Yeats’s Phantasmagoria

Abstract

A.E. passed on to me an invitation from Yeats, who was then living in Merrion Square. I found myself alone in a dim, candle-lit room when Yeats entered, tall, elegantly dressed, stern looking with a sideway glance. He always wore a pale, beautifully cut soft suit, full silk shirts, blue during the days of O’Duffy’s¹ fascist party, and a huge ring; and when he sat down he washed his hands with a certain consciousness of their beauty. His speech was like his clothes, suave, mannered; he raised his brows and looked down his nose at you; and though he had not yet developed the leaden shuffle of old age, he walked slowly and deliberately, with full and ornamental gestures in the dim candle-light. It was only later when one grew more used to him, that one noticed the expensiveness and beauty of everything about him: the pictures, the masks from his dance plays, the tall bookcases and long orderly table, the silver candlesticks, and that dimness that made rich hollows of shadow everywhere. At first, one was only aware-pleasantly aware-of a touch of dandyism in the lofty, ecclesiastical stare, the ritual motion of the hands, the unction of the voice, and an occasional elaborate mispronunciation like ‘weld’ for ‘world’ or ‘medder’ for ‘murder.’ And perhaps if one had analyzed those careful sentences of his, one would have found at times the rhythms of oratory rather than the rhythms of good speech—certain cadences linger in my ear.

Extracted from ‘Two Friends: Yeats and A. E.’, Yale Review (New Haven, Connecticut), no. i (Sep 1939) 60–88.