A seat had been placed under a weeping ash for collaborators, and in the warmth and fragrance of the garden we spent many pleasant hours, quarrelling 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 are 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 theorise 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 with long, thin hands the shapes the act should take. The first act begins with laying the feast for the Fianna; this is followed by a scene between Grania and the Druidess; then we have a short scene between King Cormac and his daughter. The Fianna 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's 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 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.



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 translate the Irish text back into English.

And then you'll put style upon it? And it was for that you awoke me?

But don't you think a peasant Grania—

No, Yeats, I don't, but I'll sleep on it and tomorrow morning I may think differently. It is some satisfaction, however, to hear that you can bear 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 disapproval of a joke if it tells ever so little against himself. 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 midnight, 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 Cairbre'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, but it had been seen by many. Even so, I began, but my thoughts were no longer under my command and I saw and heard no more till the dawn divided the window-curtains and the rooks began to fly overhead.

The next morning was spent in thinking of Yeats's 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 upstairs 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 difficulties?

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.

But I will translate it with all deference to your style.

To my French style! Good heavens! And then it is 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 a way of escape 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; I will go to France and send it to you, act by act. And overjoyed when the news was brought to his bedroom, Yeats came down at once and began to speak about the value of dialect, and a peasant Grania. If I did not like that, at all events a Grania—

Who would be racy of the soil, I said.

A cloud came into Yeats's face, but we parted the best of friends, and it was in the cosmopolitan atmosphere 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.



Grania

J'ai entendu un bruit. Quelqu'un passe dans la nuit des rochers. Diarmuid!

Diarmuid

Je t'ai fait peur.

Grania

Non. Mais qu'est-ce que tu m'apportes? Quels sont ces fruits d'or?

Diarmuid

Je t'apporte des pommes, j'ai trouvé un pommier dans ces landes, très loin dans une vallée désolée. Cela doit être le pommier dont le berger nous a parlé. Regarde le fruit! Comme ces pommes sont belles! Cela doit être le pommier des admirable vertus. Le berger l'a dit.

(Il donne la branche à Grania)

Grania

Ces pommes sont vraiment belles, elles sont comme de l'or. (Elle fait glisser une pomme dans sa robe.) Les solitudes de ces landes nous ont sauvegardés de toute poursuite. N'est-ce pas, Diarmuid? Ici nous sommes sauvegardés. C'est la solitude qui nous sauvegarde, et ce pommier sacré dont le berger nous a parlé. Mais les pommes si belles doivent être le signe d'un grand malheur ou peut-être bien, Diarmuid, d'une grand joie. Diarmuid! j'entends des pas. Écoute! Cherche tes armes!

Diarmuid

Non, Grania, tu n'entends rien. Nous sommes loin de toute poursuite. (On écoute et alors Diarmuid reprend le bouclier qu'il a jeté par terre; avançant d'un pas.) Oui, Grania, quelqu'un passe dans la nuit des rochers.... Qui êtes-vous? D'où venez-vous? Pourquoi venez-vous ici?

Entrent deux Jeunes Hommes.

1er Jeune Homme

Nous venons de Finn.

Diarmuid

Et vous venez pour me tuer?



Oui.

Grania

Vous êtes donc venus ici en assassins! Pourquoi cherchez-vous à tuer deux amants? Quel mal vous avons-nous donc fait? Nous sommes ici dans les landes inconnues, et si nous ne sommes pas morts c'est parce que la Nature nous a sauvegardés. La Nature aime les amants et les protège. Qu'avons-nous donc fait pour que vous veniez aussi loin nous tuer?

2ème Jeune Homme

Nous avons voulu faire partie du Fianna, et nous avons passé par toutes les épreuves de la prouesse que l'on nous a demandée.

1er Jeune Homme

Nous avons fait des armes avec les guerriers de Finn.

2ème Jeune Homme

La lance lourde et la lance légère, nous avons couru et sauté avec eux.

1er Jeune Homme

Nous sommes sortis acclamés de toutes les épreuves.

Diarmuid

Et vous êtes venus chercher la dernière épreuve. Finn vous a demandé ma tête?

1er Jeune Homme

Avant d'être admis au Fianna il faut que nous apportions la tête de Diarmuid à Finn.

Grania

Et ne savez-vous pas que tout le Fianna est l'ami de Diarmuid excepté Finn?

Diarmuid

Ils veulent ma tête? Eh bien! qu'ils la prennent s'ils le peuvent.

Grania

Qui de vous attaquera Diarmuid le premier?

1er Jeune Homme

Nous l'attaquerons tous les deux à la fois.



Nous ne venons pas ici faire des prouesses d'armes.

Diarmuid

Ils ont raison, Grania, ils ne viennent pas ici faire des prouesses d'armes, ils viennent comme des bêtes cherchant leur proie; cela leur est égal comment.

(Ils commencent l'attaque; l'un est plus impétueux que l'autre, et il se met en avant. Diarmuid se recule dans un étroit passage entre les rochers. Soudain il blesse son adversaire qui tombe. Diarmuid passe par-dessus son corps et s'engage avec l'autre. Bien vite il le jette par terre et il commence à lui lier les mains, mais l'autre se lève et s'avance l'épée à la main gauche. Diarmuid donne son poignard à Grania; laissant à la charge de Grania l'adversaire qui est par terre, il attaque l'autre et dans quelques ripostes fait sauter l'épée de sa main. Pendant ce combat Grania est restée assise, le poignard en main. Aussitôt, l'homme ayant voulu se relever, elle le poignarde, et avance nonchalamment vers Diarmuid.)

Diarmuid

Ne le quitte pas.

Grania

Il est mort.

Diarmuid

Tu l'as tué?

Grania

Oui, je l'ai tué. Et maintenant tue celui-ci; ce sont des lâches qui n'auraient osé t'attaquer un contre un.

Diarmuid

Je ne peux pas tuer un homme qui est sans armes. Regarde-le! Son regard me trouble, pourtant c'est Finn qui l'a envoyé. Laisse-le partir.

Grania

Les malfaiteurs restent les malfaiteurs. Il retournerait à Finn et il lui dirait que nous sommes ici. (S'adressant à l'homme.) Tu ne dis rien, tourne-toi pour que le coup soit plus sûr. Mets-toi contre le rocher. (L'homme obeit.)



Dans la bataille je n'ai jamais frappé que mon adversaire et je n'ai jamais frappé quand il n'était pas sur ses gardes. Et quand il tombait, souvent je lui donnais la main; et j'ai souvent déchiré une écharpe pour étancher le sang de ses blessures. (Il coupe un lambeau de son vêtement et l'attache autour du bras du jeune homme.)

Grania

Qu'est-ce qu'il dira à Finn?

Diarmuid

Je lui donne ces pommes d'or et Finna saura que ce n'est pas lui qui les a trouvées. Oui, je lui donnerai cette branche, et Finna saura que je tiens mon serment.

Grania

Entre ses mains les pommes seront flétries, elles n'arriveront pas à Finn si elles sont les pommes dont le berger nous a parlé, elles disparaîtront comme une poussière légère. (Diarmuid donne la branche à l'homme, et l'homme s'en va traînant le cadavre de son compagnon.) Tu aurais dû le tuer, il conduira Finn à cette caverne. Il faut que nous cherchions des landes plus désertes, plus inconnues.

Diarmuid

Peut-être au bout de ces landes où il faut que nous nous cachions des années, peut-être trouverons-nous une douce vallée paisible.

Grania

Et alors, Diarmuid, dans cette vallée que se passerait-il entre nous?

Diarmuid

Grania, j'ai prêtée serment à Finn.

Grania

Oui, mais le serment que tu as prêté à Finn ne te poursuit pas dans la forêt: les dieux à qui tu as fait appel ne règnent pas ici. Ici les divinités sont autres.

Diarmuid

Si cet homme nous trahit, il y a deux sorties à cette caverne et, comme tu dis, il ne faut pas attendre ici, il faut que nous nous en allions très loin.



Je ne puis te suivre. Je pense à toi, Diarmuid, nuit et jour, et mon désir me laisse sans force; je t'aime, Diarmuid, et les pommes que tu as trouvées dans cette vallée désolée ne sont-elles pas un signe que ma bouche est pour ta bouche?

Diarmuid

Je ne puis t'écouter ... nous trouverons un asile quelque part. Viens au jour. La caverne te fait peur et elle me fait peur aussi. Il y du sang ici et une odeur de sang.

Grania

Restons, Diarmuid: tu es un guerrier renommé, et tu as vaincu deux hommes devant mes yeux. Mais, Diarmuid, la pomme qui est tombée dans ma robe ... regarde-la: elle ose plus que toi. Nous avons des périls à traverser ensemble, les serments que tu as prêtés à Tara ne te regardent plus. Notre monde sera autre et nos divinités seront autres.

Diarmuid

Mais j'ai prêté serment à Finn. Finn c'est mon frère d'armes, mon capitaine. Combien de fois nous avons été contre l'ennemi ensemble!—non, Grania, je ne puis.

(Il la prend dans ses bras. La scène s'obscurcit.)

Grania

Le jour est pour la bataille et pour les périls, pour la poursuite et pour la fuite; mais la nuit est le silence pour les amants qui n'ont plus rien qu'eux-mêmes. (Un changement de scène; maintenant on est dans une vallée pierreuse à l'entrée d'une caverne, à gauche un bois et le soleil commence à baisser.)

The introduction of French dialogue into the pages of this book breaks the harmony of the English narrative, but there is no help for it; for only by printing 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 profoundly, 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 verandah to ponder on my folly in having come to France to write Diarmuid and Grania, and to rail against myself for having accepted Yeats's insulting 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 fisherfolk 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 language spoken by Diarmuid and Grania than modern English is to Beowulf.

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 ruin to me. 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 step 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 not being easily conceived 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 Sickert 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, as they came to every other Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman, and it is not likely 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 Sickert'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 said justly, that if notice had been given at the beginning of the war that 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 in common 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 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 copies 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 was 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 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 language that should have been mine; and it was while thinking that England was now behind me, and for ever, that a presence semed 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; and walking in a devout collectedness, I heard a voice speaking within me: no whispering thought it was, but a resolute voice, saying, Go to Ireland! The words were so distinct and clear that I could not turn to look. Nobody was within many yards of me. I walked on, but had not taken many steps before I heard the voice again. 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 indifferent things would be impossible, and I returned to Victoria Street unable to think of anything 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 authenticity 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 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, and then I shall know.

But our experience in life never enables us to divine what our destiny will 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 drawing-room, the presence seemed to fill the room, overpowering me; and though I strove to resist it, in the end it forced me upon my knees, a prayer was put into my mouth, and I prayed, but to whom I 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! 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 by some unseen authority, and that, no doubt, the Boer War had made any further stay in England impossible to me.