Yeats, Pound and Ford at Woburn

Abstract

One of his [Ezra Pound’s] greatest triumphs in London was the way in which he stormed 18 Woburn Buildings, the Celtic stronghold of W. B. Yeats, took charge of his famous ‘Mondays’, precisely as he took charge of the South Lodge tennis-parties, and succeeded in reducing him from master to disciple. The ‘later Yeats’, which is now so universally admired, was unmistakably influenced by Pound.’ I shall never forget my surprise, when Ezra took me for the first time to one of Yeats’s ‘Mondays’, at the way in which he dominated the room, distributed Yeats’ cigarettes and Chianti, and laid down the law about poetry. Poor golden-bearded Sturge Moore, who sat in a corner with a large musical instrument by his side (on which he was never given a chance of performing) endeavoured to join in the discussion on prosody, a subject on which he believed himself not entirely ignorant, but Ezra promptly reduced him to a glum silence. My own emotions on this particular evening, since I did not possess Ezra’s transatlantic brio,² were an equal blend of reverence and a desire to giggle. I was sitting next to Yeats on a settle when a young Indian woman³ in a sari came and squatted at his feet and asked him to sing ‘Innisfree’, saying that she was certain he had composed it to an Irish air. Yeats was anxious to comply with this request but, unfortunately, like so many poets, he was completely unmusical, indeed almost tone deaf.

South Lodge: Reminiscences of Violet Hunt, Ford Madox Ford and ‘The English Review’ Circle (London: Constable, 1943) pp. 48–9.