no longer. The
names of the different fields as they came up in my
mind irritated me. What name more absurd for
that old barn than Thunders Barrow Barn ? A few
minutes later I was on the crest above Anchor
Hollow, whither ships came in the old days, so it
was said, and, but for the fact that my friends would
lose their land, I doubt if I should have found any
great cause for regret in the news that they were
certain to come there again. I remembered how
the coast towns light up in the evening : garlands
of light reaching from Worthing to Lancing, to
Amberley, to Shoreham, to Southwick, and on to
Brighton. ' There is no country in England ; even
the downs are encircled with lights ;' and my
thoughts turned from them to the dim waste about
Lough Carra, only lighted here and there by tallow
dips. Passing from Mayo to Galway, I remembered
Edward's castle and the Burran Mountains, and the

AVE 325

lake out of which thirty-six wild swans had risen
while Yeats told me of The Shadowy Waters; and
with such distant lands and such vague, primeval
people in my mind, it was impossible for me to
appreciate any longer the sight of ploughing on the
downs. I used to like to stand and watch old
Rogers lift the culter from the vore when he came
to the headland, and the great horses turn, the
ploughboy yarking and lashing his whip all the time ;
but now my humour was such that I could hardly
answer his cheery ' Good-day, sir ;' and when the
squire asked me how the mare had carried me, I
said that she didn't like the ploughboy' s whip, and
very nearly got me off her ' ba'ack,' as old Rogers
would say.

' He was just at the end of his vore, and the
horses were just a-comin' round.'

^ So you no longer care about our down speech,'
the squire said.

He would have wished me to stay on for a few
days, for the sake of his billiards in the evening, and
the conversation which he got from me and could
not get from his son ; but Dulcie said that it would
be better if I should go away and come down again,
and Florence seemed to agree with her that I had
not been as nice this time as I had been on other
occasions. So I am certain that there must have
been a mingled sadness and perplexity in my eyes
on bidding these dear friends of mine good-bye. I
must have known that the friendship of many years
— one that meant much to all of us — was now over,
ended, done to death by an idea that had come into
my life some months ago, without warning, undesired.

326 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

uncalled for. It had been repulsed more than once,
and with all the strength I was capable of, but it
had gotten possession of me all the same, and it was
now my master, making me hate all that I had once
loved.

XIV

The best friends a man ever had, yet they had
been blown away like thistledown ; and Sussex was
no longer beautiful : ' an ugly, suburban country, in
which only a lust for gold thrives.' And leaning
back in my seat, I fell to rejoicing that after a few
more rehearsals of The Bending of the Bough I should
be back among Irish hills again.

The Irish Literary Theatre was going over to
Dublin with three plays — The Bending of the Bough
(my rewritten version of Edward's play, The Tale oj
a Town), Edward's own beautiful play Maeve, and a
small play. The Last Feast of the Fianni, by Miss
Milligan. Edward, who had cast himself again for
baggage-man, was going to take the company over,
and we were to follow him — Lady Gregory, Yeats,
and myself; and when I got into the railway-
carriage after them at Euston, their soft western
accent fell soothingly on my ear, recalling the peat.
Our project drew us together ; we were delightfully
intimate that morning ; and I remember my elation
while watching Yeats reading the paper I had
written on the literary necessity of small languages.
It was to be read by me at a lunch that the
Irish Literary Society was giving in our honour, and
in it some ideas especially dear to Yeats had been

AVE 327

evolved : that language after a time becomes like
a coin too long current — the English language had
become defaced, and to write in English it was
necessary to return to the dialects. Language rises
like a spring among the mountains ; it increases
into a rivulet ; then it becomes a river (the water is
still unpolluted), but when the river has passed
through a town the water must be filtered. And
Milton was mentioned as the first filter, the first
stylist.

Never did I hear so deep a note of earnestness in
Yeats' voice as when he begged of me not to go
back upon these opinions. They were his deepest
nature, but in me they were merely intellectual,
invented so that the GaeHc League should be able
to justify its existence with reasonable, literary argu-
ment. Lady Gregory sat in the corner, a little sore,
I think, feeling, and not unnaturally, that this fine
defence of the revival of the Irish language should
come from her poet, instead of coming, as it did,
from me. In this she was right, but an apology for
the prominent part I was taking in this literary and
national adventure would make matters worse. The
most I could do to make my intrusion acceptable to
her was to welcome all Yeats' emendations of my
text with enthusiasm.

There were passages in this lecture intended to
capture the popular ear, and they succeeded in doing
this in spite of the noise of coffee-cups (as soon as the
orator rises the waiters become unnaturally interested
in their work) ; but I can shout, and when I had
shouted above the rattle that I had arranged to dis-
inherit my nephews if they did not learn Irish from

328 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

the nurse that had been brought from Arran, every-
body was dehghted. The phrase that Ireland's need
was not a Catholic, but a Gaelic University, brought
a cloud into the face of a priest. Edward agreed
with me, adding, however, that Gaelic and Catholicism
went hand in hand — a remark which I did not
understand at the time, but I learnt to appreciate it
afterwards. There were some cynics present, Gaelic
Leaguers, who, while approving, held doubts, asking
each other if my sincerity were more than skin-deep ;
and it was whispered at Edward's table that I had
come over to write about the country and its ideas,
and would make fun of them all when it suited my
purpose to do so. It would take years for me to
obtain forgiveness for a certain book of mine, Edward
said, and reminded me that Irish memories are long.
But in time, in time.

' When I am a grey-headed old man,' I answered,
and went back to England. ' Irish speakers are dying
daily and going to America, and the League will not
avail itself of my services. The folly of it ! The
folly of it!' I muttered over my fire for the next
three months, until one morning a telegram was
handed to me. It was from the League's secretary.
' Your presence is requested at a meeting to be held
in the Rotunda to protest against '

What the League would protest against on that
occasion has been forgotten, but my emotion on
reading that telegram will never be forgotten.
Ireland had not kept me out in the cold, looking
over the half-door for years, as Edward had anticipated
— only three months. The telegram must be* under-
stood to mean complete forgiveness. ' But they will

AVE 329

want a speech from me, and I am the only living
Irishman that cannot speak for ten minutes. A
speech of ten minutes means two thousand words, and
every morning I fail to dictate two thousand words.
My dictations are only so much rigmarole, mere in-
centives to work, and have to be all rewritten. On
the edge of a platform one cannot say, " Forget what
I have said ; I'll begin again." One cannot transpose
a paragraph, or revise a sentence. 1 can't go, I can't
go ;' and my feet moved towards the writing-table.
But it was as difficult for me to write ^ No ' as it was
to write '^Yes.' ^The only Irishman living who
cannot make a speech, the only one that ever lived,'
I added, sinking into an armchair, awakening from a
painful lethargy by the sudden thought that perhaps
the secretary of the Gaelic League might be
persuaded to allow me to read a paper at the
meeting. I could do that. But time was lacking
to write the paper. Midday! And the train left
Euston at eight forty-five. Evelyn Innes would
have to be abandoned. The secretary should have
given longer notice. A man of letters cannot up-
root himself at a moment's notice. Leave Owen
Asher in the middle of Evelyn's bed to write an
argument on the literary necessity of small languages !
Impossible ! All the same, I could not spend the
evening in Victoria Street while my kinsmen were
engaged in protesting against the abominable lan-
guage of the Saxon. ' A worn-out, defaced coin ;' and
I sought for an old shilling in my pocket. Finding
one of George the Third, and looking at the blunted
image, Tsaid : ' That is the English language. But
the Irish language is pure of journalists, of com-

330 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

merce, of literature. It is what the Italian language
was when Dante decided to abandon the Latin ;'
and my thoughts melted into nothingness, like the
steam of the train that would rattle through the
shires, through Rugby, Crewe, and Chester ; we
should then be within view of the Welsh mountains ;
and then I heard the sea, and saw the train circling
through Aber, where Stella was painting flocks and
herds. It would not stop for me to pick her up, but
Bangor is only a few miles farther on. The simplest
plan would be to meet her on board the boat.

' Let Stella be the die that shall decide whether
I go or stay.'

An act relieves the mind from the strain of think-
ing, and I believed everything to be settled until
her telegram arrived, saying she would meet me on
board the boat. Then, for some reason which I am
unable to give here, the journey seemed again
impossible, and my indecisions continued until
evening, and expressed themselves in five telegrams.

' Five telegrams,' she said, when I came up the
gangway. ' Two asking me to come, two telling me
not to come, and the last one reaching me only in
time. You have a servant to pack your things, but
in lodgings '

' Stella dear, I know, but the fault isn't mine. I
came into the world unable to decide whether I
should catch the train or remain at home. But
don't think that my vacillations proceed from selfish-
ness. Agonies were endured while walking up and
down Victoria Street between my flat and the post-
office ; the sending of each telegram seemed to
settle the matter, but half-way down the street I

AVE 331

would stop, asking myself if I should go or stay, and
all the time knowing, I suppose, in some sort of
unconscious way, that my love of you would not
allow me to miss the pleasure of finding you, a lonely,
dark figure, leaning over the bulwarks. How good
of you to come !'

' Yes, it was good of me, for, really, five telegrams !
Would you like to see them ?'

' No, no ; throw them away.'

She crushed the telegrams in her hand and
dropped them into the sea.

'You were vexed and perplexed, but I suffered
agonies. About some things I am will-less, and for
half my life I believed myself to be the most weak-
minded person in the world.'

'But you are not weak-minded. I never knew
anyone more determined about some things. Your
writing '

' Aren't you as determined about your painting ?
You have sent me out of your studio, preferring your
painting to me. But we haven't met under that
moon for disputation. Here you are and here am I,
and we're going to Ireland together.'

The boat moved away from the pier, steaming
slowly down the long winding harbour, round the
great headland into the sea; and finding that we
were nearly the only passengers on board, and that
the saloon was empty, we ensconced ourselves at the
writing-table, and while dictating to her, I admired
her hand, slender, with strong fingers that held the
pen, accomplishing a large, steady, somewhat formal
writing, which would suggest to one interested in
handwriting a calm, clear mind, never fretted by

332 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

smallj mean interests ; and if he were to add, a mind
contented with the broad aspect of things^ he would
prove to me that her soul was reflected in her
manuscript as clearly as in her pictures.

Nothing is more endearing than mutual work, and
it was that night on board the boat and next morn-
ing, when, uncomplaining, she followed me to the
writing-table, that 1 realized how beautiful was her
disposition. And when the finishing sentences were
written, it seemed that the time had come for me to
consider her pleasure. She had never been in
Dublin before, and would like to see the National
Gallery. We hung together over the railings,
admiring a Mantegna in the long room, and after-
wards a Hogarth — a beautiful sketch of George the
Third sitting under a canopy with his family. We
talked of these, and stood a long time before Millais'
^ Hearts are Trumps,' Stella explaining the painting
and exhibiting her mind in many appreciative subtle-
ties. No one talked painting better than she, and
it was always a delight to me to listen to her ; but
that day my attention was distracted from her and
from the pictures by an intolerable agony of nerves.
The repose, the unconsciousness of my animal
nature, seemed withdrawn, leaving me nothing but
a mere mentality. In a nervous crisis one seems to
be aware of one's whole being, of one's finger-nails,
of the roots of one's hair, of the movements of
one's very entrails. One's suffering seems, curiously
enough, in the stomach, a sort of tremor of the
entrails. There, I have got it at last, or the physical
side of it ! Added to which is the throb of cerebral
perplexity. Why not run away and escape from

AVE 333

this sickness ? And the sensation of one's inability
to run away is not the least part of one's suflfering.
One rolls like a stone that has become conscious,
and often on my way to the Rotunda the thought
passed through my mind that I must love Ireland
very much to endure so much for her sake. Yet I
was by no means sure that 1 loved Ireland at all.
Before this point could be decided I had lost my
way in many dark passages. But the platform was
at last discovered, and there was Hyde, to whom I
told that I had come over at the request of the
secretary, having received a wire yestermorning
from him, saying my presence was indispensable at
the meeting. He did not seem to know anything
about the matter, and it was a disappointment to
find that he did not seem to think my presence as
indispensable as the secretary had done in his
telegram. Perhaps my face betrayed me, for he
tried to hide his indifference under an excessive
effusion which seemed to aggravate my nervous-
ness.

An extraordinary indigence of speech, and an
artificiality of sentiment caught my ear, and I felt
that it would be impossible to restrain from an out-
burst if he were to say again, in answer to the simple
statement that I arrived this morning :

' Now, did you come across last night ? You don't
tell me so? Tank you, tank you. You'll have a
great reception.'

'About the reception I care not a fig. I came
over because it seemed to me to be my duty.'

' Did you, now ? It was good of you.'

'But I am suffering something that words can't

334 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

express, and it will be kind in you to call upon me
as soon as you have finished speaking.'

' MacNeil follows me. I'm sorry for you ; from the
bottom of my heart I'm sorry.'

' Well, Hyde, if you don't hasten I'm afraid I
shall have to go away. There is a trembling in my
stomach that I would explain.'

Somebody called him ; a shuffling of chairs was
followed by a sudden silence, and soon after a torrent
of verbiage poured through Hyde's black moustache ;
threats, abuse, denunciations. While he stood
bawling at the edge of the platform I saw the great
skull and its fringe of long black hair with extra-
ordinary lucidity, and the slope of the temples and
the swell of the bone above the nape, the insignificant
nose and the droop of the moustache through which
his Irish frothed like porter, and when he returned
to English it was easy to understand why he desired
to change the language of Ireland.

The next speaker was a bearded man of middle
height and middle age, forty or thereabouts, a post-
office official whose oratory was more reasonable and
dignified than our President's, and perhaps for that
reason it was less successful despite its repetitions
and commonplace. But these qualities, which I had
begun to see were essential in Irish oratory, were
not considered sufficient; the audience missed the
familiar note of vituperation. MacNeil was looked
upon as good enough, as small ale would be by the
average Coombe toper. ' What they want is porther ;'
and feeling that my paper would interest nobody, I
appealed to Hyde again, and begged him to call on
me and let me get it over.

AVE 335

Before he could do so he said he would have to
call upon two priests^ Father Meehan and Father
Hogarty, and these men spoke whatever happened
to come into their heads, always using twenty words
where five would have been too many, and they
rambled on to their own pleasure and to that of the
audience. Snatches of their oratory still linger in
my ears. I remember ' the language that our fore-
fathers spoke in time of persecution . . . hermits
and saints said their prayers in it ' — which might be
true, but which seemed to imply that since the
introduction of the English language saints had
declined in Ireland. The next speaker, referring to
the eloquent words of the last speaker, reminded the
audience that not a line of heresy had been written
in Irish, an assertion which recalled Father Ford's
pamphlet. ^ He must have been reading it,' I said
to myself.

' Now, will you call on me ?' I whispered to Hyde.
' I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart.'
' Of what use to bring me over from England ?'
' From the bottom of my heart ! I must call

upon ' and he called out some name that I have

forgotten. The success of this speaker when he
declared that ' the dogs of war were to be loosed '
was unbounded. In the vast and densely-packed
building only one dissenting voice was heard. It did
not come from the body of the hall, but from a man
on the platform — a thick-set fellow, a working man,
sitting in a chair next to me. While Hyde was
speaking he had played impatiently with his hat — a
bowler, worn at the brim, greasy and ingrained with
dust, very like Whelan's. His hands were those of a

SS6 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

joiner or carpenter or plumber. ^ Yet/ 1 said to
myself, ^he hears that our President's speech isn't as
beautiful as it should be.' It seemed to me that in
the midst of some turgid sentence I had heard him
spitting, ' Good God ! Yes, yes ; get on !' through
his tawny moustache. ' We all know that.' And I
had certainly heard him mutter while MacNeil was
speaking, ^ If I'd known it was to listen to this kind
of stuff.' While the reverend Fathers were rigmarol-
ing he had only dared to shuffle his feet from time to
time, making it clear, at all events to me, that he
did not judge ecclesiastical oratory more favourably
than lay, thereby winning my approval and sympathy,
and inducing me to accept him as a pure, disinterested
and very able critic, who might possibly find some
small merit in the paper which I began to read as
soon as the applause had ceased that followed upon
the declaration that 'the dogs of war were to be
loosed.' Before five lines were read I heard him
shuffling his feet heavily; at the tenth line a loud
groan escaped him ; and when I began my third
paragraph, which to my mind contained everjrthing
that could be said in favour of the literary necessity
of the revival of small languages, I heard him
mutter, ' It isn't that sort of sophisticated stuff" that
we want * ; and he muttered so loudly that there was
a moment when it began to seem necessary to ask
the audience to choose between us. His impatience
increased with every succeeding speaker, and while
wondering what his oratory would be like if Hyde
were to give him a chance of exercising it, I saw
him seize the coat-tails of a little man with a
bibulous nose, who had been called upon to address

AVE 337

the meeting. Had such a thing happened to me, my
nerves would have given way utterly ; but the little
man merely lifted his coat-tails out of his assailant's
reach, and when he had finished talking somebody
proposed a vote of thanks. Then the meeting broke
up rapidly, and as we were leaving the platform the
disappointed orator put his hand on Hyde's shoulder.

' For two pins I'd tell you what I think about
you ;' and Hyde was asked to explain why he did
not call upon him to speak.

' Your name wasn't given to me, sir.'

' Wasn't I on the platform .'*'

' There were many on the platform that I didn't
call on to speak ; I only called those on my list, and
you weren't upon it.'

' A fine lot of blatherers you had on your list, and
every one of us sick listening to them.'

As the retort seemed to me to be in the fine Irish
style, I was tempted to stand by to listen, but fearing
to exhibit a too impertinent curiosity, I followed the
crowd regretfully out of the building, wondering
what Stella would think of her first Gaelic League
meeting ; and my first, too, for that matter. /

On the boat coming over, she had been assured
that it was going to be a very grand affair, typical of
the new spirit that was awaking in Ireland, and there
was no denying that no very high intellectual level
had been reached by anybody. My own paper, that
in the making had seemed a fine thing, had faded
away in the reading, and she couldn't but have been
disappointed with it, if not, at all events with the
unintellectual audience that had gathered to hear
it. And the ridiculous wrangle between Hyde and

338 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

the disappointed orator ! She may have left her seat
before it began. But, even without this episode,
a clear-minded Englishwoman, as she undoubtedly
was, couldn't have failed to have been struck by a
certain absence of sincerity in the speeches. It
would, perhaps, have been better if she hadn't come
over ; at all events, it was desirable that this meeting
had not been her first glimpse of Ireland. Her tact
and her affection for me would save her from the
mistake of laughing at the meeting to my face . . .
there was no real reason why I should regret having
brought her over, only that the meeting had exhibited
Ireland under a rough and uncouth aspect; worse
still, as a country that was essentially insincere and
frivolous, and I wanted her to like Ireland — it was
unfortunate.

The man that hadn't been allowed to ' blather,' had
described the meeting as ^ blather ' (a word derived,
no doubt, from lather ; and what is lather but froth ?).
Hyde had been all Guinness ; and she must have
laughed at the prattle of the priests. Though in
sympathy with what they had come to bless — the
revival of the Irish language — I had had to bite my
lips when one of them started talking about Hhe
tongue that their forefathers had spoken in time of
persecution,' and I had found it difficult to keep my
patience when his fellow, a young cleric, said that he
was in favour of a revival of the Irish language
because no heresy had ever been written in it. A
fine reason it was to give why we should be at pains
to revive the language, and it had awakened a
suspicion in me that he was just a lad — in favour of
the Irish language because there was no thought in

AVE 339

its literature. What interest is there in any lan-
guage but for the literature it has produced or is
going to produce ? And there can be no literature
when no mental activities are about. ' Mental
activity begets heresy/ I muttered, and wandered
to and fro, looking for Stella, hoping to find her not
too seriously disappointed with her first glimpse into
Irish Ireland. If she had only heard one good
speech, or one note of genuine passion, however
imperfectly expressed ! ' But Ireland lacks passion,'
I said, and pushed my way through the crowd. ' It
lacks ideas, and, worst of all, it lacks passion ... all
the same it is difficult to find Stella. Where the
devil ! — all froth, porther, porther,' and I returned to
that very magnanimous statement that the Irish lan-
guage was worth reviving because no word of heresy
had been written in it. 'Which is a lie. Damn
that priest !' I said. ' Stella cannot have failed to
see through his advocacy. Without heresy there can
be no religion, for heresy means trying to think out
the answer to the riddle of life and death for our-
selves. We don't succeed, of course we don't, but
we do lift ourselves out of the ruts when we think
for ourselves — in other words, when we live. But
acquiescence in dogma means decay, dead leaves in
the mire, nothing more. The only thing that counts
is personal feeling. And if this be true, it may
be said that Ireland has never shown any interest
in religious questions — merely a wrangle between
Protestants and Catholics.'

Part of the speech of another orator started into
my mind ; he had said he would shoulder a musket
— ' he didn't say a rifle, mark you, but a musket ;

340 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

I wonder he didn't say a pike ! Dead leaves in
the mire^ dead traditions, a people living on the
tradition of '98. But there were heroes in '98. In
those days men thought for themselves and lived
according to their passions. Bnt if the meeting I
have just come from is to be taken as typical, Ireland
has melted away. Maybe, to be revived again in
the language ... if the language can be revived.
But can it be revived ? Ah, there is Stella !'

Never did she seem so essentially English to me
as at that moment — so English that I experienced
a certain sense of resentment against her for wearing
the look that, before the Boer War, had attracted
me to her — I might say had attracted me even
before I had seen her — that English air of hers
which she wore with such dignity. Until I met
her, the women I had loved were like myself,
capricious and impulsive ; some had been amusing,
some charming, some pretty, and one had enchanted
me by her joy in life and belief that everything she
did was right because she did it. High spirits are
delightful, but incompatible with dignity, and, deep
down in my heart, I had always wished to love a
chin that deflected, calm, clear, intelligent eyes, and
a quiet and grave demeanour, for that is the English
face, and the English face and temperament have
always been in my blood ; and it was doubtless
these qualities that attracted me to my friends in
Sussex. Stella might be more intelligent than they,
or her intelligence was of a different kind — the
measure of intellect differs in every individual, but
the temperament of the race (in essentials) is the
same, and it endures longer. But now her very

AVE 341

English appearance and temperament vexed me
down Sackville Street, and my vexation was aggra-
vated by the fact that it was impossible to tell her
why I was so dissatisfied with her. She had not
laughed at nor said a word in disparagement of the
meeting, nor told me that, in seeking to revive the
language, I was on a wild-goose chase. But, out of
sorts with her I was, knowing myself all the while
for a fool, and cursing myself as a weakling for not
having been able to come to Ireland without her.

The incident seemed symbolic ; neither country is
able to do without the other; and it would have
been easy for Stella and me to have quarrelled that
evening, though we weren't man and wife. She
spoke so kindly and warmly of the meeting, seeing
all that was good in it, and laughing with such
agreeable humour at the incident of the disappointed
orator, which I could not keep myself from telling
her when we got home, that I loved her, despite
her English face and appearance, making her laugh
thereby.

The tact of women cannot be overpraised ; they
have to exercise all their tact to live with us ; and
they do this very well, simulating an interest in our
ideas, deceiving us — but how delightfully ! Accept-
ing the religions we invent, and the morals that
we like to worry over, though they understand
neither morals nor religions, only lovers, children
and flowers. A wonderful race is the race of
women, entirely misunderstood by men. So much
more emotional than we are — lovely animal natures !
On this subject it would be easy for me to write
many pages, and perhaps they would be more

342 ^HAIL AND FAREWELL!'

interesting than the tale I have to tell. Even
so^ I should have to continue telling how, some
months after my visit to Dublin, when the cloud
cast by the meeting at the Rotunda upon my belief
in the possibility of a Celtic Renaissance had dis-
solved, another escape from England presented
itself, and was eagerly accepted. A letter arrived
one morning from Yeats, summoning me to Ireland,
so that we might come to some decision about
Diartnuid and Grania, the play that we had agreed
to write in collaboration. We had exchanged many
letters, but as every one had seemed to estrange us.
Lady Gregory had charged Yeats to invite me to
Coole, where he was staying at the time ; and read-
ing in this letter a week spent in the very heart
of Ireland, among lakes and hills, and the most
delightful conversation in the world, I accepted
the invitation with pleasure.

As I write, the wind whistles and yells in the
street ; the waves must be mountains high in the
Channel ; but the Irish Sea has always been pro-
pitious to me — all my crossings have been accom-
plished amid sparkling waves and dipping gulls, and
the crossing that I am trying to remember when I
went to Coole to write Diarmuid and Grania was
doubtless as fine as those that had gone before.
With my head filled with legends, I can see myself
waiting eagerly for the beautiful shape of Howth to
appear above the sea-line. Or, maybe, my memory
fails me, and it may well have been that I crossed
under the moon and stars, for I remember catching
the morning mail from the Broadstone and journey-
ing, pale for want of sleep and tired, through the

AVE 343

beautifiil county of Dublin^ alongside of the canal ;
here and there it slipped into swamp, with an
abandoned boat in the rushes. Outside the County
Dublin the country begins to drop away into bog-
land, the hovel appears — there is a good deal of the
West of Ireland all through Ireland — but as soon as
the middle of Ireland has been crossed the country
begins to improve ; and, seeing many woods, I fell
to thinking how Ireland once had been known as
the Island of Many Woods, cultivated in patches,
and overrun by tribes always at war one with the
other. So it must have been in the fourth cen-
tury when Grania fled from Tara with Diarmuid ;
that was her adventure ; and mine was to write
Ireland's greatest love-story in conjunction with
Yeats.

Athlone came into sight, and I looked upon the
Shannon with a strange and new tenderness, think-
ing that it might have been in that very bed of
rushes Grania lifted her Idrtle, the sweetness of
her legs blighting in Diarmuid all memory of his
oath of fealty to Finn, and compelling him to take
her in his arms, and in the words of the old Irish
story-teller ^to make a woman of her.' Without
doubt it would be a great thing to shape this
primitive story into a play, if we could do it without
losing any of the grandeur and significance of the
legend, and I thought of the beauty of Diarmuid,
and his doom, and how he should court it at the
end of the second act when the great fame of Finn
captures Grania' s imagination. A wonderful act the
third would be, the pursuit of the boar through the
forest, the baying of Finn's great hounds — their

344 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

names would appear beautiful in the text — Bran,
Skealon, Lomaire.

In happy meditation mile after mile went by.
Lady Gregory's station is Gort. Coole was beginning
to be known to the general public at the time I
went there to ^vrite Diaiynuid and Grania with Yeats.
Hyde had been to Coole, and had been inspired to
write several short plays in Irish ; one of them, The
Twisting of the Rope, we hoped we should be able
to induce Mr, Benson to allow us to produce after
Diarmuid and Grania. If Yeats had not begun The
Shadowy Waters at Coole he had at least written
several versions of it under Lady Gregory's roof-
tree. M had painted in the park ; now I was
going there. ^In years to come Coole will be
historic ; later still, it will be legendary, a sort of
Minstrelburg, the home of the Bell Branch Singers,'
I said, trying to keep my bicycle from skidding, for
I had told the coachman to look after my luggage
and bring it with him on the car, hoping in this way
to reach Coole in time for breakfast.

The sun was shining, but the road was dangerously
greasy, and I had much difficulty in saving myself
from falling. 'All blue and white,' I said, 'is the
morning, sweetly ventilated by light breezes from
the Burran Mountains. We shall all become folk-
lore in time to come, Finns and Diarmuids and
Usheens, every one of us, and Lady Gregory a new
Niamh who — ' At that moment my bicycle nearly
succeeded in throwing me into the mud, but by lifting
it on to the footpath, and by giving all my attention
to it, I managed to reach the lodge-gates without
a fall

AVE 345

'A horn,' I said, ^should hang on the gate-post,
and the gate should not open till the visitor have
blown forth a motif; but were this so Yeats would
be kept a long time waiting, for he is not musical.'
It was pleasant to follow the long, blue drive for
nearly a mile, through coarse fields, remembering
the various hollows as they came into view, and the
hillocks crowned by the hawthorns that JE had
painted last year.

At the end of the long drive one comes upon the
modest house, the plain walls unadorned save by a
portico and masses of reddening creeper. The
dining-room window dispelled thoughts of literature
for the moment, and this was not extraordinary, for
I had been up since six, and had refrained from
breakfast in the train, not wishing to spoil my
appetite for hot soda-bread, which I knew I should
get at Coole : its excellence is not forgotten, however
long the interval between the present and the past
visit may have been.

Yeats was composing. Lady Gregory said, we
should have to wait for him, and we waited, till,
perforce, I had to ask for something to eat, and
we sat down to a meal that was at once breakfast
and lunch. Yeats still tarried, and it was whispered
round the table that he must have been overtaken
by some sudden inspiration, and at this thought
everyone was fluttered with care. Lady Gregory
was about to send the servant up to know if the
poet would like to have his breakfast in his room,
when the poet appeared, smiling and delightful, say-
ing that just as the clocks were striking ten the
metre had begun to beat, and abandoning himself

346 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

to the emotion of the tune, he had allowed his pen
to run till it had completed nearly eight and a half
lines, and the conversation turned on the embarrass-
ment his prose caused him, forcing him to reconstruct
his scenario. He would have written his play in
half the time if he had begun writing it in verse.

As soon as we rose from the table Lady Gregory
told us we should be undisturbed in the drawing-
room till tea-time. Thanking her, we moved into
the room; the moment had come, and feeling like
a swordsman that meets for the first time a re-
doubtable rival, I reminded Yeats that in his last
letter he had said we must decide in what language
the play should be written — not whether it should be
written in English or in Irish (neither of us knew
Irish), but in what style.

^ Yes, we must arrive at some agreement as to the
style. Of what good will your dialogue be to me if
it is written, let us say, in the language of Esther
Waters ?'

' Nor would it be of any use to you if I were to
write it in Irish dialect ?'

Yeats was not sure on that point ; a peasant
Grania appealed to him, and I regretted that my
words should have suggested to him so hazardous an
experiment as a peasant Grania.

'We're writing an heroic play.' And a long time
was spent over the question whether the Galway
dialect was possible in the mouths of heroes, I
contending that it would render the characters
farcical. ' Folk is always farce. It is not until the
language has been strained through many brilliant
minds that tragedy can be written in it. Why did

AVE 347

Balzac choose to write Contes Drolatiques in Old
French ? Not because he was afraid of the Censor,
but because Old French lends itself well to droll
stories. Our play had better be written in the
language of the Bible.'

' Avoiding all turns of speech which immediately
recall the Bible. You will not write ^^ Angus and
his son Diarmuid which is in heaven/' I hope. We
don't want to recall the Lord's Prayer. And, for
the same reason, you will not use any archaic words.
You will avoid words that recall any particular
epoch.'

* I'm not sure that I understand.'

'The words "honour" and "ideal" suggest the
Middle Ages, and should not be used. The word
"glory" is charged with modem idea — the glory of
God and the glory that shall cover Lord Kitchener
when he returns from Africa. You will not use it.
The word "soldier" represents to us a man that
wears a red tunic ; an equivalent must be found,
"swordsman" or "fighting man." "Hill" is a better
word than "mountain"; I can't give you a reason,
but that is my feeling, and the word " ocean " was
not known to the Early Irish, only the sea.'

'We shall have to begin by writing a dictionary
of the words that may not be used, and all the ideas
that may not be introduced. Last week you wrote
begging me not to waste time writing descriptions
of Nature. Primitive man, you said, did not look at
trees for the beauty of the branches and the agree-
able shade they cast, but for the fruits they bore
and the wood they furnished for making spear-shafts
and canoes. A most ingenious theory, Yeats, and it

S48 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

may be that you are right ; but I think it is safer to
assume that primitive man thought and felt much as
we do. Life in its essentials changes very little^ and
are we not writing about essentials, or trying to ?'

Yeats said that the ancient writer wrote about
things, and that the softness, the weakness, the
effeminacy of modern literature could be attributed
to ideas.

^ There are no ideas in ancient literature, only
things,' and, in support of this theory, reference
was made to the sagas, to the Iliad, to the Odyssey,
and I listened to him, forgetful of the subject which
we had met to discuss.

^It is through the dialect,' he said, ^that one
escapes from abstract words, back to the sensation
inspired directly by the thing itself.'

' But, Yeats, a play cannot be written in dialect ;
nor do I think it can be written by turning common
phrases which rise up in the mind into uncommon
phrases. '

' That is what one is always doing.'

' If, for the sake of one's literature, one had the
courage to don a tramp's weed — you object to the
word " don " } And still more to " weed " } Well, if
one had the courage to put on a tramp's jacket and
wander through the country, sleeping in hovels,
eating American bacon, and lying five in a bed, one
might be able to write the dialect naturally ; but I
don't think that one can acquire the dialect by going
out to walk with Lady Gregory. She goes into the
cottage and listens to the story, takes it down while
you wait outside, sitting on a bit of wall, Yeats, like
an old jackdaw, and then filching her manuscript to

AVE 349

put style upon it, just as you want to put style on
me.'

Yeats laughed vaguely ; his laugh is one of the
most melancholy things in the world, and it seemed
to me that I had come to Coole on a fruitless errand
— that we should never be able to write Diarmuid
and Grania in collaboration.

XV

A seat had been placed under a weeping ash for
the collaborators, and in the warmth and fragrance
of the garden we spent many pleasant hours, quarrel-
ling as to how the play should be written. Lady
Gregory intervening when our talk waxed loud.
She would cross the sward and pacify us, and tempt
us out of argument into the work of construction
with some such simple question as — ^And your
second act — how is it to end.^' And when we were
agreed on this point she would say :

' Let the play be written by one or the other of
you, and then let the other go over it. Surely that
is the best way — and the only way ? Try to confine
yourselves to the construction of the play while you
are together.'

Yeats had left the construction pretty nearly in
my hands ; but he could theorize as well about
construction as about style, and when Lady Gregory
left us he would say that the first act of every good
play is horizontal, the second perpendicular.

' And the third, I suppose, circular ?'

^ Quite so. In the third act we must return to the
theme stated in the first scene ' ; and he described

350 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

with long, thin hands the shapes the act should take.
' The first act begins with laying the feast for the
Fianni ; this is followed by a scene between Grania
and the Druidess ; then we have a short scene
between King Cormac and his daughter. The
Fianni arrive and Grania is at once captured by the
beauty of Diarmuid, and she compels the Druidess
(her foster-mother) to speak a spell over the wine,
turning it into a drug that will make all men sleepy
. . . now, there we have a horizontal act. You see
how it extends from right to left ?'

And while I considered whether he would not
have done better to say that it extended from left to
right, he told me that the second act was clearly
perpendicular. Did it not begin far away in the
country, at the foot of Ben Bulben ? And after the
shearing of a sheep which Diarmuid has performed
very skilfully, Grania begins to speak of Finn who is
encamped in the neighbourhood, her object being to
persuade Diarmuid to invite Finn to his dun. The
reconciliation of Finn and Diarmuid is interrupted
by Conan, who comes in telling that a great boar has
broken loose and is harrying the country, and
Diarmuid, though he knows that his destiny is to be
killed by the boar, agrees to hunt the boar with Finn.

' What could be more perpendicular than that ?
Don't you see what I mean ?' and Yeats' hands went
up and down ; and then he told me that the third act,
with some slight alteration, could be made even more
circular than the first and second were horizontal and
perpendicular.

^ Agreed, agreed !' I cried, and getting up, I strode
about the sward, raising my voice out of its normal

AVE 351

pitch until a sudden sight of Lady Gregory reminded
me that to lose my temper would be to lose the play.
' You'll allow me a free hand in the construction ?
But it's the writing we are not agreed about, and if
the writing is altered as you propose to alter it, the
construction will be altered too. It may suit you to
prepare your palette and distribute phrases like
garlands of roses on the backs of chairs. . . . But
there's no use getting angry. I'll try to write
within the limits of the vocabulary you impose upon
me, although the burden is heavier than that of a
foreign language. ... I'd sooner write the play in
French.'

' Why not write it in French ? Lady Gregory will
translate it.'

And that night I was awakened by a loud knock-
ing at my door, causing me to start up in bed.

' What is it ? Who is it ? Yeats !'

^ I'm sorry to disturb you, but an idea has just
occurred to me.'

And sitting on the edge of my bed he explained
that the casual suggestion that I preferred to write
the play in French rather than in his vocabulary was
a better idea than he had thought at the time.

* How is that, Yeats ?' I asked, rubbing my eyes.

' Well, you see, through the Irish language we can
get a peasant Grania.'

' But Grania is a King's daughter. I don't know
what you mean, Yeats ; and my French '

^ Lady Gregory will translate your text into
English. Taidgh O'Donoghue will translate the
English text into Irish, and Lady Gregory will trans-
late the Irish text back into English.'

352 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' And then you'll put style upon it ? And it was
for that you awoke me ?'

' But don't you think a peasant Grania '

' Noj YeatSj I don't^ but I'll sleep on it and to-
morrow morning I may think differently. It is some
satisfaction, however, to hear that you can stand my
English style at four removes.' And as I turned
over in the hope of escaping from further literary
discussion, I heard the thin, hollow laugh which
Yeats uses on such occasions to disguise his dis-
approval of a joke if it tells ever so little against him-
self. I heard him moving towards the door, but he
returned to my bedside, brought back by a sudden
inspiration to win me over to his idea that Grania,
instead of running in front of her nurse gathering
primroses as I wished her to do, might wake at mid-
night, and, finding the door of the dun on the latch,
wander out into the garden and stand among the
gooseberry-bushes, her naked feet taking pleasure in
the sensation of the warm earth.

' You've a nice sense of folk, though you are an
indifferent collector,' I muttered from my pillow ;
and, as I lay between sleeping and waking, I heard,
some time later in the night, a dialogue going on
between two men — a young man seemed to me to be
telling an old man that a two-headed chicken was
hatched in Caibre's barn last night, and I heard the
old man asking the young man if he had seen the
chicken, and the young man answering that it had
been burnt before he arrived to see it. . . . After
that I saw and heard no more till the dawn divided
the window-curtains and the rooks began to fly
overhead. ' Coming,' I said, ^ from the great
rookeries at Tillyra.'

AVE 353

The long morning was spent thinking of Yeats'
talent^ and wondering what it would come to

eventually. If he would only But there is always

an ' only/ and at breakfast there seemed very little
chance of our ever coming to an agreement as to how
the play should be written, for Lady Gregory said
that Yeats had asked to have his breakfast sent up-
stairs to him, as he was very busy experimenting in
rhyme. She spoke of Dryden, whose plays were
always written in rhyme ; we listened reverentially,
and when we rose from table she asked me to come
into the garden with her. It was on our way to the
seat under the weeping ash that she intimated to
me that the best way to put an end to these verbal
disputes between myself and my collaborator would
be to do what I had myself suggested yesterday —
to write a French version of the play.

' Which I will translate,' she said.

* But, Lady Gregory, wouldn't it be better for you
to use your influence with Yeats, to persuade him to
concede something ?'

* He has made all the concessions he can possibly
make.'

'I don't know if you are aware of our diffi-
culties ?'

' It would be no use my taking sides on a question
of style, even if I were capable of doing so,' she said
gently. ' One has to accept Yeats as he is, or not at
all. We are both friends of his, and he has told me
that it is really his friendship for you which has
enabled him '

' To suggest that I should try to write the play in
French !' I cried.

354 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' But I will translate it with all deference to your
style.'

' To my French style ! Good heavens ! And then
it is to be translated into Irish and back into English.
Now I know what poor Edward suffered when I
altered his play. Edward yielded for the sake of

Ireland ' But as I was about to tell Lady Gregory

that I declined to descend into the kitchen, to don
the cap and apron, to turn the spit while the chef des
sauces prepared his gravies and stirred his saucepans,
the adventure of writing a play in French, to be
translated three times back and forwards before a
last and immortal relish was to be poured upon it,
began to appeal to me. Literary adventures have
always been my quest, and here was one ; and seeing
in it an escapement from the English language,
which I had come to hate for political reasons, and
from the English country and the English people, I
said :

' It is impossible to write this play in French in
Galway. A French atmosphere is necessary, and I
will go to France and send it to you, act by act.*

Yeats was overjoyed when the news was brought
to his bedroom ; he came down at once and began to
speak brilliantly about the value of dialect, and a
peasant Grania. If I did not like that, at all events
a Grania

' That would be racy of the soil,' I said.

A cloud came into Yeats' face, but we parted the
best of friends, and it was in the cosmopolitan atmo-
sphere of a hotel sitting-room that I wrote the first
scene of our second act in French — if not in French,
in a language comprehensible to a Frenchman.

AVE 355

Une caverne. Gbania est couchee sur une peau (Tours;
se reveillant en sursaut.

Gbania.

J'ai entendu un bruit. Quelqu'un passe dans la nuit
des rochers. Diarmuid !

DiABMUID.

Je t*ai fait peur.

Grania.

Nod. Mais qu'est ce que tu m'apportes? Quels sout
ces fruits d'or ?

Diarmuid.

Je t^apporte des pommes^ j^ai trouve un pommier dans
ces landes, tres loin dans une vallee desolee. Cela doit
etre le pommier dont le berger nous a parle. Regarde le
fruit ! Comme ces pomraes sont belles ! Cela doit etre
le pommier des admirables vertus. Le berger la dit.

(7/ donne la branche a Gbania.)

Grania.

Ces pommes sont vraiment belles^ elles sont comme de
Tor. {Elle fait glisser une pomme dans sa robe.) Les
solitudes de ces landes nous ont sauvegardes de toute
poursuite. N^est-ce pas, Diarmuid.'^ Ici nous sommes
sauvegardes. C'est la solitude qui nous sauvegarde, et ce
pommier sacre dont le berger nous a parle. Mais les
pommes si belles doivent etre le signe d'un grand malheur
ou peut-etre bien, Diarmuid, d'une grand joie. Diarmuid !
j'entends des pas. Ecoute ! Cherche tes armes !

Diarmuid.

Non, Grania, tu n^entends rien. Nous sommes loin de
toute poursuite. (On ecoute et alors Diarmuid reprend le
bouclier quHl a jete par terre ; avan^ant d'un pas.) Oui,

356 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !' ^

Grania^ quelqu'un passe dans la nuit des rochers. . . .
Qui etes-vous? D'oii venez-vous? Pourquoi venez vous
ici?

Entrent deux Jeunes Hommes.

1^' Jeune Homme.
Nous veuons de Finn.

DiABMUID.

Et vous venez pour me tuer ?

l*^"" Jeune Homme.
Oui.

Grania.

Vous etes done venus ici en assassins ! Pourquoi
cherchez-vous a tuer deux amants ? Quel mal vous avons-
nous done fait ? Nous sommes ici dans les landes incon-
nues^ et si nous ne sommes pas morts c'est parce que la
Nature nous a sauvegardes. La Nature aime les amants
et les protege. Qu'avons nous done fait pour que vous
veniez aussi loin nous tuer ?

2eme JguNE HoMME.

Nous avons voulu faire partie du Fianna, et nous avous
passe par toutes les epreuves de la prouesse que Pon nous
a demand^e.

!*"■ Jeune Homme.

Nous avons fait des armes avec les guerriers de Finn.

2*"'® Jeune Homme.

La lance lourde et la lance l^g^re, nous avons couru et
saute avec eux.

1^' Jeune Homme.
Nous somme sortis acclames de toutes les epreuves.

AVE 357

DlARMUID.

Et vous etes venus chercher la demiere epreuve. Finn
vous a demand^ ma tete ?

1^' Jeune Homme.

Avant d'etre admis au Fianna il faut que nous apportions
la tete de Diarmuid a Finn.

Grania. ^

Et ue savez-vous pas que tout le Fianna est I'ami de
Diarmuid except^ Finn ?

Diarmuid.
lis veulent ma tete ? Eh, bien ! qu'ils la prennent s'ils
le peuvent.

Grania.

Qui de vous attaquera Diarmuid le premier .'*

1^' Jeune Homme.
Nous I'attaquerons tous les deux a la fois.

2eme JguNE HoMME.

Nous ne venons pas ici faire des prouesses d'armes.

Diarmuid.

lis ont raison, Grania, ils ne viennent pas ici faire des
prouesses d'armes, ils viennent commes des betes cher-
chant leur proie ; cela leur est egal comment.

(lis commencent Pattaque ; tun est plits impetueux
que Vautre, et il se met en avant. Diarmuid se
recule dans un etroit passage entre les rochers.
Soudain il blesse son adversaire qui to tube.
Diarmuid passe par dessus son corps et s'engage
avec y autre. Bien vite il le jette par terre et il
commence a lui Iter les mains, mais F autre se Uve
et s'avance tepee a la main gauche. Diarmuid

358 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

donne son poignard a Grania, laissant a la
charge de Grania Vadxiersaire qui est par terre,
il attaque Vautre et dans quelques ripostes fait
sauter I'epee de sa main. Pendant ce combat
Grania est restee assise le poignard en main.
Tout de suite, I'homme ayant voulu se relever, elle
le poignarde, et avance nonchalamment vers

DiARMUID.)

Diarmuid.

Ne le quitte pas.
II est mort.
TuTastue?

Grania.

Diarmuid.

Grania.

Oui, je I'ai tue. Et maiiitenant tue celui-ci, ce sont
des laches qui n'auraient ose t'attaquer un par un.

Diarmuid.

Je ne peux pas tuer uii homme qui est sans armes.
Regarde-le ! Son regard me trouble, pourtant c'est Finn
qui Fa envoy^. Laisse le partir.

Grania.

Les malfaiteurs restent les malfaiteurs. II retournerait
&> Finn et il lui dirait que nous sommes ici. {S'adressa7it
a I' homme.) Tu ne dis rien, tourne-toi pour que le coup
soit plus sur. Mets-toi contre le rocher. {L'homme obeit.)

Diarmuid.

Dans la bataille je n'ai jamais frappe que men adversaire
et je n^ai jamais frappe quand il n'etait pas sur ses gardes.
Et quand je le lis tomber, souvent je lui donnai la main, et
j'ai souvent dechire une echarpe pour etancher le sang de
ses blessures. (// coupe un lambeau de son vetement et
Vattache autour du bras du jeune homme.)

AVE 359

Gbania.

Qu'est ce qu'il dira a Finn ?

DiABMUID.

Je lui donne ces porames d'or et Finn saura que ce n'est
pas lui qui les a trouvees. Oui^ je lui donnerai cette
branche, et Finn saura que je tiens mon serment.

Gbania.

Entre ses mains les pommes seront fletries, elles
n'arriveraient pas a Finn si elles sont les pommes dont le
berger nous a parle, elles disparaitraient comme une
poussiere legere. (Diarmuid donne la branche a. I'homme,
et Vhomme s'en va trainant le cadavre de son compagnon.)
Tu aurais du le tuer, il conduira Finn a cette caverne. II
faut que nous cherchions des landes plus desertes, plus
inconnues.

Diarmuid.

Peut-etre au bout de ces landes ou il faut que nous nous
cachions des annees, peut-etre trouverons nous une douce
valle'e paisible.

Grania.

Et alors, Diarmuid, dans cette vallee que se passerait-il
entre nous ?

Diarmuid.

Grania, j'ai pret^ serment a Finn.

Grania.

Oui, mais le serment que tu as prete k Finn ne te
poursuit pas dans la foret : les dieux a qui tu as fait appel
ne regnent pas ici. Ici les divinites sont autres.

Diarmuid.

Si cet homme nous trahit, il y a deux sorties a cette
caverne et comme tu dis il ne faut pas attendre ici, il
faut que nous nous en alliens tres loin.

360 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

Grania.

Je ne puis vous suivre. Je pense a toi, Diarmuid, nuit
et jour_, et mon desir me laisse sans force ; je t'aime,
Diarmuid, et les pommes que tu as trouvees dans cette
vallee desolee ne sont-elles pas un signe que ma bouche
est pour ta bouche ?

Diarmuid.

Je ne puis t'ecouter . . . nous trouverons un asile
quelque part. Viens au jour. La caverne te fait peur et
elle me fait peur aussi. 11 y a du sang ici et une odeur
de sang.

Grania.

Restons, Diarmuid ; tu es un guerrier renomme, et tu
as vaincu deux hommes devant mes yeux. Mais, Diarmuid,
la pomme qui est tombee dans ma robe . . . regarde-la ;
elle ose plus que toi. Nous avons des perils k traverser
ensemble, les serments que tu as pretes k Tara ne te
regardeut plus. Notre monde sera autre et nos divinites
seront autres.

Diarmuid.

Mais j'ai pret^ serment k Finn. Finn c'est mon frere
d'armes, mon capitaine. Combien de fois nous avons ete
centre Fennemi ensemble ! — non, Grania, je ne puis.

(// la prend dans ses bras. La scene sohscur^iL)

Grania.

Le jour est pour la bataille et pour les perils, pour la
poursuite et pour la fuite ; mais la imit est le silence
pour les amants qui n'ont plus rien qu'eux-memes. {Un
changement de scene; maintenant on est dans une vallee
pierreuse a Ventree d'une caverne^ d gauche un hois et le
soldi commence d baisser. )

*****

The introduction of French dialogue into the
pages of this book breaks the harmony of the English

AVE 361

narrative^ but there is no help for it ; only by print-
ing my French of Stratford atte Bowe can I hope to
convince the reader that two such literary lunatics
as Yeats and myself existed^ contemporaneously, and
in Ireland, too, a country not distinguished for its
love of letters. The scene in the ravine, which
follows the scene in the cave, was written in the
same casual memory of the French language and its
literature. We can think, but we cannot think pro-
foundly, in a foreign language, and though a sudden
sentiment may lift us for a while out of the common
rut, we soon fall back and crawl along through the
mud till the pen stops. Mine stopped suddenly
towards the end of the act, and I wandered out of
the reading-room into the veranda to ponder on
my folly in having come to France to write Diarmuid
and Grania, and to rail against myself for having
accepted Yeats' insidting proposal.

When my fit of ill-temper had passed away, I
admitted that reason would be amenable to the
writing of Diarmuid and Grania in Irish, but to do
that one would have to know the Irish language, and
to learn it, it would be necessary to live in Arran for
some years. A vision of what my life would be there
rose up : a large, bright cottage with chintz curtains,
and homely oaken furniture, and some three or four
Impressionist pictures, and the restless ocean my
only companion until I knew enough Irish for daily
speech. But ten years among the fisher-folk might
blot out all desire of literature in me, and even if it
didn't, and if I succeeded in acquiring Irish (which
was impossible), it would be no nearer to the lan-
guage spoken by Diarmuid and Grania than modem
EngUsh is to Beowulf.

362 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

'But what is all this nonsense that keeps on
drumming in my head about the Irish language and
Anglo-Irish ?' And I went out of the hotel into the
street convinced that any further association with
Yeats would be my ruin. Lady Gregory feared that
I should break up the mould of his mind. ' But it
is he that is breaking up the mould of mine. I must
get out of his way. And as for writing Diarmuid
and Grania in French — not another line ! My folly
ends on the scene in my pocket, which I'll keep
to remind me what a damned fool a clever man like
Yeats can be when he is in the mood to be a fool.'

A moment after, it seemed to me that it would be
well to write and tell him that I would give the
play up to him and Lady Gregory to finish ; and I
would have given them Diarmuid and Grania if it
had not been my one Irish subject at the time. Life
without a subject is not conceived easily by me ;
so I decided to retain it, and next day returned to
England and to Sickert.

The pictures on the easels were forgotten, and the
manuscripts in Victoria Street, so obsessed were
we by the thought that, while we were talking,
De Wet's army might be caught in one of Kitchener's
wire entanglements, and the war be brought to an
end, and I remember that very often as I stared at
him across the studio my thoughts would resolve
into a prayer that the means might be put into
my hands to humiliate this detestable England, this
brutal people ! A prayer not very likely to be
answered, and I wondered at my folly while I
prayed. Yet it was answered.

Every week letters came to me from South Africa,

AVE 363

as they came to every other Enghshman, Irishman,
and Scotchman, and it is not Ukely that any of these
letters contained news that others did not read in
their letters or in the newspapers ; but soon after
my prayer in Sicltert's studio, a letter was put into
my hands containing news so terrific that for a long
time I sat, unable to think, bewildered, holding
myself in check, resisting the passion that nearly
compelled me to run into the street and cry aloud
the plan that an English General had devised.
De Wet was in the angle formed by the junction of
two rivers ; the rivers were in flood ; he could go
neither back nor forwards; and troops were being
marched along either bank, the superior officers of
every regiment receiving orders, so my correspondent
informed me, that firing was not to cease when
De Wet was caught in the triangle and the white
flag raised. My correspondent said, and justly it
appeared to me, in my indignant acceptance of the
story, that if notice had been given at the beginning
of the war quarter would not be asked for nor given,
we might have said, 'This is too horrible,' and
covered our faces, but we should not have been able
to charge our Generals with treachery. But no such
notice had been given, and he reminded me that we
were accepting quarter from the Boers at the rate of
eight hundred a day. 'A murder plot, pure and
simple, having nothing to do with any warfare
waged by Europeans for many centuries. It must
be stopped, and publication will stop it. But is
there a newspaper in London that will publish it }*
One or two were tried, and in vain. 'And while
you dally with me,* I cried, ' De Wet and his army

264^ < HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

may be massacred. Only in Ireland is there any
sense of right.'

And next day, in Dublin, I dictated the story to the
editor of the Freeman's Journal. The Times reprinted
it, and the editor of a Cape paper copied it from the
Times, upon which the military authorities in South
Africa disowned and repudiated the plot. If they
had not done so, the whole of Cape Colony, as I
thought, would have risen against us ; and once the
plot was repudiated, the Boers were safe ; it would
be impossible to revive the methods of Tamburlaine
on another occasion. The Boer nation was saved
and England punished, and in her capacious pocket
that she loves so well. The war, I reflected, was
costing England two millions a week, and with the
white flag respected, it will last some years longer ;
at the very lowest estimate my publication will cost
England two hundred millions. The calculation
put an alertness into my step, and I walked forth,
believing myself to be the instrument chosen by
God whereby an unswerving, strenuous, Protestant
people were saved from the designs of the lascivious
and corrupt Jew, and the stupid machinations of a
nail-maker in Birmingham.

In a humbler and more forgiving mood I might
have looked upon myself as having saved England
from a crime that would have cried shame after her
till the end of history. A great delirium of the
intellect and the senses had overtaken Englishmen
at that time, and how far they had wandered from
their true selves can be guessed from the fact that
that great and good man Kruger, who loved God
and his fellow-countrymen, was scorned throughout

AVE 365

the whole British Press — and why ? Because he read
his Bible. Even to the point of ridiculing the
reading of the Bible did a Birmingham nail-maker
beguile the English people from their true selves.

There is great joy in believing oneself to be God's
instrument^ and it seemed to me^ as I walked,, that
my mission had ended in England with the exposure
of the murder plan^ and that I had earned my right
to France, to my own instinctive friends, to the lan-
guage that should have been mine ; and it was while
thinking that England was now behind me, and for
ever, that a presence seemed to gather, or rather,
seemed to follow me as I went towards Chelsea. The
first sensation was thin, but it deepened at every
moment, and when I entered the Hospital Road I did
not dare to look behind me, yet not for fear lest my
eyes should see something they had never seen
before, something not of this world. I walked in a
sort of devout collectedness awaiting what was to
happen, and very soon, half-way down the road, I
heard a voice, not an inner, but an external voice as
from somebody close behind me, saying, ^ Go to
Ireland !' The voice was so distinct and clear that
I could not but turn to look. Nobody was within
many yards of me.

The order, impressive in itself, coming as it did out
of nothing, was made perhaps still more impressive by
the fact that the way I had come to Chelsea was
through Ebury Street, and it was in Ebury Street
that I had been stopped by the discovery that I no
longer desired a victory for our troops in South
Africa, but one for the Boers. I walked on, but had
not taken many steps before I heard the voice again.

366 ' HAIL AND FAREWELL !'

' Order your manuscripts and your pictures and your
furniture to be packed at once^ and go to Ireland.'
Of this I am sure — that the words ^ Go to Ireland '
did not come from within, but from without. The
minutes passed by, and I waited to hear the voice
again, but I could hear nothing except my own
thoughts telling me that no Messiah had been found
by me at the dinner at the Shelbourne Hotel because
the Messiah Ireland was waiting for was in me and
not in another.

^ So the summons has come,' I said — ' the summons
has come ;' and I walked, greatly shaken in my mind,
feeling that it would be impossible for me to keep
my appointment with the lady who had asked me to
tea that evening. To chatter with her about indif-
ferent things would be impossible, and I returned
to Victoria Street unable to think of anything else
but the voice that had spoken to me ; its tone, its
timbre^ lingered in my ear through that day and
the next, and for many days my recollection did
not seem to grow weaker. All the same I remained
doubtful ; at all events, unconvinced of the authen-
ticity of the summons that I had received. It was
hard to abandon my project of going to live in my
own country, which was France, and I said to myself,
' If the summons be a real one and no delusion of the
senses, it will be repeated.' Next morning, as I lay
between sleeping and waking, I heard the words,
* Go to Ireland ! Go to Ireland !' repeated by the
same voice, and this time it was close by me, speaking
into my ear. It seemed to speak within five or six
inches, and it was so clear and distinct that I put out
my hand to detain the speaker. ' The same voice,' I

AVE 367

said to myself ; ' the same words, only this time the
words were repeated twice. When I hear them
again they will be repeated three times. Then I
shall know.'

But our experience in life never enables us to
divine what our destiny may be, nor the manner in
which it may be revealed to us. The voice was not
heard again, but a few weeks afterwards, in my draw-
ing-room, the presence seemed to fill the room, and it
overpowered me ; and though I strove to resist it, in
the end it forced me upon my knees, and a prayer
was put into my mouth. I prayed, but to whom 1
prayed I do not know, only that I was conscious of a
presence about me and that I prayed. Doubt was no
longer possible. I had been summoned to Ireland !

When I told my friends of my intention to leave
London, and for ever, they were disheartened, and
tried to dissuade me, and one after the other brought
some new argument, all of which were unavailing.
Tonks collected some friends to dinner ; Steer and
Sickert were among the company, and it was pointed
out to me that no man could break up his life as I
proposed to break up mine with impunity.

^It is no use. Nothing that you can say will
change me.'

My manner must have impressed them. They
must have felt that my departure was decreed,
though no reasons were given, except that the Boer
War had rendered any further stay in England
impossible to me.

END OF VOLUME I

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