The Yeats I Knew

Abstract

Although I often met Yeats, particularly at the Board-Room table in the Abbey Theatre, and although I took part in many discussions with him, I feel that perhaps I can offer only a worm’s eye view of the man. Everyone who can read, may, according to his capacity, form an opinion of Yeats’s work. But I do not know whether there were very many who knew him really well personally. He always seemed to me to be an aloof man, who, even when he was being genial and sociable, never fully unbent. His air of being withdrawn may have indicated no more than the abstraction of a dedicated writer, and, in certain kinds of select company, he may have inspired much affection as well as that admiration which, in not a few cases, verged upon awe. But I was often struck by the way in which people, who were obviously impressed by his genius, failed to show kindly personal feeling for him. When at Yeats’s repeated invitation, I hesitantly joined the Abbey Board, knowing that as a consequence of becoming a member of it, I must relinquish the tenuous connection which I still had with active politics, I was visited at my home by the other new Directors, Fred Higgins and Brinsley Mac-Namara. They wanted to arrange that the three of us should act together on the Board.

The Teats We Knew, ed. Francis MacManus (Cork: Mercier Press, 1965) pp. 61–75.