Reavey did not establish a
quarterly
journal.
Samuel Beckett
Thomas McGreevy, an Irishman, who has been most incomprehensibly neglected.
' [.
.
.
] Are you pleased?
I am glad to have got the chance.
'' Apparently McGreevy had not heard the broadcast, because Devlin continued this letter on 22 October: "I am chagrined that you did not hear me" (5 October 1935 continued 22 October 1935, TCD, MS 8112/7).
The Dublin radio station was 2RN.
"Nocturne of the Self-Evident Presence" was originally published by MacGreevy under the pseudonym L.
St.
Senan in The Irish Statesman 7.
3 (25 September 1926) 57; rpt.
MacGreevy, Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreevy, ed.
Schreibman, 42-43.
Devlin worked in the Department of External Affairs; as Secretary to the legation, he accompanied Eamon De Valera (popularly known as Dev, 1882-1975), then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the Irish Free State and Head of Council of the League of Nations, to the League of Nations in Geneva (3 September to 2 October 1935) (Devlin, Collected Poems of Denis Devlin, 19; "Back from Geneva," The Irish Times 2 October 1933: 7).
18 Yeats may have traced the provenance of Comer Boys, which had had an owner previous to SB (see 5 May 1935, n. 4).
Tobias and the Angel by Scottish playwright James Bridie (ne Osborne Henry Mavor, 1888-1951) was performed at the Gaiety Theatre (not the Abbey Theatre) as part of the Dublin Summer School of Acting on Sunday, 22 September 1935 (The Irish Times 23 September 1935: 8).
19 Mrs. Frost,SB'slandladyat34GertrudeStreet. The"Lieblings"(lovers),presum- ably the couple described in 8 September 1934.
Geoffrey Thompson and Ursula Stenhouse were shortly to be married.
20 Boissier:see22September1935,n. 8.
21 GermanpublisherKarlBaedeker(1801-1859)publishedtravelguidesforvarious regions of Europe; updated versions continue to be published.
22 Simon and Schuster and SB's request to Chatto and Windus: 8 September 1935.
287
8 October 1935, McGreevy
13 October 1935, Reavey GEORGE REAVEY
LONDON
13/10/35
Dear George
34 Gertrude Street London SW10
Thanks for letter & prospectus. Further victims:
Charles Rowe, Esq. , F. T. C. D. , Trinity College, Dublin.
1
It is better for you to diffuse them, but let me have a dozen in case I think of someone else.
The American publishers I have in mind are Messrs. Simon &
Schuster, 386 Fourth Avenue, New York. They wrote to me about
a month & a half ago, asking to see whatever material I had
available for publication in USA. I sent them Proust & Pricks &
have not yet had their decision. They seem well disposed. This
being the position, it occurs to me that they ought to be offered
the first refusal ofBones, also that it might be advisable to wait for
their decision as to prose before submitting the verse. However
I leave you to deal with the matter as you think best. I am quite
2
pectus. Ifthis is your dastardly intention and the covers have not
3
Frances Steen (n. d. ), schoolmate of SB's at Earlsfort House School, Dublin; her brother, RobertEllsworth Steen (1902-1981) was a friend of SB's at TCD, and they golfed together at Carrickrnines, Co. Dublin.
288
Miss Frances Steen, Carrickmines, Co. Dublin.
satisfied with 20% for EP [for EB].
I hope the Bones are not covered in the canary of the pros
yet been put in hand, be an angel and change it to PUTIY. Yours ever
s/ Sam
TIS; 1 leaf, 1 side; AN in another hand: checkmarks, and underscoring; TxU.
1 CharlesHenryRowe,ProfessorofMathematicsatTrinityCollegeDublin.
Saturday [after 13 October 1935}, Reavey
2 Echo's Bones.
3 Thecoloroftheprospectuswaswarmgold;thecolorofthefinalcoverforEcho's
Bones was putty. GEORGE REAVEY
LONDON
Saturday [after 13 October 1935]
34 Gertrude St [London] SWlO
Cher ami
It might be a good idea to send a copy to Observer, "for favour
of etc. ", & if so to Humbert Wolfe, lest it should fall into black
1
Clare St. & both Tom & Brian know
Mr NAIRN, Combridge's, Grafton Street
Hodges & Figgis also might take a few copies. 2
Looking over it at leisure I am very pleased with layout.
I only find one mistake: there should be a space in Enueg 2 between "doch I assure thee" & "lying on O'Connell Bridge. " Pas serieux-3
I have sent out 5 more prospectuses this morning that may bring a few more bob.
A mardi Sam
I have found MS of Serena III which you can have 4
ALS; 1 leaf folded, 2 sides; from "Looking over it . . . ", text appears upside down because SB has turned the folded page; PS written to left of signature; TxU. Dating: in 15 March 1935, SB gives his choice of title for the volume of poems; in 8 October 1935, SB anticipates proofs that week; in SB's letter toReavey of 13 October 1935, SB discusses the color of the cover. The imprint of Echo's Bones gives the publication date as November 1935. "Enueg 2" was published in Echo's Bones without the correction SB
289
claws of Austin Clarke.
For distribution in Dublin I know:
Mr PEMBRY [for Pembrey] Green's [for Greene's] Library,
Saturday [after 13 October 1935}, Reavey
requested in this letter, and with "Serena III" (published as "Serena 3," Echo's Bones [31-321). The date, therefore, is after 13 October, but before 30 November 1935, probably early to mid-November.
1 Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940), English poet, satirist, and civil servant. Austin Clarke reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator; SB was wary of retaliation (see 8 September 1934, n. 2).
2 HerbertS. Pembrey(1909-2000),sub-postmasterandproprietorwithhisfather, Herbert H. Pembrey, of Greene's Library, 16 Clare Street.
Thomas McGreevy; Brian Coffey.
Ernest Nairn (d. 1970), a book expert who worked for about fifty years at Combridges, at 18-20 Grafton Street in 1935. Hodges & Figgis, bookstore, was then at 20 Nassau Street.
3 Seediscussionofdatingabove.
"Pas serieux" (anglicism for "pas grave" [no great matter]). Reavey may have mis understood SB's comment, as the page layout was not altered in this or in subsequent editions.
4 "Amardi"(tillTuesday).
290
1936 January 18January
24January 1 February
2March
7 March By25 March
By 9April 2May
6May
By 7 May By 9June 11June
27 June 29June
CHRONOLOGY 1936
SBpursuesinterestinfilmtheoryandmethods. VisitsJack B. Yeats.
T. S. Eliot speaks at University College Dublin. SB visitsJack B. Yeats withMorris Sinclair. Applies to study with Eisenstein.
Germans occupy the Rhineland.
SB travels with Frank Beckett to Galway. Visits Clonmacnoise.
Tells Reavey that transition can choose any poems to publish from Echo's Bones.
Declines to undertake more translations of Eluard's poems for Reavey.
Offers transition the unpublished "Censorship in the Saorstat," updating it with the censorship registry number for More Pricks Than Kicks.
Buys Jack B. Yeats's painting Morning. Finishes a first draft ofMurphy.
Opening of the International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London. Publication ofEluard's Thorns of Thunder with SB's translations.
Murphy typescript finished.
SB sends Murphy to Ian Parsons at Chatto and Windus, to Charles Prentice, and to
McGreevy.
291
Chronology 1936
July
By 7 July
15 July Mid-July By 17 July
17 July
By 6 August 12 August
18 August By 19August
c. 31 August
6 September 29September 30 September 2 October
By 5 October
7 October
3 November 5 November
13 November 4 December
Dublin Magazine publishes "An Imaginative Work! " SB's review of The Amaranthers by Jack B. Yeats.
SB sends Murphy to Simon and Schuster in New York.
Chatto and Windus rejects Murphy.
SB sends poem "Cascando" to Dublin Magazine.
Sends Murphy to Frere-Reeves at Heinemann. Receives author's copy of Thorns of Thunder.
Spanish Civil War begins. Heinemann rejects Murphy.
SB translates Samuel Johnson's Letter to Lord Chesterfield into German in his notebook.
Drafts German translation of"Cascando. "
Sends Murphy to Reavey so that he can act as agent.
Visits Arland Ussher at Cappagh with Joe Hone; sees Ardmore and Cashel.
Reavey visits Dublin from Belfast. SB leaves for Germany.
Arrives in Le Havre.
Arrives in Hamburg.
Simon and Schuster rejects Murphy. Dublin Magazine publishes poem "Cascando. "
SB settles in the Pension Hoppe, Hamburg. Visits Lubeck.
German museums ordered to remove "decadent art. "
SB refuses to accept cuts in Murphy requested by Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Asks Reavey how to acquire permission to use "apes at chess" for frontispiece ofMurphy.
Leaves Hamburg; visits Liineburg.
292
Chronology 1936
5 December
6 December
7 December
8 December
10 December
11 December
c. 16-17 December
In Hanover; visits home of Leibniz.
In Brunswick.
In Riddagshausen.
In Wolfenbiittel; visits Lessing Museum. In Hildesheim.
Arrives in Berlin.
Settles in Pension Kempt, Berlin.
293
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
9/1/35 [for 1936] 6 Clare Street Dublin
Dear George
Thanks for your card. I am more or less all right again now. Coffey left here I think last Friday, for a lecture at Sorbonne
Sat. morning, so I suppose you didn't see him in London. He said he had sent you some more Bones. 1 Yes, let me have as many more as I am due. I think he got my copy of the This Quarter in question. I said i [sic] was not keen on doing more translations, but would if necessary. 2 He appears to want to make the philo sophical series very serious & Fach. But my Geulincx could only be a literary fantasia. 3
I am glad to hear of the European Quarterly. I suppose I have odd poems, or perhaps I might let you have an excerpt from the prose work I mentioned. But there doesn't seem to be much, among my papers or in my mind. 4 I have not seen Devlin. He works in an office, you know. Then in the evening the ballroom. Codpiece Bordel de Danse, Gipsy Scrotum and his Band. Ne suis pas a la hauteur. 5
My friends here esquivent the Bones for the more part, which means the bolus has gone home. What shall they say, my not even enemies. May it stick in their anus. "I am sure you were not born with a pop. " But am I not sparkling? Then how should the birth be still? Sois calme, 6 mon souleur . . 6 Andersen was the byblow of a Frenchman from the Marne. Ca explique Dieu. 7
295
9 January 1935 {for 1936}, Reavey
How much longer London? As I broached the stairs to your
party, as to observatory platform at uranal distance from the
young lady whose name escapes me altogether don't you know,
the gan;on tirebouchon (ce qui m'interesse, c'est le tirebouchon,
non pas le Chandon - Gide) smirked his inadequacy. His heart
8
was not pure. Non pas le condom.
Hommages to Miss Cordon non pas bas bleu.
Your obedient servant s/Sam
9
Ce n'est pas au pelican Pas si pitoyable
Ni a Marie
Pas si pure
Mais a Lucie
Egyptienne oui et peaussiere aussi
Qui ne m'a pas gueri mais qui aurait pu Et a. Jude
Dontj'ai adorore la depouille Quej'adresse la cause desesperee Qu'on dirait la mienne. 10
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU. Dating: Echo's Bones was published in November 1935, and so the year must be 1936.
1 SB had been ill with pleurisy (SB to McGreevy 31 December [1935J, TCD, MS 10402/84).
Brian Coffey left Dublin for Paris on Friday, 3 January 1936. Before he had left Paris for the Christmas holidays in Dublin, he had sent George Reavey copies ofEcho's Bones, which had been published byEuropa Press in Paris (Brian Coffey to George Reavey, 17 December 1935; TxU).
2 SBwrote"<Hecamedownheretoseeme,asIwasnotyetpromenable,>Ithink. "
Coffey had taken SB's copy of This Quarter 5. 1 (September 1932} in which SB's translations of Paul Eluard's poems ("Lady Love," "Out of Sight in the Direction of My Body," "Scarcely Disfigured," "The Invention," "Definition," "A Life Uncovered or The Human Pyramid," "The Queen of Diamonds," "Do Thou Sleep," "Second Nature," "Scene," "All-Proof: Universe-Solitude," and "Confections") had appeared (86-98). Reavey was preparing Thorns of Thunder, a collection ofEluard's poems in translation,
296
9January 1935 [for 1936}, Reavey
which included SB's translations already published in This Quarter; Reavey had appa rently asked, through Coffey, ifSB would prepare more.
3 BrianCoffeyhadinmindamonographseriesonphilosophers;hewasstudying the philosophy of science with Catholic thinker Jacques Maritain {1882-1973) at the lnstitut Catholique de Paris.
"Fach" {professional).
Despite his disclaimer, SB pursued study ofFlemish metaphysicanArnold Geulincx {1624-1669) in the library ofTrinity College Dublin, as he wrote to McGreevy: "I put my foot within the abhorred gates [ofTCDJ for the first time since the escape, on a commis sion from Ruddy. And I fear I shall have to penetrate more deeply, in search ofGeulincx, who does not exist in the National, but does in TCD" (9 January 1935 [for 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/85). SBreadandtookextensivenotesinLatinfromtheEthicaofArnoldGeulincx, in the edition Arnoldi Geulincx antverpiensis Opera Philosophica. Sumptibus providernnt Sortis spinozianae curatores, 3 vols. , ed. Jan Pieter Nicolaas Land {The Hague: apud Martinum Nijhoff, 1891-1893). For SB's notes on his reading ofGeuiincx, see TCD, MS 10971/6; EverettFrostandJaneMaxwell,"TCDMS10971/6LatinexcerptsfromArnoldusGeulincx and R. P. Gredt," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 141-155.
4 As SB wrote to McGreevy, "A card from Reavey, decided to launch European Quarterly . . What would I like to give him for nothing? " (9 January 1935 [for 19361). It is not known what poems or prose SB had in mind, although a poem appears at the end of the present letter.
Reavey did not establish a quarterly journal.
5 DenisDevlin(see5May1935,n. 1).
"Borde! de Danse" (Dance Brothel). "Ne suis pas a la hauteur" ([I'm] not up to it).
6 Echo'sBoneswasmentionedasforthcominginthe"Irishman'sDiary:IrishWriters," The Irish Times 7 December 1935: 6. "Esquivent" (are dodging); "the more part" (Gallicism for "the most part"). SB wrote to McGreevy: "No professional reactions to the poems in any quarter that I know of. Con & Ethna were able to get out ofthe awkward position by remarking that they were already familiar with most ofthem. Ruddy had only feuillete" (9 January 1935 [for 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/85). "Feuillete" (leafed through).
SB imagines a response to the line from "Sanies I": "I was born with a pop with the green ofthe larches" (Echo's Bones, [191). He mentally prepares a retort with wordplay based on sparkling wine/water and still, birth, and stillbirth.
In "Sois calme, 6 mon soiileur" (Be calm, oh my intoxicator), SB makes play with the opening line of Baudelaire's poem "Recueillement": "Sois sage, 6 ma Douleur" (Behave, my sorrow) (Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes, I, 140; Baudelaire, Les Reurs du Mal, The Rowers ofEvil, 173).
7 Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was born in wedlock, his parents having married two months before his birth (1805); his father, Hans Andersen, was a journey man shoemaker from Odense (Elias Bredsdorff, Hans Christian Andersen: The Story ofHis Life and Work, 1805-75 [London: Phaidon Press, 1975[ 15-16).
·c;;a explique Dieu" (That explains God).
8 Theyoungwoman,asfardistantastheplanetUranus,hasnotbeenidentified.
"Gar�on tirebouchon (ce qui m'interesse, c'est le tirebouchon, non pas le Chandon - Gide)" (The waiter with the corkscrew [what interests me is the corkscrew, not the Chandon - Gide]). Reference unclear.
"Non pas le condom" (Not the condom).
297
9 January 1935 [for 1936}, Reavey
9 "Hommages to Miss Cordon non pas bas bleu" (Respects to Miss Cordon not bleu): "bas bleu" (bluestocking). Punning combines this with "Cordon bleu. " The subject of SB's reference is not known.
10 This version of the poem varies from that published in French in SB's Dream of Fair to Middling Women, 21. For a discussion of sources and nuances, see also Pilling, A Companion to "Dream of Fair to Middling Women," 54-55. SB did not translate this poem.
It is not to the pelican Not so pitiable
Nor to Marie
Not so pure
But to Lucie
Yes, the Egyptian (and in the leather trade) Who did not cure me but who might have And to Jude
Whose hide I adorored
That I put the desperate case
That might look like mine.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
16/1 [1936]
Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
Very glad to have your letter & poems. The verdict ofOxford
is final & excellent. I do not care so much for its preparation. Davies matters as little as the jelly. j'irai dans le desert I liked
1
tion ofVollard's new book.
I found Devlin the other day among his external affairs &
am lunching with him to-morrow. His poems are in hand & he has a new prose-cum-verse romance. But he said he had written to you himself. He wondered were you bose with him. I said: Macche! 3
298
also. But is it not rather from the desert. Call it camp foutu. Rutter turns out to be ofsome service at last - in his indica
2
16January {1936}, McGreevy
The weather is dreadful & I cannot get warm. I trailed down to Newcastle one day with Cissie to see Boss. Always when I get there I am glummer than the whole institution put together. On the way back a hard hit publican in Bray quoted Daniel O'Connell to prove there was no hope remaining for this coun try. A cow, a cow, my Free State for a cow. In the train from Bray, vainly unrecognized, the pestiferous Michael Farrell fresh from Kilmacanogue & next doordom to All Forlorn (whose elucubra tion on Coriolanus at the Abbey I trust you read in the Chelsea Library). He is finishing a work, really very beautiful, & admired by All Forlorn, himself naively 5 minutes later extolled by Farrell as a critic! 4
No news from Coffey since I saw him here. I shall have to go
into TCD after Geulincx, as he does not exist in National Library.
I suddenly see that Murphy is break down between his ubi nihil
vales ibi nihil velis (positive) & Malraux's Il est difficile a celui
qui vit hors du monde de ne pas rechercher les siens (negation).
I have not done a tap since I saw you. Shelves are going up slowly
in the room where I hope to dig in, and books slowly from Clare
5
The X-Ray shows nothing. Je m'en doutais.
I was hoping to see JBY last Saturday but went to the Gallery
6
299
Street.
instead. Not a picture touched, only two "British" rooms closed. Bion in his last acknowledgment of the filthy "trusted I had by now taken up my work with pleasure and satisfaction", as he was sure I must "even though not entirely freed from neuroses"! Mother's whole idea of course is to get me committed to life here. And my travel-courage is so gone that the collapse is more than likely. I find myself more than ever frightened by the prospect of effort, initiative & even the little self-assertion of getting about from one place to another. Solitude here, perhaps
16 January {1936}, McGreevy
more sober than before, seems the upshot of the London
Torture. Indeed I do not see what difference the analysis has
made. Relations with M. as thorny as ever and the nights no
7
provenistheliterary. Wartenur. . . FrankIfeelcensoriousas
9
I have not seen Ruddy since. It is very difficult to get across
10
better. Aheartattacklastnightthatwouldhavedonecreditto three years ago. The only plane on which I feel my defeat not
8
not before. He is so successful. To-day gone to Galway, not to return till Saturday.
from here, and when one does . . . But I hear he gets on well.
I
have seen all the Jew faithful, Con etc. , but really feel I do not
want to see them any more. If nothing has survived but the
11
Geoffrey seems to be working too hard at the Maudsley. He
has applied for a demonstratorship in physiology, 4 hours a
week well paid & work that would give him no trouble. Then
he could give up the Maudsley. I should say he has a very good
chance ofgetting in. He will be upset by the death ofAndy Frank
Dixon announced in to-day's paper. One of the few good minds
12
your gaffe will save her. Greetings to her & Hester & Raven. 13 Write very soon again.
Love Sam
300
habit, to insist is like doffing to the Cenotaph.
seem to have committed myself to some months here, London & you & Geoffrey seem the sanctuary & reality. Perhaps the flight will be sooner than I expect, but no more Bion. As I write, think, move, speak, praise & blame, I see myselfliving up to the speci men that these 2 years have taught me I am. The word is not out before I am blushing for my automatism.
Now, just as I
left in the place.
Poor Dilly, in the running for Lynd's good opinion. Surely
Sean O'Sullivan was over taking plan & elevation of Shem.
He asked did I dive with my glasses on. Sean liked Leon (for Leon].
They all got jolly together, chez Fourquet [for Fouquet]. Parait
16January {1936}, McGreevy
14
ALS; 2 leaves, 3 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea,
London SW 3; pm 20-1-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/86. Dating: from pm.
1 McGreevy'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound;itisnotknownwhichofthepoems he enclosed.
W. B. Yeats selected and introduced the poems included in The Oxford Book ofModem Verse: 1892-1935 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936).
McGreevy was aware that his poems "Aodh Ruadh 6 Domhnaill" and "Homage to Jack Yeats" would be included (333-335). Since his friend George Yeats (nee Bertha Georgie Hyde-Lee, 1892-1968) was handling permissions and compiling the index for the anthology in early January 1936, McGreevy is likely to have seen the other poems selected (Ann Saddlemyer. Becoming George, 495-496).
Welsh-born poetWilliam Henry Davies (1870-1940) was represented in the anthol ogy by seven poems (128-133).
The poem referred to as "j'irai dans le desert" (I will go into the desert) has not been identified.
"Camp foutu" (off duly buggered); SB deliberately inverts "foutre le camp" (to get away or to bugger off).
2 FrankRutter(1876-1937),ArtCriticforTheSundayTimes,wroteanappreciative review of Recollections of a Picture Dealer {1936), the memoirs of the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1867-1939), saying that it was "full of absorbingly interesting subject-matter and good stories" ("Oddest Art Dealer, Ambroise Vollard: Memories of Famous Painters," 12 January 1936: 5).
3 Devlin'scollectionofpoems,Intercessions,wasnotactuallypublisheduntilAugust 1937. SB's reference to Devlin's "prose-cum-verse romance" is not clear. Although there is an undated TMS draft entitled "Prose" in the Devlin archives, the "prose cum-verse romance" may refer to a group of poems called Adventure, "the generic title of a number of MS poems dating from the early thirties, which D[enis] D[evlin] never published as a group or sequence"; the first of these, "The Statue and the Perturbed Burghers," appeared in a second draft as "Romance sentimentale" (National Library of Ireland, The Literary Papers of Denis Devlin, MS 38, Box 5; Devlin, Collected Poems ofDenis Devlin, 334).
"Bose" (angry): "Macche" (Come off it).
4 Bray,onthecoastroad,atthesouthernendofKillineyBay,wastheterminusofthe rail line from Dublin. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), the "Liberator" who led the cam paign for Catholic emancipation of Ireland (April 1829) advocating political rather than violent means; as Mayor of Dublin (1843), he led the failed movement to repeal the Act of Union in order to secure an Irish parliament. "A cow, a cow, my Free State for a cow" parodies "A horse, a horse! my kingdom for a horse! " (Shakespeare, Richard III, V. iv. 7).
301
que Lucia est . i Londres.
16 January {1936}, McGreevy
Michael Farrell wrote for The Bell and Radio Eireann: see 9 October 1933, n. 6. Kilmacanogue, Co. Wicklow, on the slopes ofSugarloaf.
"All Forlorn" is SB's rendering of Irish writer Sean O'Faolain (ne John Whelan,
1900-1991), who lived in Kilmacanogue. O'Faolain wrote a letter to the Editor that condemned the Irish Times drama critic for only "watery approval" of the Abbey Theatre production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, directed by Hugh Hunt (1911-1993), which he felt was a "dashing" and "vigorous" performance (The Irish Times 15 January 1936: 3; see also Holloway. Joseph Holloway's Irish Theatre, II, 1932-1937, 50-51).
SB wrote "<Gate>" and inserted above "Abbey. " The Chelsea Library in Manresa Road, near McGreevy's residence in Cheyne Gardens.
5 BrianCoffeywasinParis.
Geulincx: see 9 January 1936, n. 3.
In Ethica, Tract I, Cap. II, S. IL, Paragraph 3 (p. 37), Geulincx discusses "Sui Despectio"
(Contempt ofSelf); his note to this term includes the phrase "Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil etiam velis" (Opera philosophica, Ill, 222; Where you are worth nothing, may you also wish for nothing [tr. GC)).
Andre Malraux writes in La Condition humaine (1933): "Solitude demiere, car ii est difficile a celui qui vit hors du monde de ne pas rechercher Jes siens" ("The ultimate solitude, for it is difficult for one who lives isolated from the everyday world not to seek others like himself") (Malraux, Romans. Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1947] 353; Malraux, Man's Fate, tr. Stuart Gilbert [New York: Random House, 1961] 246). See SB's Murphy, 178-179.
SB wrote to McGreevy on 9 January 1935 [for 1936]: "I feel I shall finish it all right, and begin it again, somehow after all" (TCD, MS 10402/85). He was setting up a work space at the family home, moving back the books from the study he had had at the office of Beckett and Medcalf, 6 Clare Street, prior to his move to London in 1934.
6 "Je m'en doutais. " (I thought as much. )
Jack B. Yeats.
Shortly after his appointment as Director of the National Gallery of Ireland in
October 1935, George Furlong (1898-1987) undertook a refurbishment ofthe museum and restoration of the collection. The re-hanging took place later in 1936, when the museum was closed from the end ofSeptember to the end ofNovember.
7 SB notes Bion's response to the final payment which marked closure of SB's therapy with him. "M. " refers to Mother.
8 "Wartenur. . . "(justwait). FromGoethe's"EinGleiches"("AnotherNightSong") (Christopher Middleton, ed. , Johann Wo! /gang von Goethe Selected Poems [Boston: Suhrkamp/Jnsel, 1983] 58-59).
9 FrankBeckettwasrunningBeckettandMedcalf,QuantitySurveyors.
10 Rudmose-Brown had been ill and was recovering at his home, 8 Shanganagh Terrace, on the road from Ballybrack to Killiney.
11 A. ]. Leventhal.
George Atkinson (1880-1941), Headmaster ofthe Metropolitan School ofArt from 1918 to 1936 and Director ofthe National College ofArt from 1936 to 1941, designed the Cenotaph or Celtic Cross Memorial. It was installed on Leinster Lawn in 1923 as a temporary monument; in 1950 the Cenotaph was replaced by a granite obelisk (Frederick O'Dwyer, Lost Dublin [Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1981] 50, 56).
302
12 Geoffrey Thompson was then working at the Maudsley Hospital, London. Andrew Francis Dixon (1868-1936), Professor of Anatomy and Chirurgery and Dean of the Faculty of Physic at Trinity College Dublin, died on 15 January; Geoffrey Thompson had been his student.
13 GeraldineCumminshopedforagoodreviewofhernovelFiresofBeltane(1936) from Robert Lynd (1879-1949), Literary Editor of the News Chronicle and contributor to the New Statesman. McGreevy reviewed it for Time and Tide 17. 37 (12 September 1936) 1260.
Hester Dowden and Thomas Holmes Ravenhill.
14 SeanO'SullivanhadbeeninParistosketchJamesJoyceforaportraitcommis sioned by Joyce's friend Constantine Curran (1880-1975) ijames Joyce to Constantine Curran, 18 September 1935, in Joyce, Letters of]ames]oyce, I, 384). See a drawing from this sitting dated 1935 (NG! , 2027).
Paul Leon.
Fouquet's was Joyce's favorite restaurant, 99 Avenue des Champs-Elysees. "Parait que Lucia est a Londres" (Appears that Lucia is in London). Actually Lucia Joyce was in St. Andrew's Hospital, Northampton, for ten weeks from mid-December 1935 through February 1936 (Shloss, Lucia Joyce, 373-374; Jane Lidderdale and Mary Nicholson, Dear Miss Weaver: Haniet Shaw Weaver 1876-1961 [London: Faber and Faber, 1970] 355-356).
29 January 1935 {for 1936}, McGreevy
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
29/1/35 [for 1936]
Cooldrinagh [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
Thanks for your letter. Galley & page of home counties
1
I went round to JBY last Sat. week, found him all alone & Mrs
invisible with a 'acking corf. He has painted a lot of new small
pictures for exhibition in London in March, I forget where but
2
sound last two straws. Hope they are paying you pro rata.
[. . . ]
notatAlpine,somegalleryinVigoSt. Ithink. Thenewstuff, some of it, is superb. One small picture especially, Morning, almost a skyscape, wide street leading into Sligo looking west as usual, with boy on a horse 30 pounds. If I had ten I would beard him with an easy payments proposition. But I have not.
Devlin worked in the Department of External Affairs; as Secretary to the legation, he accompanied Eamon De Valera (popularly known as Dev, 1882-1975), then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the Irish Free State and Head of Council of the League of Nations, to the League of Nations in Geneva (3 September to 2 October 1935) (Devlin, Collected Poems of Denis Devlin, 19; "Back from Geneva," The Irish Times 2 October 1933: 7).
18 Yeats may have traced the provenance of Comer Boys, which had had an owner previous to SB (see 5 May 1935, n. 4).
Tobias and the Angel by Scottish playwright James Bridie (ne Osborne Henry Mavor, 1888-1951) was performed at the Gaiety Theatre (not the Abbey Theatre) as part of the Dublin Summer School of Acting on Sunday, 22 September 1935 (The Irish Times 23 September 1935: 8).
19 Mrs. Frost,SB'slandladyat34GertrudeStreet. The"Lieblings"(lovers),presum- ably the couple described in 8 September 1934.
Geoffrey Thompson and Ursula Stenhouse were shortly to be married.
20 Boissier:see22September1935,n. 8.
21 GermanpublisherKarlBaedeker(1801-1859)publishedtravelguidesforvarious regions of Europe; updated versions continue to be published.
22 Simon and Schuster and SB's request to Chatto and Windus: 8 September 1935.
287
8 October 1935, McGreevy
13 October 1935, Reavey GEORGE REAVEY
LONDON
13/10/35
Dear George
34 Gertrude Street London SW10
Thanks for letter & prospectus. Further victims:
Charles Rowe, Esq. , F. T. C. D. , Trinity College, Dublin.
1
It is better for you to diffuse them, but let me have a dozen in case I think of someone else.
The American publishers I have in mind are Messrs. Simon &
Schuster, 386 Fourth Avenue, New York. They wrote to me about
a month & a half ago, asking to see whatever material I had
available for publication in USA. I sent them Proust & Pricks &
have not yet had their decision. They seem well disposed. This
being the position, it occurs to me that they ought to be offered
the first refusal ofBones, also that it might be advisable to wait for
their decision as to prose before submitting the verse. However
I leave you to deal with the matter as you think best. I am quite
2
pectus. Ifthis is your dastardly intention and the covers have not
3
Frances Steen (n. d. ), schoolmate of SB's at Earlsfort House School, Dublin; her brother, RobertEllsworth Steen (1902-1981) was a friend of SB's at TCD, and they golfed together at Carrickrnines, Co. Dublin.
288
Miss Frances Steen, Carrickmines, Co. Dublin.
satisfied with 20% for EP [for EB].
I hope the Bones are not covered in the canary of the pros
yet been put in hand, be an angel and change it to PUTIY. Yours ever
s/ Sam
TIS; 1 leaf, 1 side; AN in another hand: checkmarks, and underscoring; TxU.
1 CharlesHenryRowe,ProfessorofMathematicsatTrinityCollegeDublin.
Saturday [after 13 October 1935}, Reavey
2 Echo's Bones.
3 Thecoloroftheprospectuswaswarmgold;thecolorofthefinalcoverforEcho's
Bones was putty. GEORGE REAVEY
LONDON
Saturday [after 13 October 1935]
34 Gertrude St [London] SWlO
Cher ami
It might be a good idea to send a copy to Observer, "for favour
of etc. ", & if so to Humbert Wolfe, lest it should fall into black
1
Clare St. & both Tom & Brian know
Mr NAIRN, Combridge's, Grafton Street
Hodges & Figgis also might take a few copies. 2
Looking over it at leisure I am very pleased with layout.
I only find one mistake: there should be a space in Enueg 2 between "doch I assure thee" & "lying on O'Connell Bridge. " Pas serieux-3
I have sent out 5 more prospectuses this morning that may bring a few more bob.
A mardi Sam
I have found MS of Serena III which you can have 4
ALS; 1 leaf folded, 2 sides; from "Looking over it . . . ", text appears upside down because SB has turned the folded page; PS written to left of signature; TxU. Dating: in 15 March 1935, SB gives his choice of title for the volume of poems; in 8 October 1935, SB anticipates proofs that week; in SB's letter toReavey of 13 October 1935, SB discusses the color of the cover. The imprint of Echo's Bones gives the publication date as November 1935. "Enueg 2" was published in Echo's Bones without the correction SB
289
claws of Austin Clarke.
For distribution in Dublin I know:
Mr PEMBRY [for Pembrey] Green's [for Greene's] Library,
Saturday [after 13 October 1935}, Reavey
requested in this letter, and with "Serena III" (published as "Serena 3," Echo's Bones [31-321). The date, therefore, is after 13 October, but before 30 November 1935, probably early to mid-November.
1 Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940), English poet, satirist, and civil servant. Austin Clarke reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator; SB was wary of retaliation (see 8 September 1934, n. 2).
2 HerbertS. Pembrey(1909-2000),sub-postmasterandproprietorwithhisfather, Herbert H. Pembrey, of Greene's Library, 16 Clare Street.
Thomas McGreevy; Brian Coffey.
Ernest Nairn (d. 1970), a book expert who worked for about fifty years at Combridges, at 18-20 Grafton Street in 1935. Hodges & Figgis, bookstore, was then at 20 Nassau Street.
3 Seediscussionofdatingabove.
"Pas serieux" (anglicism for "pas grave" [no great matter]). Reavey may have mis understood SB's comment, as the page layout was not altered in this or in subsequent editions.
4 "Amardi"(tillTuesday).
290
1936 January 18January
24January 1 February
2March
7 March By25 March
By 9April 2May
6May
By 7 May By 9June 11June
27 June 29June
CHRONOLOGY 1936
SBpursuesinterestinfilmtheoryandmethods. VisitsJack B. Yeats.
T. S. Eliot speaks at University College Dublin. SB visitsJack B. Yeats withMorris Sinclair. Applies to study with Eisenstein.
Germans occupy the Rhineland.
SB travels with Frank Beckett to Galway. Visits Clonmacnoise.
Tells Reavey that transition can choose any poems to publish from Echo's Bones.
Declines to undertake more translations of Eluard's poems for Reavey.
Offers transition the unpublished "Censorship in the Saorstat," updating it with the censorship registry number for More Pricks Than Kicks.
Buys Jack B. Yeats's painting Morning. Finishes a first draft ofMurphy.
Opening of the International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London. Publication ofEluard's Thorns of Thunder with SB's translations.
Murphy typescript finished.
SB sends Murphy to Ian Parsons at Chatto and Windus, to Charles Prentice, and to
McGreevy.
291
Chronology 1936
July
By 7 July
15 July Mid-July By 17 July
17 July
By 6 August 12 August
18 August By 19August
c. 31 August
6 September 29September 30 September 2 October
By 5 October
7 October
3 November 5 November
13 November 4 December
Dublin Magazine publishes "An Imaginative Work! " SB's review of The Amaranthers by Jack B. Yeats.
SB sends Murphy to Simon and Schuster in New York.
Chatto and Windus rejects Murphy.
SB sends poem "Cascando" to Dublin Magazine.
Sends Murphy to Frere-Reeves at Heinemann. Receives author's copy of Thorns of Thunder.
Spanish Civil War begins. Heinemann rejects Murphy.
SB translates Samuel Johnson's Letter to Lord Chesterfield into German in his notebook.
Drafts German translation of"Cascando. "
Sends Murphy to Reavey so that he can act as agent.
Visits Arland Ussher at Cappagh with Joe Hone; sees Ardmore and Cashel.
Reavey visits Dublin from Belfast. SB leaves for Germany.
Arrives in Le Havre.
Arrives in Hamburg.
Simon and Schuster rejects Murphy. Dublin Magazine publishes poem "Cascando. "
SB settles in the Pension Hoppe, Hamburg. Visits Lubeck.
German museums ordered to remove "decadent art. "
SB refuses to accept cuts in Murphy requested by Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Asks Reavey how to acquire permission to use "apes at chess" for frontispiece ofMurphy.
Leaves Hamburg; visits Liineburg.
292
Chronology 1936
5 December
6 December
7 December
8 December
10 December
11 December
c. 16-17 December
In Hanover; visits home of Leibniz.
In Brunswick.
In Riddagshausen.
In Wolfenbiittel; visits Lessing Museum. In Hildesheim.
Arrives in Berlin.
Settles in Pension Kempt, Berlin.
293
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
9/1/35 [for 1936] 6 Clare Street Dublin
Dear George
Thanks for your card. I am more or less all right again now. Coffey left here I think last Friday, for a lecture at Sorbonne
Sat. morning, so I suppose you didn't see him in London. He said he had sent you some more Bones. 1 Yes, let me have as many more as I am due. I think he got my copy of the This Quarter in question. I said i [sic] was not keen on doing more translations, but would if necessary. 2 He appears to want to make the philo sophical series very serious & Fach. But my Geulincx could only be a literary fantasia. 3
I am glad to hear of the European Quarterly. I suppose I have odd poems, or perhaps I might let you have an excerpt from the prose work I mentioned. But there doesn't seem to be much, among my papers or in my mind. 4 I have not seen Devlin. He works in an office, you know. Then in the evening the ballroom. Codpiece Bordel de Danse, Gipsy Scrotum and his Band. Ne suis pas a la hauteur. 5
My friends here esquivent the Bones for the more part, which means the bolus has gone home. What shall they say, my not even enemies. May it stick in their anus. "I am sure you were not born with a pop. " But am I not sparkling? Then how should the birth be still? Sois calme, 6 mon souleur . . 6 Andersen was the byblow of a Frenchman from the Marne. Ca explique Dieu. 7
295
9 January 1935 {for 1936}, Reavey
How much longer London? As I broached the stairs to your
party, as to observatory platform at uranal distance from the
young lady whose name escapes me altogether don't you know,
the gan;on tirebouchon (ce qui m'interesse, c'est le tirebouchon,
non pas le Chandon - Gide) smirked his inadequacy. His heart
8
was not pure. Non pas le condom.
Hommages to Miss Cordon non pas bas bleu.
Your obedient servant s/Sam
9
Ce n'est pas au pelican Pas si pitoyable
Ni a Marie
Pas si pure
Mais a Lucie
Egyptienne oui et peaussiere aussi
Qui ne m'a pas gueri mais qui aurait pu Et a. Jude
Dontj'ai adorore la depouille Quej'adresse la cause desesperee Qu'on dirait la mienne. 10
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU. Dating: Echo's Bones was published in November 1935, and so the year must be 1936.
1 SB had been ill with pleurisy (SB to McGreevy 31 December [1935J, TCD, MS 10402/84).
Brian Coffey left Dublin for Paris on Friday, 3 January 1936. Before he had left Paris for the Christmas holidays in Dublin, he had sent George Reavey copies ofEcho's Bones, which had been published byEuropa Press in Paris (Brian Coffey to George Reavey, 17 December 1935; TxU).
2 SBwrote"<Hecamedownheretoseeme,asIwasnotyetpromenable,>Ithink. "
Coffey had taken SB's copy of This Quarter 5. 1 (September 1932} in which SB's translations of Paul Eluard's poems ("Lady Love," "Out of Sight in the Direction of My Body," "Scarcely Disfigured," "The Invention," "Definition," "A Life Uncovered or The Human Pyramid," "The Queen of Diamonds," "Do Thou Sleep," "Second Nature," "Scene," "All-Proof: Universe-Solitude," and "Confections") had appeared (86-98). Reavey was preparing Thorns of Thunder, a collection ofEluard's poems in translation,
296
9January 1935 [for 1936}, Reavey
which included SB's translations already published in This Quarter; Reavey had appa rently asked, through Coffey, ifSB would prepare more.
3 BrianCoffeyhadinmindamonographseriesonphilosophers;hewasstudying the philosophy of science with Catholic thinker Jacques Maritain {1882-1973) at the lnstitut Catholique de Paris.
"Fach" {professional).
Despite his disclaimer, SB pursued study ofFlemish metaphysicanArnold Geulincx {1624-1669) in the library ofTrinity College Dublin, as he wrote to McGreevy: "I put my foot within the abhorred gates [ofTCDJ for the first time since the escape, on a commis sion from Ruddy. And I fear I shall have to penetrate more deeply, in search ofGeulincx, who does not exist in the National, but does in TCD" (9 January 1935 [for 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/85). SBreadandtookextensivenotesinLatinfromtheEthicaofArnoldGeulincx, in the edition Arnoldi Geulincx antverpiensis Opera Philosophica. Sumptibus providernnt Sortis spinozianae curatores, 3 vols. , ed. Jan Pieter Nicolaas Land {The Hague: apud Martinum Nijhoff, 1891-1893). For SB's notes on his reading ofGeuiincx, see TCD, MS 10971/6; EverettFrostandJaneMaxwell,"TCDMS10971/6LatinexcerptsfromArnoldusGeulincx and R. P. Gredt," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 141-155.
4 As SB wrote to McGreevy, "A card from Reavey, decided to launch European Quarterly . . What would I like to give him for nothing? " (9 January 1935 [for 19361). It is not known what poems or prose SB had in mind, although a poem appears at the end of the present letter.
Reavey did not establish a quarterly journal.
5 DenisDevlin(see5May1935,n. 1).
"Borde! de Danse" (Dance Brothel). "Ne suis pas a la hauteur" ([I'm] not up to it).
6 Echo'sBoneswasmentionedasforthcominginthe"Irishman'sDiary:IrishWriters," The Irish Times 7 December 1935: 6. "Esquivent" (are dodging); "the more part" (Gallicism for "the most part"). SB wrote to McGreevy: "No professional reactions to the poems in any quarter that I know of. Con & Ethna were able to get out ofthe awkward position by remarking that they were already familiar with most ofthem. Ruddy had only feuillete" (9 January 1935 [for 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/85). "Feuillete" (leafed through).
SB imagines a response to the line from "Sanies I": "I was born with a pop with the green ofthe larches" (Echo's Bones, [191). He mentally prepares a retort with wordplay based on sparkling wine/water and still, birth, and stillbirth.
In "Sois calme, 6 mon soiileur" (Be calm, oh my intoxicator), SB makes play with the opening line of Baudelaire's poem "Recueillement": "Sois sage, 6 ma Douleur" (Behave, my sorrow) (Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes, I, 140; Baudelaire, Les Reurs du Mal, The Rowers ofEvil, 173).
7 Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was born in wedlock, his parents having married two months before his birth (1805); his father, Hans Andersen, was a journey man shoemaker from Odense (Elias Bredsdorff, Hans Christian Andersen: The Story ofHis Life and Work, 1805-75 [London: Phaidon Press, 1975[ 15-16).
·c;;a explique Dieu" (That explains God).
8 Theyoungwoman,asfardistantastheplanetUranus,hasnotbeenidentified.
"Gar�on tirebouchon (ce qui m'interesse, c'est le tirebouchon, non pas le Chandon - Gide)" (The waiter with the corkscrew [what interests me is the corkscrew, not the Chandon - Gide]). Reference unclear.
"Non pas le condom" (Not the condom).
297
9 January 1935 [for 1936}, Reavey
9 "Hommages to Miss Cordon non pas bas bleu" (Respects to Miss Cordon not bleu): "bas bleu" (bluestocking). Punning combines this with "Cordon bleu. " The subject of SB's reference is not known.
10 This version of the poem varies from that published in French in SB's Dream of Fair to Middling Women, 21. For a discussion of sources and nuances, see also Pilling, A Companion to "Dream of Fair to Middling Women," 54-55. SB did not translate this poem.
It is not to the pelican Not so pitiable
Nor to Marie
Not so pure
But to Lucie
Yes, the Egyptian (and in the leather trade) Who did not cure me but who might have And to Jude
Whose hide I adorored
That I put the desperate case
That might look like mine.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
16/1 [1936]
Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
Very glad to have your letter & poems. The verdict ofOxford
is final & excellent. I do not care so much for its preparation. Davies matters as little as the jelly. j'irai dans le desert I liked
1
tion ofVollard's new book.
I found Devlin the other day among his external affairs &
am lunching with him to-morrow. His poems are in hand & he has a new prose-cum-verse romance. But he said he had written to you himself. He wondered were you bose with him. I said: Macche! 3
298
also. But is it not rather from the desert. Call it camp foutu. Rutter turns out to be ofsome service at last - in his indica
2
16January {1936}, McGreevy
The weather is dreadful & I cannot get warm. I trailed down to Newcastle one day with Cissie to see Boss. Always when I get there I am glummer than the whole institution put together. On the way back a hard hit publican in Bray quoted Daniel O'Connell to prove there was no hope remaining for this coun try. A cow, a cow, my Free State for a cow. In the train from Bray, vainly unrecognized, the pestiferous Michael Farrell fresh from Kilmacanogue & next doordom to All Forlorn (whose elucubra tion on Coriolanus at the Abbey I trust you read in the Chelsea Library). He is finishing a work, really very beautiful, & admired by All Forlorn, himself naively 5 minutes later extolled by Farrell as a critic! 4
No news from Coffey since I saw him here. I shall have to go
into TCD after Geulincx, as he does not exist in National Library.
I suddenly see that Murphy is break down between his ubi nihil
vales ibi nihil velis (positive) & Malraux's Il est difficile a celui
qui vit hors du monde de ne pas rechercher les siens (negation).
I have not done a tap since I saw you. Shelves are going up slowly
in the room where I hope to dig in, and books slowly from Clare
5
The X-Ray shows nothing. Je m'en doutais.
I was hoping to see JBY last Saturday but went to the Gallery
6
299
Street.
instead. Not a picture touched, only two "British" rooms closed. Bion in his last acknowledgment of the filthy "trusted I had by now taken up my work with pleasure and satisfaction", as he was sure I must "even though not entirely freed from neuroses"! Mother's whole idea of course is to get me committed to life here. And my travel-courage is so gone that the collapse is more than likely. I find myself more than ever frightened by the prospect of effort, initiative & even the little self-assertion of getting about from one place to another. Solitude here, perhaps
16 January {1936}, McGreevy
more sober than before, seems the upshot of the London
Torture. Indeed I do not see what difference the analysis has
made. Relations with M. as thorny as ever and the nights no
7
provenistheliterary. Wartenur. . . FrankIfeelcensoriousas
9
I have not seen Ruddy since. It is very difficult to get across
10
better. Aheartattacklastnightthatwouldhavedonecreditto three years ago. The only plane on which I feel my defeat not
8
not before. He is so successful. To-day gone to Galway, not to return till Saturday.
from here, and when one does . . . But I hear he gets on well.
I
have seen all the Jew faithful, Con etc. , but really feel I do not
want to see them any more. If nothing has survived but the
11
Geoffrey seems to be working too hard at the Maudsley. He
has applied for a demonstratorship in physiology, 4 hours a
week well paid & work that would give him no trouble. Then
he could give up the Maudsley. I should say he has a very good
chance ofgetting in. He will be upset by the death ofAndy Frank
Dixon announced in to-day's paper. One of the few good minds
12
your gaffe will save her. Greetings to her & Hester & Raven. 13 Write very soon again.
Love Sam
300
habit, to insist is like doffing to the Cenotaph.
seem to have committed myself to some months here, London & you & Geoffrey seem the sanctuary & reality. Perhaps the flight will be sooner than I expect, but no more Bion. As I write, think, move, speak, praise & blame, I see myselfliving up to the speci men that these 2 years have taught me I am. The word is not out before I am blushing for my automatism.
Now, just as I
left in the place.
Poor Dilly, in the running for Lynd's good opinion. Surely
Sean O'Sullivan was over taking plan & elevation of Shem.
He asked did I dive with my glasses on. Sean liked Leon (for Leon].
They all got jolly together, chez Fourquet [for Fouquet]. Parait
16January {1936}, McGreevy
14
ALS; 2 leaves, 3 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea,
London SW 3; pm 20-1-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/86. Dating: from pm.
1 McGreevy'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound;itisnotknownwhichofthepoems he enclosed.
W. B. Yeats selected and introduced the poems included in The Oxford Book ofModem Verse: 1892-1935 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936).
McGreevy was aware that his poems "Aodh Ruadh 6 Domhnaill" and "Homage to Jack Yeats" would be included (333-335). Since his friend George Yeats (nee Bertha Georgie Hyde-Lee, 1892-1968) was handling permissions and compiling the index for the anthology in early January 1936, McGreevy is likely to have seen the other poems selected (Ann Saddlemyer. Becoming George, 495-496).
Welsh-born poetWilliam Henry Davies (1870-1940) was represented in the anthol ogy by seven poems (128-133).
The poem referred to as "j'irai dans le desert" (I will go into the desert) has not been identified.
"Camp foutu" (off duly buggered); SB deliberately inverts "foutre le camp" (to get away or to bugger off).
2 FrankRutter(1876-1937),ArtCriticforTheSundayTimes,wroteanappreciative review of Recollections of a Picture Dealer {1936), the memoirs of the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1867-1939), saying that it was "full of absorbingly interesting subject-matter and good stories" ("Oddest Art Dealer, Ambroise Vollard: Memories of Famous Painters," 12 January 1936: 5).
3 Devlin'scollectionofpoems,Intercessions,wasnotactuallypublisheduntilAugust 1937. SB's reference to Devlin's "prose-cum-verse romance" is not clear. Although there is an undated TMS draft entitled "Prose" in the Devlin archives, the "prose cum-verse romance" may refer to a group of poems called Adventure, "the generic title of a number of MS poems dating from the early thirties, which D[enis] D[evlin] never published as a group or sequence"; the first of these, "The Statue and the Perturbed Burghers," appeared in a second draft as "Romance sentimentale" (National Library of Ireland, The Literary Papers of Denis Devlin, MS 38, Box 5; Devlin, Collected Poems ofDenis Devlin, 334).
"Bose" (angry): "Macche" (Come off it).
4 Bray,onthecoastroad,atthesouthernendofKillineyBay,wastheterminusofthe rail line from Dublin. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), the "Liberator" who led the cam paign for Catholic emancipation of Ireland (April 1829) advocating political rather than violent means; as Mayor of Dublin (1843), he led the failed movement to repeal the Act of Union in order to secure an Irish parliament. "A cow, a cow, my Free State for a cow" parodies "A horse, a horse! my kingdom for a horse! " (Shakespeare, Richard III, V. iv. 7).
301
que Lucia est . i Londres.
16 January {1936}, McGreevy
Michael Farrell wrote for The Bell and Radio Eireann: see 9 October 1933, n. 6. Kilmacanogue, Co. Wicklow, on the slopes ofSugarloaf.
"All Forlorn" is SB's rendering of Irish writer Sean O'Faolain (ne John Whelan,
1900-1991), who lived in Kilmacanogue. O'Faolain wrote a letter to the Editor that condemned the Irish Times drama critic for only "watery approval" of the Abbey Theatre production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, directed by Hugh Hunt (1911-1993), which he felt was a "dashing" and "vigorous" performance (The Irish Times 15 January 1936: 3; see also Holloway. Joseph Holloway's Irish Theatre, II, 1932-1937, 50-51).
SB wrote "<Gate>" and inserted above "Abbey. " The Chelsea Library in Manresa Road, near McGreevy's residence in Cheyne Gardens.
5 BrianCoffeywasinParis.
Geulincx: see 9 January 1936, n. 3.
In Ethica, Tract I, Cap. II, S. IL, Paragraph 3 (p. 37), Geulincx discusses "Sui Despectio"
(Contempt ofSelf); his note to this term includes the phrase "Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil etiam velis" (Opera philosophica, Ill, 222; Where you are worth nothing, may you also wish for nothing [tr. GC)).
Andre Malraux writes in La Condition humaine (1933): "Solitude demiere, car ii est difficile a celui qui vit hors du monde de ne pas rechercher Jes siens" ("The ultimate solitude, for it is difficult for one who lives isolated from the everyday world not to seek others like himself") (Malraux, Romans. Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1947] 353; Malraux, Man's Fate, tr. Stuart Gilbert [New York: Random House, 1961] 246). See SB's Murphy, 178-179.
SB wrote to McGreevy on 9 January 1935 [for 1936]: "I feel I shall finish it all right, and begin it again, somehow after all" (TCD, MS 10402/85). He was setting up a work space at the family home, moving back the books from the study he had had at the office of Beckett and Medcalf, 6 Clare Street, prior to his move to London in 1934.
6 "Je m'en doutais. " (I thought as much. )
Jack B. Yeats.
Shortly after his appointment as Director of the National Gallery of Ireland in
October 1935, George Furlong (1898-1987) undertook a refurbishment ofthe museum and restoration of the collection. The re-hanging took place later in 1936, when the museum was closed from the end ofSeptember to the end ofNovember.
7 SB notes Bion's response to the final payment which marked closure of SB's therapy with him. "M. " refers to Mother.
8 "Wartenur. . . "(justwait). FromGoethe's"EinGleiches"("AnotherNightSong") (Christopher Middleton, ed. , Johann Wo! /gang von Goethe Selected Poems [Boston: Suhrkamp/Jnsel, 1983] 58-59).
9 FrankBeckettwasrunningBeckettandMedcalf,QuantitySurveyors.
10 Rudmose-Brown had been ill and was recovering at his home, 8 Shanganagh Terrace, on the road from Ballybrack to Killiney.
11 A. ]. Leventhal.
George Atkinson (1880-1941), Headmaster ofthe Metropolitan School ofArt from 1918 to 1936 and Director ofthe National College ofArt from 1936 to 1941, designed the Cenotaph or Celtic Cross Memorial. It was installed on Leinster Lawn in 1923 as a temporary monument; in 1950 the Cenotaph was replaced by a granite obelisk (Frederick O'Dwyer, Lost Dublin [Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1981] 50, 56).
302
12 Geoffrey Thompson was then working at the Maudsley Hospital, London. Andrew Francis Dixon (1868-1936), Professor of Anatomy and Chirurgery and Dean of the Faculty of Physic at Trinity College Dublin, died on 15 January; Geoffrey Thompson had been his student.
13 GeraldineCumminshopedforagoodreviewofhernovelFiresofBeltane(1936) from Robert Lynd (1879-1949), Literary Editor of the News Chronicle and contributor to the New Statesman. McGreevy reviewed it for Time and Tide 17. 37 (12 September 1936) 1260.
Hester Dowden and Thomas Holmes Ravenhill.
14 SeanO'SullivanhadbeeninParistosketchJamesJoyceforaportraitcommis sioned by Joyce's friend Constantine Curran (1880-1975) ijames Joyce to Constantine Curran, 18 September 1935, in Joyce, Letters of]ames]oyce, I, 384). See a drawing from this sitting dated 1935 (NG! , 2027).
Paul Leon.
Fouquet's was Joyce's favorite restaurant, 99 Avenue des Champs-Elysees. "Parait que Lucia est a Londres" (Appears that Lucia is in London). Actually Lucia Joyce was in St. Andrew's Hospital, Northampton, for ten weeks from mid-December 1935 through February 1936 (Shloss, Lucia Joyce, 373-374; Jane Lidderdale and Mary Nicholson, Dear Miss Weaver: Haniet Shaw Weaver 1876-1961 [London: Faber and Faber, 1970] 355-356).
29 January 1935 {for 1936}, McGreevy
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
29/1/35 [for 1936]
Cooldrinagh [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
Thanks for your letter. Galley & page of home counties
1
I went round to JBY last Sat. week, found him all alone & Mrs
invisible with a 'acking corf. He has painted a lot of new small
pictures for exhibition in London in March, I forget where but
2
sound last two straws. Hope they are paying you pro rata.
[. . . ]
notatAlpine,somegalleryinVigoSt. Ithink. Thenewstuff, some of it, is superb. One small picture especially, Morning, almost a skyscape, wide street leading into Sligo looking west as usual, with boy on a horse 30 pounds. If I had ten I would beard him with an easy payments proposition. But I have not.
