Three weeks after Edward knocked at my door.

Are you busy? I don't want to disturb you, but I thought I'd like 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.



Il faut que je m'en mêle, 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—

And hopes to get an answer from him next week. 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. Late one afternoon when he called, meeting me on my doorstep. A moment later and you would have 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 contrasting 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 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 conscious 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 understand how deeply troubled he was.

We have had three or four rehearsals, he confided 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's 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's play was poetry, and only to be repeated, whereas The Heather Field would have to be carefully rehearsed, and by an experienced stage-manager.

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

As Edward at that time had never seen a stage-manager at work he could form no opinion of the man's ability, 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? I 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; one is unjust, and then one remembers and is sorry. Edward had never cast a play before; he had never engaged a company, 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 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 disappointed; his play was his single 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, and the question warned me that for three weeks at least I should be at their beck and call, for having made an alteration. 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 Humbert's.... Where are you rehearsing? At the Bijou Theatre in Notting Hill. It is impossible to rehearse anywhere except in the Strand. We'll rehearse where you like; and he continued to press me to say why I was so averse from seeing the plays. You're coming to Dublin, George?

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 literature to Ireland! Les Cloches de Corneville is what they want over there. And next morning in the hansom I 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 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 manuscript 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 continually of the speaking of verse.

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 you've just spoken should get you across; whoever is in the habit of conducting rehearsals can tell at the first glance if things are going well or badly, 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 alteration in the cast. Mr ——, I don't think the part of Carden Tyrrell altogether suits you; the second part, Barry Ussher—The gentleman who was playing Barry Ussher objected. You'll play, I said, perhaps, 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! 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 convinced me that, like the fair-haired lady, he would be of no use; 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 be distributed among such odds and oddments. One can go out hunting, I said to Edward, on 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 apologised, 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 Carden 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.



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 Countess 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 Carden 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 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's 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 realise something.

Now, Edward, I'll say goodbye; 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 that things were going well, I bade everybody goodbye.

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 any one 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 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 anything 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 wainscoting. And the question has always interested me, whether I brought this lack of belief in myself into the world with me, or whether is 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 an old woman, 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 remind 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 ff'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 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 Revolution; 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 painting in me that has lasted all my life. He sent me to Paris to learn painting; I have told in My Confessions 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 curious is that, if the success had been twice what it was, it would not have restored the confidence in myself that I lost in childhood. I am always a novice, publishing 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 many blunders, and I owe to it many pleasant surprises: 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 among us again criticising 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. I never suspected my friends would miss me, or that it would mean much to them to have me back again. I was overwhelmed 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 instance 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 intensifies in me that nobody does, or could, care for 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 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 happens to me—I am sure of that, and I am quite sure nobody believes he is in the wrong so easily as I do, or is tempted so irresistibly to believe the fault is his if anything goes wrong with his work. If an editor were to return an article to me tomorrow, it would never occur to me to suppose he returned it for any other reason that its 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 realised in age that in youth Rousseau was a shy, silly lad, with no indication, apparently, of the genius that awaited him in middle life, 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 realised 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 unworthiness, I might have easily believed in myself to the extent that my contemporaries believe in themselves, and there is little doubt that many of them believe themselves to be men and women of genius; 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. And I am less ashamed to speak of the joy I experienced 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 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 I got from my first reading of Esther Waters. 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 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 demoralised its author. How is such evil to be restrained? All 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 murmuring, 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 cock-loft like this. And looking round my room I realised that what he said was true; I was living in a cock-loft, 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 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 realised 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 any one living 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.

My poor laundress used to tell me every day 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 Ruttledge 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 Confessions—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 present 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 goodbye I bade goodbye to literature. No, she didn't inspire the subject of Esther Waters, but she was the atmosphere I required for the book, and to talk to her at breakfast 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 parlourmaid quite useless. She had no stories to tell of the poor who wouldn't 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 indignation 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 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 is all right in her notes, Yeats informed me. But she can't transfer it from paper on to the stage, he added, without appearing in the least to wish that the stage-management of his play should be taken from her. Would you like to see her notes? At that moment the voice of the experienced actress asking the poor lady how she was to get up the stage drew attention from Yeats to the reticule, which was being searched for the notes. And the 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.

That will never do, Yeats; and the lady interrupted, 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 speaking 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 theologian, and was no longer sure that he would be able to allow the performances of The Countess Cathleen.

You see, he's paying for it, and believes himself 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 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 backsliding 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's 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 consultation with the friar he was not yet certain as to 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 Press, and the lady to discover the necessary properties 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 approbation 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, shepherding his flock, 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 intelligence 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 Liffey, 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 to start that evening; but it seemed to me that the returning native should see Ireland arising from the sea, and thinking how beautiful the crests would show against the sunset, I remembered a legend telling how the earliest inhabitants 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, 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 sentimentalise 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 Étaine'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 lying 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 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 Anglesey 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, whether 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 this book, 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 enchantment? 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 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 I was 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. 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 leave me to eat a solitary table-d'hôte dinner when I had come over in his honour. And 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, to angry to admire Merrion Square, 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 constructed 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 the last act some people came on the stage whom I did not recognise 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's 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.



A man must love his play very much, I thought, to be able to listen to it in such distressing circumstances. 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 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 one whom I 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 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 some one 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 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 tonight. Tomorrow—tomorrow you can come to see me, and we will talk about Edward and The Cross or the Guillotine.