No More Learning

Lennox Robinson (ne Esme Stuart Lennox Robinson, 1886-1958), Irish playwright, was appointed by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory to manage the Abbey Theatre in 1909 and was sent to London to gain theatrical experience with George Bernard Shaw; Robinson resigned
14 Samuel Beckett, "In Memoriam: George Reavey," Journal ofBeckett Studies 2 (Summer 1977) [lJ.
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from the Abbey in 1914 following a dispute about his decision to keep the theatre open during the mourning period for King Edward VII. In 1919, Robinson returned to the Abbey, where he was a director-pro­ ducer and served on the theatre's board of directors from 1923 until his death. In 1931 he married the artist and set designer Dorothy Travers Smith, daughter of Hester Dowden. A writer of fiction, biography, autobiography, and essays, Robinson was best known as a playwright. He wrote a history of the Abbey, Ireland's Abbey Theatre (1951), and he organized and traveled with the Abbey on lecture tours throughout the world.
Thomas Brown Rudmose-Brown (popularly known as Ruddy, 1878- 1942) was Professor of Modern Languages at Trinity College Dublin, and taught SB French and Proven�al Literature. Rudmose-Brown studied at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Grenoble and was appointed to TCD in 1909. He had a wide range of scholarly interests, from Pierre de Ronsard and Jean Racine to modern French writers, among them Marcel Proust, Francis Viele-Griffin, Stuart Merrill, Louis Le Cardonnel, Paul Valery, Valery Larbaud, and Charles Peguy. He also knew personally many of the poets of the Proven�al literary renais­ sance. TCD awarded him an honorary D. Litt. in 1931. He edited plays by Corneille and Marivaux, published French Literary Studies (1917), French Short Stories (1925), Contes du moyen age (1926), A Book of French Verse from Hugo to Larbaud (1928), French Town and Country (1928), and a collection of his own poetry, Walled Gardens (1918). Rudmose-Brown nominated SB as Lecteur d'anglais to the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1927; when this appointment was delayed, he arranged for SB's appointment to Campbell College in Belfast (from January 1928). Following two years at the ENS, SB returned to TCD in 1930-1931 as Rudmose-Brown's Assistant in French. Although he later regretted it, SB portrayed Rudmose-Brown as the "Polar Bear" in Dream of Fair to Middling Women. SB said of his mentor: "Much needed light came to me from 'Ruddy', from his teaching and friendship. I think of him often and
always with affection and gratitude. "15
15 Samuel Beckett to Roger Little, 18 May 1983, cited by Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 64. 711
Profiles
Profiles
Frances Beckett Sinclair (known as Fanny and as Cissie, 1880-1951),
artist and musician, was the only sister ofSB's father William Beckett. She studied painting at the Dublin MetropolitanSchool of Art and at the Academie Colarossi in Paris in 1904, along with her good friends Estella Solomons and Beatrice Elvery (later Lady Glenavy). As Fannie Beckett, she exhibited her paintings in the Royal Hibernian Academy (1897, 1901-1908). In 1908, she married William Abraham (Boss)Sinclair, an art and antiques dealer; their home in Baily, Howth, Co. Dublin was a gathering-place for writers and artists. TheSinclairs moved to Kassel, Germany, in the early 1920s, where SB frequently visited them, sharing in their family and artistic life. In his Aunt Cissie, SB found a mature confidante with whom he could share interests in literature, art, and music. CissieSinclair traveled between Dublin and Kassel in 1931-1932, a time when personal difficulties, economic depression, and growing anti-Semitism were making life increasingly difficult in Germany. After the death of their daughter Ruth MargaretSinclair (known as Peggy) in May 1933, the family returned to Dublin in June. SB remained close to the Sinclairs, especially during Boss's illness and death in 1937; when Cissie was confined by rheumatoid arthritis and Parkinson's disease in her later years,SB was particularly attentive and visited her whenever
he was in Ireland.
Morris Sinclair (known as Sunny or Sonny Sinclair, 1918-2007) was
SB's first cousin, the only son of Frances (Cissie) and William (Boss) Sinclair. Despite the twelve-year age difference, the cousins were close. Sinclair and his family moved permanently from Germany to Dublin in
1933. SB helped him prepare for his examinations in Modern Languages (German and French) at Trinity College Dublin. Sinclair was a gifted violinist and studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His father and sister Peggy had died of tuberculosis, so when Sinclair became ill in autumn 1936, it was arranged for him to go to the more favorable climate ofSouth Africa (1937-1938) as a private tutor. He completed his studies at TCD in winter 1940. In 1945,Sinclair received a scholarship to study in Paris; as he hesitated about a thesis subject,SB suggested that he might write on Sartre and the influences of Husserl and Kierkegaard, offering to introduce him to Sartre. From 1948 to 1952, Sinclair worked for UNESCO, first in English translation and editing and then as a writer and producer for radio broadcasts in German. He then moved to Geneva,
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where he worked in the Public Information Office of the World Health Organization (1952-1971), becoming Director of Public Information (1971-1974). He corresponded with SB and often visited him in Paris.
Ruth Margaret Sinclair (known as Peggy, 1911-1933), daughter of Frances (Cissie) and William (Boss) Sinclair, was SB's first cousin. When her family moved to Kassel in the early 1920s, SB often visited. SB and Peggy were attracted to each other when she visited Dublin in mid-summer of 1928. Peggy studied art, music, and movement at the Schule Hellerau-Laxenburg, near Vienna, where SB visited her in September 1928 before beginning his appointment at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, but by early 1929 their intimacy had ended. She figures in several of SB's early poems and many of her qualities are reflected in the character of Smeraldina-Rima in Dream of Fair to Middling Women and "The Smeraldina's Billet-Doux," first pub­ lished in More Pricks Than Kicks. Peggy Sinclair died of tuberculosis in Germany in May 1933.
William Abraham Sinclair (known as Boss, 1882-1937),Jewish, an art and antiques dealer, SB's uncle by marriage to his aunt Frances (Cissie) Sinclair, was an amateur violinist and a member of the Dublin Musical Society; he had been active in the Republican movement. They lived in Howth, Co. Dublin, before their move in the early 1920s to Kassel, Germany, where he dealt in contemporary German art. Sinclair published Painting (1918), contributed art criticism to the Irish Review, lectured on art, and taught English. SB grew close to the Sinclairs during his visits to Kassel, appreciating their warmth, their easy ways, and their encouragement of his writing. In the early 1930s, economic depression and anti-Semitism made life in Germany inhospitable; Sinclair returned to Dublin in the summer of 1933 after the death of his daughter Margaret (Peggy) Sinclair. He died from tuberculosis in 1937. Fulfilling a death-bed promise to Boss, his twin brother Henry Sinclair pursued a lawsuit against Oliver St. John Gogarty, who had libeled them and their grandfather in his book As I Was Going Down Sackville Street; SB gave testimony in the case in November 1937.
Estella Solomons(1882-1968),Irishpainter,wasmarriedtoSeumas O'Sullivan, but used her maiden name professionally. She was a
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Profiles
Profiles
political activist who became involved in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. She studied with William Orpen at the Metropolitan School ofArt in Dublin, and with Walter Osborne at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and in London. Solomons painted portraits of many Irish liter­ ary and artistic figures, including Jack B. Yeats, and showed her work regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy Exhibitions. She was named an Honorary Royal Hibernian Academician. SB attended the opening of Solomons's exhibition (with her cousin Louise Jacobs and friend Mary Duncan) at the Arlington Gallery in 1935. Having studied Art together, Estella Solomons and Frances (Cissie) Sinclair were close friends. Estella Solomons took an interest in SB and his work, and her sister the singer Sophie Jacobs (nee Solomons, 1887-1972) befriended SB in the 1930s in Paris and London. SB occasionally visited the home of Solomons and O'Sullivan, "The Grange," in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
Francis Stuart (ne Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart, 1902-2000),
Australian-born Irish novelist, poet, and dramatist, converted to
Catholicism in 1920, and was married to Iseult MacBride, the daughter
ofMaudGonne. WithA. J. Leventhal,CecilSalkeld,andothers,hebegan
the short-lived literary magazine Tomorrow (1924). SB's letters mention,
among Stuart's prolific early writings, the novels Women and God (1931),
which was dedicated to Thomas McGreevy; The Coloured Dome (1932);
and The Great Squire (1939). In 1939, Stuart gave a series of academic
lectures in Germany, and then taught English and Irish Literature in
Berlin in 1940. From 1942 to January 1944, Stuart read German radio
broadcasts aimed at Ireland. Although Stuart claimed that he wrote to
SB in August 1942, and that SB replied, the letter has not been found.
After World War II, Stuart lived in Germany, France, and England; he
married Gertrude Meissner in 1954, returning to Ireland in 1958. He is
perhaps best known for his book Black List Section H (1971). Although
"men ofdiffering viewpoints," he and SB met occasionally in Paris after
16
Jean Thomas (1900-1983), French educator, entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1920, became Agrege-repetiteur (1926-1932), and Secretaire general of the ENS (1933). He taught French Language and
16 Elbom. Francis Stuart. 8. 714
World War II.
Literature at the Sorbonne (1934-1936), French Literature at the University of Poitiers (1936-1938), and Modem Comparative Literature at the University of Lyon (1938-1944). Thomas published studies of Diderot, Musset, and Sainte-Beuve. He was appointed as Directeur du cabinet du Ministre de ! 'Education Nationale (October 1944) and Chef du service des relations universitaires et artistiques avec l'etranger (1945); having been a member of the French delegation to the constituting conference of UNESCO, he became its Director of Cultural Activities (1947-1954), and then Assistant Director General of UNESCO (1955-1960). In 1932, Thomas wrote a letter of reference for SB, and in his position with UNESCO suggested SB for various translation projects during the 1950s, most notably the English translation of The Mexican Anthology edited by Octavio Paz. Thomas's eminence in French public and international education culminated in his appointment as President de la Commission de laRepublique Frarn;aise pour ! 'education, la science, et la culture (1972-1980).
Arthur Geoffrey Thompson (known to SB as Geoffrey, 1905-1976) was, with his brother Alan, a childhood friend of SB; they studied together at Portora Royal School and Trinity College Dublin. They shared interests in music, literature, and sports, and, while students at TCD, attended the Abbey Theatre together. Thompson qualified in Medicine at TCD in 1928, then studied Biochemistry in London and Paris as a Rockefeller Research Fellow. Returning to Dublin in 1930, he took up the position of Physician at Baggot St. Hospital. Thompson became increasingly interested in mental illness manifested as physical symptoms, and moved to London in 1934 to train in psychoanalysis, a specialty that could not be pursued in Dublin at that time. He was resident Senior House Physician at Bethlem Royal Hospital and later worked at the Maudsley Hospital and St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. When SB came to see Thompson, he would also visit long-term patients who otherwise were seldom visited. Thompson has said that SB was "preoccupied with decrepitude, people who could hardly help themselves. "17 It was Thompson who suggested that SB begin psychotherapy with W. R. Bion in 1934. In 1935, Thompson
Pro. files
17 Geoffrey Thomson interviewed by Andy O'Mahoney, RTE. 1976.
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took a post in the Tavistock Clinic. In November 1935, SB was best man at Thompson's wedding to Ursula Stenhouse.
After war-time service, Thompson practiced privately and at the Tavistock Clinic, qualifying in psychoanalysis in 1949. He worked with the National Health Service and was a member of the Institute of Marital Studies, retiring from the Tavistock Clinic in 1970. In later years, the Thompsons and SB saw each other from time to time in London and in Paris.
Edward William Titus (1870-1952), Polish-born American bibliophile, translator, and publisher, opened his anglophone bookstore, At the Sign of the Black Manikin, in Paris in 1924. Subsidized by his wife Helena Rubinstein, he published twenty-five books under the Black Manikin imprint from 1926 to 1932: ranging from works by Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler to those by British modernist Mary Butts, from Harlem Renaissance poets Claude McKay and Countee Cullen to Anai:s Nin's An Unprofessional Study ofD. H. Lawrence, and also translations of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. In 1929 he became Editor of This Quarter (1925-1932), initiating prizes to attract submissions and encourage young writers. In This Quarter SB published translations from Italian of work by Eugenio Montale, Raffaelo Franchi, Giovanni Comisso (1930), as well as his own story "Dante and the Lobster" (1932), and many of his translations from French for the surrealist number (1932) guest­ edited by Andre Breton. In 1932, SB translated Rimbaud's "Le Bateau ivre" (Drunken Boat), unpublished until 1976, as a commission from Titus.
transition (1927-1938), an international avant-garde literary magazine, was founded by EugeneJolas, MariaJolas, and Elliot Paul to present new European writing to American readers and to create a forum for lin­ guistic experimentation: as Jolas put it, "a laboratory of the word. " Eugene Jolas's ideas about language and literature were expressed most concisely in two manifestos, "The Revolution of the Word" (1929) and "Poetry is Vertical" (1932). Among the writers published by transition were Andre Breton, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, and Dylan Thomas; transition may be best known for serially publishing sections of James Joyce's Work in Progress (1927-1935), a process in which SB was involved. SB's first published
716
writing, his essay "Dante. . . Bruno. Vico. . Joyce," appeared in transition Uune 1929). He also published in transition the short stories "Assumption" and "Sedendo et Quiesciendo [sic]," poems ("For Future Reference," "Malacoda," "Enueg II," "Dortmunder," and "Ooftish"), and a review of Denis Devlin's collection of poetry Intercessions.
AfterWorldWar II, the Jolases transferred the publishing licence of transition to Georges Duthuit, who capitalized its title and changed the focus of the journal (see profile of Transition in Volume II).
Percival Arland Ussher (known as Percy until mid-1937, then as Arland, 1899-1980), essayist, critic, and translator, was born in London and studied at Trinity College Dublin (1917-1919) and St. John's College, Cambridge (1920). He settled on his family's estate in Co. Waterford, where he wrote on the Gaelic language and the way of life of the Deise Gaeltacht. His translation from Irish of Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court (1926) was prefaced byW. B. Yeats. SB visited Ussher at Cappagh, and Ussher often sent him his essays on philosophy, history, politics, and art, especially in the late 1930s and again afterWorldWar II, when he occasionally visited SB in Paris. Acerbic wit and strong opinions mark his writing, which he called "philosophical belles lettres. " He published Postsoipt on Existentialism and Other Essays (1946); The Twilight of Ideas and Other Essays (1948); The Face and Mind ofIreland (1949); a study of Jewish culture and an analysis of anti-Semitism, The Magic People (1949); a study of Shaw, Yeats, and Joyce, Three Great Irishmen (1952); a book on existentialism with reference to Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, Journey Through Dread (1955); Sages and Schoolmen (1967); and Eros and Psyche (1976). His interest in folklore and divination is reflected in his study Twenty Two Keys to the Tarot (1957). Edited selections from Ussher's diary (1943-1977) were published as From a Dead Lantern (1978) and The]oumal ofArland Ussher (1980).
Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957), Irish painter, illustrator, novelist, and playwright, the son of John Butler Yeats and younger brother to the poet William Butler Yeats, was born in London, but spent his boyhood in County Sligo with his maternal grandparents. In 1887, he returned to London where he studied Art and established himself as an illustrator; in 1894 he married Mary Cottenham White (known as Cottie), a fellow-student at the Chiswick Art School. Although he visited Ireland
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frequently, Jack Yeats did not settle there until 1910. In 1912 he pub­ lished a book ofpaintings and drawings, Life in the West ofIreland, and began to work in oils. SB met Yeats through Thomas McGreevy in November 1930; over time, Yeats became a trusted older friend to SB. In the 1930s, SB occasionally attended Yeats's "at-homes" in Fitzwilliam Square, but much preferred to visit the painter in his studio. SB greatly admired Yeats's paintings and saw a correlation between them and his own work. SB owned several ofYeats's works, including the painting A Morning("a setting out without the coming home"), which he bought on what he called the "stuttering system. " Yeats was also an accomplished writer, and in 1936 SB reviewed his novel The Amaranthers in the Dublin Magazine. In 1938, Yeats wrote to Routledge, his own London publisher, on behalfofBeckett's Murphy. At the time ofYeats's 1954 Paris exhibi­ tion, SB wrote "Hommage a Jack B. Yeats" and elicited tributes about Yeats's work from Pierre Schneider and Jacques Putman for Les Lettres Nouvelles (April 1954). SB was deeply disappointed that he was unable to return to Dublin for Yeats's funeral in April 1957.
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