Nothing by the way from Reavey, not a word about the poems & no sign of the
oustanding
copies that are due to me.
Samuel Beckett
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.
303
29 January 1935 lfor 1936}, McGreevy
I let fall hints here that were understood but not implemented. But I have not given up hope of raising it. Do you think he would be amenable to instalments. It's a long time since I saw a picture I wanted so much. I ran into him again yesterday in the library, but he was uneasy & looked ill and wouldn't have a drink. I hope to bring young Sinclair round to see him next Sunday. 3
I was at the Gate to see Berkeley Square, ragged adaptation
ofthe ragged Sense ofthe Past, last Tuesday. Quite well played in
parts by Mace. [for MacL], to whom in the comp[an]y ofMme. &
M. Jammet I was presented earlier in the afternnoon. Ofcourse it
is not a play at all, but a very interesting psychological situation
with all kinds of unuttered obiters that are scarcely developed in
4
Dublin was there, from Longfords & bloodshot blue eyed fourth
estaters to Seumas [for Seamus] McCall & Skeffington mit Frau.
McCall now highly successful journalist, novelist & biographer,
with as many publishers as he has faculties. He has done 25,000
on T. Moore and is commissioned to do a large work on Mitchel,
by what London firm I forget, as [has] he that he owes me best
part of a pound. He is so morally self-righteous, living in "Fort of
the Oak", Dalkey, & at the same time so widely read, that I sent
5
Good coffee & fine. But it didn't go. They are the enemy & one
shouldn't go near them. The commercial attache, M. Lyord (? ),
deaf, bald & obesely wizened, complete with Gaeltacht fiancee,
Miss Larkin ("c'est une Titiane! "), was there, walking up & down
6
the book either as well as I remember. The whole of dirty
him a copy of the Bones.
Last night I went across to the Jammet's in Blackrock.
sopping up oeufs sur le plat with sandwiches ofsaumon fume. TSE has been all over the place, speaking at National to a motion affirmed by Rev. Burke-Savage, S. J. , who savaged what he
304
didn't burke, & then alone next day on Relation of Literatures,
tralalala. Shem "an unconscious tribute to a Catholic education
acquired at a time when few people were educated at all. " The old
fall back on pedagogics. His murder was played by the National
Dramatic. I think he was staying with Curran. 7 I haven't seen
anything more of Devlin, who was reading his poems at [2]RN last
night. He thinks of calling his poems with Reavey Intercessions,
8
cinema from young Montgomery, who is certainly a curious little
card: Pudovkin, Arnheim & back numbers of Close Up with stuff
by Eisenstein. How I would like to go to Moscow and work under
Eisenstein for a year. Then one would be beautifully qualified for
9
It is good of you to be willing to see Bion, but I think the
less that scab is scratched the better. As you say, he has been as
probe as he could, with the probities respectively homologous
11
29January 1935 [for 1936}, McGreevy
whichIthinkisanexcellenttitle. Iborrowedalotofworkson
the execrations on another plane.
Nothing by the way from Reavey, not a word about the poems & no sign of the oustanding copies that are due to me. Nor from Coffey, who promised me Geulincx & Eluard informations. And no reactions here to the poems of any kind whatsoever. 10
to mother & me.
if you will. Of the two coats I sent to myself here before leaving London, identically addressed & declared, one came through without demand, the other with demand for 3/6 which I refused to pay & sent the parcel away from the door, thinking I could go into the offices in town after Xmas & explain about it. When I went in the other day they said they had sent it back to the sender according to the regulations, which means that it ought now to be with Mrs. Frost, though I have no intimation from her. Would you go round & see? If [it] is there you might address it to me marked: old leather coat, bought in Dublin,
305
But there is one thing you might do for me
29 January 1935 {for 1936), McGreevy
personal belongings. It appears the personal is the keyword.
Mother is most anxious that the gardener should enjoy it before
the Spring sets in. Forgive me for bothering you. Ifit is not there
don't bother about it any further. And love to Mrs Frost et
12
he has been complaining about me. It is very hard to get from here. He is so much better now that he is up but will not be lecturingthisterm. EthnaMaccarthyhasgotthejobofdoinghis Provern;:al lectures and I have been helping her out of the Tresor du Felibrige. Aubanel seems the best of them. They have Mistral's Mireio & Memori et Raconte. She is doing medicine in
13
behind by outgoing tenant, Machiavelli's plays including the Mandragora, nice editions ofManzoni and that old bumsucking pedantVarchi (cinquecento) and the Gerusalemme. Also Giusti's poetry. All bought at Florence by Maud Joynt, at the end of last century. She might have been nice to know. 14
I have got all my stuff together in this little room at last, and
shelves up. I wish you could see my four old men over the
mantelpiece, the Chartres Aristotle & Pere Eternel, the
Buonarotti Crepusocolo [for Buonarroti Crepuscolo] & the Tete
du Christ du Calvaire from the Puits de Moi:se at Dijon. If you
15
famille.
I have not been able to get over to see Ruddy again, & I hear
TCD now and the two are too much for her.
Cissie pushed up some Italian books that had been left
I have done next to no work on Murphy, all the sense & impulse seem to have collapsed. There are three, four, chapters to write, only about 12000, but I don't think they will be. Yes, sometime I hope I may get away, perhaps to Bavaria in the early summer. Then it would be too late for Spain. Or better still to Luneburg & Hanover, from Cove to
Hamburg etc. 16 306
can't get a woman . . .
29January 1935 [for 1936}, McGreevy
I met one Fitzgerald, cinematography expert, I think the father of Jelly. He was very nice and showed a little film on a pillow cover. He has a good 16mm. camera & projector and seems to know a lot about the actual tricks of phot[o]graphy. Mais pauvre en genie. And no interest in montage. How should one set about getting into a decent studio, or even a bad one, simply to pick up the trade? Se munir d'un scenario? 17
Mother keeps well, having added a family of measles to
her good works. Yesterday she actually took herself to the pictures.
Frank blooms. Yesterday he walked from Rathfarnham to here
via Glendoo, Featherbed, Glencree, Enniskerry, Scalp, Kilternan,
Carrickmines. Only the best part of 20 miles. T[h]en brought his
18
I wonder did you notice about a months [sic] ago in Irish
Times a short letter from Vera Esposito, soft soaping Smyl[l]ie
for his tolerance of colonial expansion in the case ofJapan and
19
TU: 2 leaves, 3 sides; TCD, MS 10402/87. Dating: TCD, MS 10402/87 includes a T env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15, Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, London S. W. 3. ; pm 8-2-36, Dublin; however, for reasons given below, this envelope is incorrectly linked to 29 January 1935 [for 1936].
Although the letter is typed with a blue ribbon, and the envelope is typed with a black ribbon, it is possible that the ribbon was changed or that two different type writers were used; furthermore, because the envelope differs in quality of paper and in size from others that SB used at this time, it is possible that SB prepared the envelope from a location other than his home. However, internal evidence makes the 8 February 1936 postmark impossible for this letter: SB gives McGreevy instruc tions for sending his coat in this letter, and his letter to McGreevy of6 February [1936], postmarked 7 February 1936 (TCD, MS 10402/88), acknowledges receipt of the coat. The year 1936 is confirmed by the context of the Jetter.
girl to see the Bergner at the Royal in Escape me Never.
making Italy a parallel case.
God love thee & write very soon.
s/ S
1 ItisnotknownwhatMcGreevyhadbeenaskedtodo. 2 JackYeatsreceivedvisitorsonSaturdayafternoons.
307
29 January 1935 [for 1936}, McGreevy
Yeats's exhibition was at the Dunthorne Gallery, 5 Vigo Street, London ("Jack B. Yeats: Recent Paintings," opening 19 March 1936); it included a number of small (9 in. x 14 in. ) paintings that were exhibited for the first time in this show: The Eye ofAffection (Pyle 475, Warren S. Halbourne, Bermuda); Boy and Horse (Pyle 476, private collection); Below the Golden Falls (Pyle 478, private collection); The Falls of Sheen (Pyle 479, Waddington Galleries, London) (Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil
Paintings, I, 431, 433; II, 1098; III, 203, 204).
3 SB refers to Jack Yeats's painting A Morning, now in the National Gallery of Ireland (NG! 4628, Pyle 482) (Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings, I, 436).
Morris Sinclair.
4 Berkeley Square (1931) was revived at the Gate Theatre from Tuesday, 28 January 1936; John Lloyd Balderston (1889-1954) and John Collings Squire (1884-1958) adap ted for the stage the fragment of a novel by Henry James (1843-1916) that was posthumously edited by Percy Lubbock (1879-1965), "The Sense of the Past" (1917). Micheal MacLiamm6ir (ne Alfred Willmore, 1899-1978), actor and founder of the Gate Theatre, played Peter Standish in this production.
Having taken it over from his father, Louis Jammet (1894-1985) was owner of Jammet's Restaurant from 1927 to 1967; his wife was the artist, Yvonne Jammet (nee Auger, 1900-1967).
5 Lord Longford, patron of the Gate Theatre (1931-1936), was Director of The Longford Players from 1936.
Seamus MacCall (1892-1964) had written a biography, Thomas Moore (1935), and was writing another, Irish Mitchel: A Biography (1938); he had also recently published a novel, Gods in Motley (1935). McCall lived at "Dun Daire" (Ir. , Fort Oak), Mount Salus, Dalkey. SB wrote "<anthologist> biographer. "
Owen Sheehy Skeffington (1909-1970) was then Lecturer in French at Trinity College Dublin; his wife was the French-born writer Andree Sheehy Skeffington (nee Denis, 1910-1998). "Mit Frau" (with wife).
6 The home of Louis and Yvonne Jammet was "Clonmore," 8 Queen's Park, Blackrock. Although he assumed the title of commercial attache only in February 1939, Eugene Lestocquoy (1895-? ) had been a French commercial agent in Ireland from 1932; Miss Larkin has not been identified.
"Fine" (old brandy). "Gaeltacht" (Ir. , one of the Gaelic-speaking regions of Ireland). "C'est une Titiane! " (She is a Titian! ). "Oeufs sur le plat" (fried eggs). "Saumon fume" (smoked salmon).
7 T. S. EliotspokeinDublinasaguestoftheUniversityCollegeDublinHistorical, Literary, and Aesthetical Society in the Council Chamber, Ear! sfort Terrace, on 23 January 1936. Reverend Roland Burke-Savage SJ (1913-1998) read an address, "Literature at the Irish Crossroads," to which T. S. Eliot was one of the respondents. Burke-Savage called for an Irish literature that would parallel the revival of the Irish language. He claimed that Anglo-Irish literature "had run the whole gamut of pagan ism" from "romanticism" to "cynicism," "nihilism," "materialism," and "despair," and proposed that a true Irish literature lay in acceptance of the Catholic tradition. In his response, Eliot agreed that the new generation oflrish writers could not simply take its direction from the current mainstream, and he paid tribute to Yeats and
308
29January 1935 {for 1936}, McGreevy
claimed that Joyce was "the most Irish" and "most Catholic writer in English of his generation" ("Literature at the Cross-Roads," The Irish Times 24 January 1936: 8; SB's quotation also comes from this article). Texts of both address and response can be found at Harvard, Houghton Library, T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965 Papers, bMS Am 1791/28-30.
On 24 January, Eliot lectured at University College Dublin on a literary tradition that developed from broad reading and fertilization from older or foreign cultures, rather than one formed merely on the patterns of the previous generation, claiming that "poetry could not flourish in an intellectual vacuum" ("Originality in Poetry: Fertilisation ofLiterature," The Irish Times 25 January 1936: 6). A production of Murder in the Cathedral (1935) was performed by the College Dramatic Society, with Eliot in the audience ("Irishman's Diary," The Irish Times 25 January 1936: 6). It is not known ifEliot stayed with Constantine Curran.
8 Denis Devlin read his poems on Radio Athlone on 29 January 1936 ("A Poet Reads," no. 3, Denis Devlin, The Independent 28 January 1936: 6). Devlin's poems were to be published by Reavey in the Europa Poets series; in a letter to Reavey, Devlin indicated that the title for his collection was Intercessions (18 January 1936, TxU).
9 Niall Montgomery (1914-1987), Dublin poet and architect, son ofFilm Censor James Montgomery (1866-1948). Film Technique (1930, rev. 1933) byVsevolod Pudovkin (1893-1953), Film (1933) by RudolfAmheim (1904-2007), and issues ofClose Up Uuly 1927 - December 1933) in which Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) had published essays about his approach to cinema, including: Eisenstein, W. I. Pudowkin, and G. V. Alexandroff (also Grigory Aleksandrov, 1903-1983), "The Sound Film: A Statement from the U. S. S. R. ," 3 (October 1928) 10-13; Eisenstein, "The New Language ofCinematography," 4 (May 1929) 10-13; "The Fourth Dimension in the Kino," 6 (March 1930) 184-194; "Filmic Art and Training (in an interview with Mark Segal)," 6 (March 1930) 195-197; "The Fourth Dimension in the Kino II," 6 (April 1930) 253-268; "The Dinamic Square," 8 (March 1931) 2-16 and Uune 1931) 91-95; "The Principles of Film Form," 8 (September 1931) 167-181; "Detective Work in the GIK," 9 (December 1932) 287-294; and "Cinematography with Tears! : The Way ofLeaming," 10 (March 1933) 3-17.
10 CopiesofEcho'sBones:see9January1935[for1936],n. 1.
Brian Coffey returned to Paris early in January; he had proposed that SB prepare a monograph on Geulincx. Coffey had SB's copy ofThis Quarter with his translations ofpoems by Eluard (see 9 January 1935, [for 1936], n. 2).
11 ItisnotknownwhyMcGreevyofferedtoseeW. R. Bion.
12 Thecustomsdutyonovercoatswas60percentofvalueunlesspersonallyowned and substantially worn. SB had lodged in London with Mrs. Frost at 34 Gertrude Street. "Et famille" (and family).
13 Although Rudmose-Brown's health was reported as improving, it was announced that his Trinity College Dublin lectures during the term would be given by other members of the staff (The Irish Times 25 January 1936: 6). Ethna Maccarthy was responsible for his lectures on the Provern;al poets; she was a Scholar and Senior Moderator in Modem Languages (1926), although by this time she had begun medical studies at TCD.
309
29 January 1935 [for 1936}, McGreevy
The "Felibrige" was a literary movement for the restoration of the "langue d'oc" (a language of southern France), begun in 1864 by Frederic Mistral (1830-1914), Theodore Aubanel (1829-1886), and Joseph Roumanille (1818-1891). Mistral edited Lou Tresor dbu felibrige ou Dictionnaire proven�al-fran�ais embrassant les divers dialectes de la langue d'oc modeme . . (1878-1886). Readings for the course included Mireio (1859) and Memori et raconte (1901) by Mistral, a Nobel laureate in 1904. SB's notes on Mistral and the Felibrige Poets can be found in TCD MS 10971/4; see Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD, MS 10971/4: Frederic Mistral and the Felibrige Poets," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue, SBT/A 16 (2006) 133-136.
14 CissieSinclairgaveSBbooksleftbehindat85MoyneRoadbytheformertenant Maud Joynt (1869-1940). Joynt, who had a wide knowledge of languages, translated and/or edited from Latin, French, and Gaelic, and was an Editor of the Royal Irish Academy's Irish Dictionary (1939).
La Mandragola (1518), a play by the Italian politician and writer Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). The collected works of Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) run to ten volumes; SB is mostly likely to have acquired I promessi sposi (1827; The Betrothed). It is not known which of the works by Florentine historian and writer Benedetto Varchi (1503-1565) SB received. He refers to Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (1575:Jerusalem Delivered) 6th edn. (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli 1923). It is not known which edition of the works of Italian satirical poet Giuseppe Giusti (1809-1850) SB was given.
15 SB refers to a reproduction of Aristotle, a twelfth-century sculpture on the Royal Portal, Chartres Cathedral (Etienne Houvet, An Illustrated Monograph of Chartres Cathedral [Chartres Cathedral: E. Houvet, 1938] 29). "Pere Eternel" may refer to any of several sculptures of God the Father in Chartres Cathedral. but none is known by this name: God Creating Day and Night (thirteenth century, North Portal), God Creating the Birds (thirteenth century, North Portal), God Creating the Moon and the Sun (n. d. , North Portal), God Creating Adam (thirteenth century, North Portal), God Creating the Earthly Paradise (n. d. , North Portal), or God Beyond Time (twelfth century. Royal Portal) (Houvet, An Illustrated Monograph of Chartres Cathedral, 44-48, 50).
SB refers to Michelangelo's n crepuscolo (Dusk), a sculpted figure on the Tomb of Lorenzo dei Medici in the Medici Chapel. Florence.
Tete du Christ du Calvaire from Puits de Moise (10 miles from Dijon), possibly by Netherlandish artist Claus Sluter (c. 1360-1406), is now in the Musee Archeologique in Dijon (see Cor Engelen, Le Mythe du Mayen Age: premiers elements d'une remise en question du style moyendgeux, tr. Benoit Boelens van Waesberghe [Leuven: C. Engelen, 1999] 214).
"If you can't get a woman . . . "; reference not traced.
16 Cove (now Cobh), Co. Cork; Liineburg, Hanover, Hamburg, in northern Germany.
17 NeitherFitzgeraldnor"Jelly"hasbeenidentified. "Mais pauvre en genie" (But no genius).
"Se munir d'un scenario? " (Equip oneself with a scenario? )
18 Frank Beckett's walk circled from the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham to the southeast in Co. Dublin, into Co. Wicklow, returning north to Foxrock.
310
6 February {1936], McGreevy
German actress Elisabeth Bergner (nee Ettel, 1897-1986) starred in the film Escape Me Never (1935) which opened in Dublin on Sunday, 26 January 1936 at the Theatre Royal.
19 In a letter from Florence dated 2 January 1936, Vera Esposito complimented R. M. Smyllie (ne Robert Maire Smyllie, also known as Bertie, 1894-1954), Editor of The Irish Times from 1934 to 1954, on his article entitled "Japan's Millions" in which he had argued that Japan needed opportunities for expansion, as did Italy (The Irish Times 30 December 1935: 6). She concurred with Smyllie, citing from his conclusion that '"real peace never will come until the world finds some way to recognize such facts, and to provide for them without recourse to violence'" (The Irish Times 7 January 1936: 4).
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
6/2 (36]
Cooldrinagh Foxrock, [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
The coat arrived safely this morning. It was very good of you
to look after it for me so promptly and I hope it did not mean too
1
(. . . ] No news at all lately from Geoffrey. I came across all the
"Surrealism & Madness" texts I translated for Titus and sent
them to him with the Eluard & Breton Essais de Simulation . .
3
handle a camera, the higher trues of the editing bench, & so on,
4
muchofacorvee. Thanksalsoforletter. Newmandidhisbestto be nice about Will Summer, and with only the Rio Grande to set it against he was able to carry it off'. 2
Perhaps these were too much for him.
What I would learn under a person like Pudovkin is how to
of which I know as little as of quantity surveying. The most liberal government imaginable, in effect & disposition, would not make me a bit wiser in that respect. It is interesting that Becky Sharp in colour, which I think had a long run in London,
311
6 February {1936}, McGreevy
was a complete flop here and was taken off at the Savoy after three days & not transferred to any other house. That does not encourage my hope that the industrial film will become so completely naturalistic, in stereoscopic colour & gramo phonic sound, that a back water may be created for the two dimensional silent film that had barely emerged from its rudiments when it was swamped.
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.
303
29 January 1935 lfor 1936}, McGreevy
I let fall hints here that were understood but not implemented. But I have not given up hope of raising it. Do you think he would be amenable to instalments. It's a long time since I saw a picture I wanted so much. I ran into him again yesterday in the library, but he was uneasy & looked ill and wouldn't have a drink. I hope to bring young Sinclair round to see him next Sunday. 3
I was at the Gate to see Berkeley Square, ragged adaptation
ofthe ragged Sense ofthe Past, last Tuesday. Quite well played in
parts by Mace. [for MacL], to whom in the comp[an]y ofMme. &
M. Jammet I was presented earlier in the afternnoon. Ofcourse it
is not a play at all, but a very interesting psychological situation
with all kinds of unuttered obiters that are scarcely developed in
4
Dublin was there, from Longfords & bloodshot blue eyed fourth
estaters to Seumas [for Seamus] McCall & Skeffington mit Frau.
McCall now highly successful journalist, novelist & biographer,
with as many publishers as he has faculties. He has done 25,000
on T. Moore and is commissioned to do a large work on Mitchel,
by what London firm I forget, as [has] he that he owes me best
part of a pound. He is so morally self-righteous, living in "Fort of
the Oak", Dalkey, & at the same time so widely read, that I sent
5
Good coffee & fine. But it didn't go. They are the enemy & one
shouldn't go near them. The commercial attache, M. Lyord (? ),
deaf, bald & obesely wizened, complete with Gaeltacht fiancee,
Miss Larkin ("c'est une Titiane! "), was there, walking up & down
6
the book either as well as I remember. The whole of dirty
him a copy of the Bones.
Last night I went across to the Jammet's in Blackrock.
sopping up oeufs sur le plat with sandwiches ofsaumon fume. TSE has been all over the place, speaking at National to a motion affirmed by Rev. Burke-Savage, S. J. , who savaged what he
304
didn't burke, & then alone next day on Relation of Literatures,
tralalala. Shem "an unconscious tribute to a Catholic education
acquired at a time when few people were educated at all. " The old
fall back on pedagogics. His murder was played by the National
Dramatic. I think he was staying with Curran. 7 I haven't seen
anything more of Devlin, who was reading his poems at [2]RN last
night. He thinks of calling his poems with Reavey Intercessions,
8
cinema from young Montgomery, who is certainly a curious little
card: Pudovkin, Arnheim & back numbers of Close Up with stuff
by Eisenstein. How I would like to go to Moscow and work under
Eisenstein for a year. Then one would be beautifully qualified for
9
It is good of you to be willing to see Bion, but I think the
less that scab is scratched the better. As you say, he has been as
probe as he could, with the probities respectively homologous
11
29January 1935 [for 1936}, McGreevy
whichIthinkisanexcellenttitle. Iborrowedalotofworkson
the execrations on another plane.
Nothing by the way from Reavey, not a word about the poems & no sign of the oustanding copies that are due to me. Nor from Coffey, who promised me Geulincx & Eluard informations. And no reactions here to the poems of any kind whatsoever. 10
to mother & me.
if you will. Of the two coats I sent to myself here before leaving London, identically addressed & declared, one came through without demand, the other with demand for 3/6 which I refused to pay & sent the parcel away from the door, thinking I could go into the offices in town after Xmas & explain about it. When I went in the other day they said they had sent it back to the sender according to the regulations, which means that it ought now to be with Mrs. Frost, though I have no intimation from her. Would you go round & see? If [it] is there you might address it to me marked: old leather coat, bought in Dublin,
305
But there is one thing you might do for me
29 January 1935 {for 1936), McGreevy
personal belongings. It appears the personal is the keyword.
Mother is most anxious that the gardener should enjoy it before
the Spring sets in. Forgive me for bothering you. Ifit is not there
don't bother about it any further. And love to Mrs Frost et
12
he has been complaining about me. It is very hard to get from here. He is so much better now that he is up but will not be lecturingthisterm. EthnaMaccarthyhasgotthejobofdoinghis Provern;:al lectures and I have been helping her out of the Tresor du Felibrige. Aubanel seems the best of them. They have Mistral's Mireio & Memori et Raconte. She is doing medicine in
13
behind by outgoing tenant, Machiavelli's plays including the Mandragora, nice editions ofManzoni and that old bumsucking pedantVarchi (cinquecento) and the Gerusalemme. Also Giusti's poetry. All bought at Florence by Maud Joynt, at the end of last century. She might have been nice to know. 14
I have got all my stuff together in this little room at last, and
shelves up. I wish you could see my four old men over the
mantelpiece, the Chartres Aristotle & Pere Eternel, the
Buonarotti Crepusocolo [for Buonarroti Crepuscolo] & the Tete
du Christ du Calvaire from the Puits de Moi:se at Dijon. If you
15
famille.
I have not been able to get over to see Ruddy again, & I hear
TCD now and the two are too much for her.
Cissie pushed up some Italian books that had been left
I have done next to no work on Murphy, all the sense & impulse seem to have collapsed. There are three, four, chapters to write, only about 12000, but I don't think they will be. Yes, sometime I hope I may get away, perhaps to Bavaria in the early summer. Then it would be too late for Spain. Or better still to Luneburg & Hanover, from Cove to
Hamburg etc. 16 306
can't get a woman . . .
29January 1935 [for 1936}, McGreevy
I met one Fitzgerald, cinematography expert, I think the father of Jelly. He was very nice and showed a little film on a pillow cover. He has a good 16mm. camera & projector and seems to know a lot about the actual tricks of phot[o]graphy. Mais pauvre en genie. And no interest in montage. How should one set about getting into a decent studio, or even a bad one, simply to pick up the trade? Se munir d'un scenario? 17
Mother keeps well, having added a family of measles to
her good works. Yesterday she actually took herself to the pictures.
Frank blooms. Yesterday he walked from Rathfarnham to here
via Glendoo, Featherbed, Glencree, Enniskerry, Scalp, Kilternan,
Carrickmines. Only the best part of 20 miles. T[h]en brought his
18
I wonder did you notice about a months [sic] ago in Irish
Times a short letter from Vera Esposito, soft soaping Smyl[l]ie
for his tolerance of colonial expansion in the case ofJapan and
19
TU: 2 leaves, 3 sides; TCD, MS 10402/87. Dating: TCD, MS 10402/87 includes a T env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15, Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, London S. W. 3. ; pm 8-2-36, Dublin; however, for reasons given below, this envelope is incorrectly linked to 29 January 1935 [for 1936].
Although the letter is typed with a blue ribbon, and the envelope is typed with a black ribbon, it is possible that the ribbon was changed or that two different type writers were used; furthermore, because the envelope differs in quality of paper and in size from others that SB used at this time, it is possible that SB prepared the envelope from a location other than his home. However, internal evidence makes the 8 February 1936 postmark impossible for this letter: SB gives McGreevy instruc tions for sending his coat in this letter, and his letter to McGreevy of6 February [1936], postmarked 7 February 1936 (TCD, MS 10402/88), acknowledges receipt of the coat. The year 1936 is confirmed by the context of the Jetter.
girl to see the Bergner at the Royal in Escape me Never.
making Italy a parallel case.
God love thee & write very soon.
s/ S
1 ItisnotknownwhatMcGreevyhadbeenaskedtodo. 2 JackYeatsreceivedvisitorsonSaturdayafternoons.
307
29 January 1935 [for 1936}, McGreevy
Yeats's exhibition was at the Dunthorne Gallery, 5 Vigo Street, London ("Jack B. Yeats: Recent Paintings," opening 19 March 1936); it included a number of small (9 in. x 14 in. ) paintings that were exhibited for the first time in this show: The Eye ofAffection (Pyle 475, Warren S. Halbourne, Bermuda); Boy and Horse (Pyle 476, private collection); Below the Golden Falls (Pyle 478, private collection); The Falls of Sheen (Pyle 479, Waddington Galleries, London) (Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil
Paintings, I, 431, 433; II, 1098; III, 203, 204).
3 SB refers to Jack Yeats's painting A Morning, now in the National Gallery of Ireland (NG! 4628, Pyle 482) (Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings, I, 436).
Morris Sinclair.
4 Berkeley Square (1931) was revived at the Gate Theatre from Tuesday, 28 January 1936; John Lloyd Balderston (1889-1954) and John Collings Squire (1884-1958) adap ted for the stage the fragment of a novel by Henry James (1843-1916) that was posthumously edited by Percy Lubbock (1879-1965), "The Sense of the Past" (1917). Micheal MacLiamm6ir (ne Alfred Willmore, 1899-1978), actor and founder of the Gate Theatre, played Peter Standish in this production.
Having taken it over from his father, Louis Jammet (1894-1985) was owner of Jammet's Restaurant from 1927 to 1967; his wife was the artist, Yvonne Jammet (nee Auger, 1900-1967).
5 Lord Longford, patron of the Gate Theatre (1931-1936), was Director of The Longford Players from 1936.
Seamus MacCall (1892-1964) had written a biography, Thomas Moore (1935), and was writing another, Irish Mitchel: A Biography (1938); he had also recently published a novel, Gods in Motley (1935). McCall lived at "Dun Daire" (Ir. , Fort Oak), Mount Salus, Dalkey. SB wrote "<anthologist> biographer. "
Owen Sheehy Skeffington (1909-1970) was then Lecturer in French at Trinity College Dublin; his wife was the French-born writer Andree Sheehy Skeffington (nee Denis, 1910-1998). "Mit Frau" (with wife).
6 The home of Louis and Yvonne Jammet was "Clonmore," 8 Queen's Park, Blackrock. Although he assumed the title of commercial attache only in February 1939, Eugene Lestocquoy (1895-? ) had been a French commercial agent in Ireland from 1932; Miss Larkin has not been identified.
"Fine" (old brandy). "Gaeltacht" (Ir. , one of the Gaelic-speaking regions of Ireland). "C'est une Titiane! " (She is a Titian! ). "Oeufs sur le plat" (fried eggs). "Saumon fume" (smoked salmon).
7 T. S. EliotspokeinDublinasaguestoftheUniversityCollegeDublinHistorical, Literary, and Aesthetical Society in the Council Chamber, Ear! sfort Terrace, on 23 January 1936. Reverend Roland Burke-Savage SJ (1913-1998) read an address, "Literature at the Irish Crossroads," to which T. S. Eliot was one of the respondents. Burke-Savage called for an Irish literature that would parallel the revival of the Irish language. He claimed that Anglo-Irish literature "had run the whole gamut of pagan ism" from "romanticism" to "cynicism," "nihilism," "materialism," and "despair," and proposed that a true Irish literature lay in acceptance of the Catholic tradition. In his response, Eliot agreed that the new generation oflrish writers could not simply take its direction from the current mainstream, and he paid tribute to Yeats and
308
29January 1935 {for 1936}, McGreevy
claimed that Joyce was "the most Irish" and "most Catholic writer in English of his generation" ("Literature at the Cross-Roads," The Irish Times 24 January 1936: 8; SB's quotation also comes from this article). Texts of both address and response can be found at Harvard, Houghton Library, T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965 Papers, bMS Am 1791/28-30.
On 24 January, Eliot lectured at University College Dublin on a literary tradition that developed from broad reading and fertilization from older or foreign cultures, rather than one formed merely on the patterns of the previous generation, claiming that "poetry could not flourish in an intellectual vacuum" ("Originality in Poetry: Fertilisation ofLiterature," The Irish Times 25 January 1936: 6). A production of Murder in the Cathedral (1935) was performed by the College Dramatic Society, with Eliot in the audience ("Irishman's Diary," The Irish Times 25 January 1936: 6). It is not known ifEliot stayed with Constantine Curran.
8 Denis Devlin read his poems on Radio Athlone on 29 January 1936 ("A Poet Reads," no. 3, Denis Devlin, The Independent 28 January 1936: 6). Devlin's poems were to be published by Reavey in the Europa Poets series; in a letter to Reavey, Devlin indicated that the title for his collection was Intercessions (18 January 1936, TxU).
9 Niall Montgomery (1914-1987), Dublin poet and architect, son ofFilm Censor James Montgomery (1866-1948). Film Technique (1930, rev. 1933) byVsevolod Pudovkin (1893-1953), Film (1933) by RudolfAmheim (1904-2007), and issues ofClose Up Uuly 1927 - December 1933) in which Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) had published essays about his approach to cinema, including: Eisenstein, W. I. Pudowkin, and G. V. Alexandroff (also Grigory Aleksandrov, 1903-1983), "The Sound Film: A Statement from the U. S. S. R. ," 3 (October 1928) 10-13; Eisenstein, "The New Language ofCinematography," 4 (May 1929) 10-13; "The Fourth Dimension in the Kino," 6 (March 1930) 184-194; "Filmic Art and Training (in an interview with Mark Segal)," 6 (March 1930) 195-197; "The Fourth Dimension in the Kino II," 6 (April 1930) 253-268; "The Dinamic Square," 8 (March 1931) 2-16 and Uune 1931) 91-95; "The Principles of Film Form," 8 (September 1931) 167-181; "Detective Work in the GIK," 9 (December 1932) 287-294; and "Cinematography with Tears! : The Way ofLeaming," 10 (March 1933) 3-17.
10 CopiesofEcho'sBones:see9January1935[for1936],n. 1.
Brian Coffey returned to Paris early in January; he had proposed that SB prepare a monograph on Geulincx. Coffey had SB's copy ofThis Quarter with his translations ofpoems by Eluard (see 9 January 1935, [for 1936], n. 2).
11 ItisnotknownwhyMcGreevyofferedtoseeW. R. Bion.
12 Thecustomsdutyonovercoatswas60percentofvalueunlesspersonallyowned and substantially worn. SB had lodged in London with Mrs. Frost at 34 Gertrude Street. "Et famille" (and family).
13 Although Rudmose-Brown's health was reported as improving, it was announced that his Trinity College Dublin lectures during the term would be given by other members of the staff (The Irish Times 25 January 1936: 6). Ethna Maccarthy was responsible for his lectures on the Provern;al poets; she was a Scholar and Senior Moderator in Modem Languages (1926), although by this time she had begun medical studies at TCD.
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29 January 1935 [for 1936}, McGreevy
The "Felibrige" was a literary movement for the restoration of the "langue d'oc" (a language of southern France), begun in 1864 by Frederic Mistral (1830-1914), Theodore Aubanel (1829-1886), and Joseph Roumanille (1818-1891). Mistral edited Lou Tresor dbu felibrige ou Dictionnaire proven�al-fran�ais embrassant les divers dialectes de la langue d'oc modeme . . (1878-1886). Readings for the course included Mireio (1859) and Memori et raconte (1901) by Mistral, a Nobel laureate in 1904. SB's notes on Mistral and the Felibrige Poets can be found in TCD MS 10971/4; see Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD, MS 10971/4: Frederic Mistral and the Felibrige Poets," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue, SBT/A 16 (2006) 133-136.
14 CissieSinclairgaveSBbooksleftbehindat85MoyneRoadbytheformertenant Maud Joynt (1869-1940). Joynt, who had a wide knowledge of languages, translated and/or edited from Latin, French, and Gaelic, and was an Editor of the Royal Irish Academy's Irish Dictionary (1939).
La Mandragola (1518), a play by the Italian politician and writer Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). The collected works of Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) run to ten volumes; SB is mostly likely to have acquired I promessi sposi (1827; The Betrothed). It is not known which of the works by Florentine historian and writer Benedetto Varchi (1503-1565) SB received. He refers to Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (1575:Jerusalem Delivered) 6th edn. (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli 1923). It is not known which edition of the works of Italian satirical poet Giuseppe Giusti (1809-1850) SB was given.
15 SB refers to a reproduction of Aristotle, a twelfth-century sculpture on the Royal Portal, Chartres Cathedral (Etienne Houvet, An Illustrated Monograph of Chartres Cathedral [Chartres Cathedral: E. Houvet, 1938] 29). "Pere Eternel" may refer to any of several sculptures of God the Father in Chartres Cathedral. but none is known by this name: God Creating Day and Night (thirteenth century, North Portal), God Creating the Birds (thirteenth century, North Portal), God Creating the Moon and the Sun (n. d. , North Portal), God Creating Adam (thirteenth century, North Portal), God Creating the Earthly Paradise (n. d. , North Portal), or God Beyond Time (twelfth century. Royal Portal) (Houvet, An Illustrated Monograph of Chartres Cathedral, 44-48, 50).
SB refers to Michelangelo's n crepuscolo (Dusk), a sculpted figure on the Tomb of Lorenzo dei Medici in the Medici Chapel. Florence.
Tete du Christ du Calvaire from Puits de Moise (10 miles from Dijon), possibly by Netherlandish artist Claus Sluter (c. 1360-1406), is now in the Musee Archeologique in Dijon (see Cor Engelen, Le Mythe du Mayen Age: premiers elements d'une remise en question du style moyendgeux, tr. Benoit Boelens van Waesberghe [Leuven: C. Engelen, 1999] 214).
"If you can't get a woman . . . "; reference not traced.
16 Cove (now Cobh), Co. Cork; Liineburg, Hanover, Hamburg, in northern Germany.
17 NeitherFitzgeraldnor"Jelly"hasbeenidentified. "Mais pauvre en genie" (But no genius).
"Se munir d'un scenario? " (Equip oneself with a scenario? )
18 Frank Beckett's walk circled from the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham to the southeast in Co. Dublin, into Co. Wicklow, returning north to Foxrock.
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6 February {1936], McGreevy
German actress Elisabeth Bergner (nee Ettel, 1897-1986) starred in the film Escape Me Never (1935) which opened in Dublin on Sunday, 26 January 1936 at the Theatre Royal.
19 In a letter from Florence dated 2 January 1936, Vera Esposito complimented R. M. Smyllie (ne Robert Maire Smyllie, also known as Bertie, 1894-1954), Editor of The Irish Times from 1934 to 1954, on his article entitled "Japan's Millions" in which he had argued that Japan needed opportunities for expansion, as did Italy (The Irish Times 30 December 1935: 6). She concurred with Smyllie, citing from his conclusion that '"real peace never will come until the world finds some way to recognize such facts, and to provide for them without recourse to violence'" (The Irish Times 7 January 1936: 4).
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
6/2 (36]
Cooldrinagh Foxrock, [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
The coat arrived safely this morning. It was very good of you
to look after it for me so promptly and I hope it did not mean too
1
(. . . ] No news at all lately from Geoffrey. I came across all the
"Surrealism & Madness" texts I translated for Titus and sent
them to him with the Eluard & Breton Essais de Simulation . .
3
handle a camera, the higher trues of the editing bench, & so on,
4
muchofacorvee. Thanksalsoforletter. Newmandidhisbestto be nice about Will Summer, and with only the Rio Grande to set it against he was able to carry it off'. 2
Perhaps these were too much for him.
What I would learn under a person like Pudovkin is how to
of which I know as little as of quantity surveying. The most liberal government imaginable, in effect & disposition, would not make me a bit wiser in that respect. It is interesting that Becky Sharp in colour, which I think had a long run in London,
311
6 February {1936}, McGreevy
was a complete flop here and was taken off at the Savoy after three days & not transferred to any other house. That does not encourage my hope that the industrial film will become so completely naturalistic, in stereoscopic colour & gramo phonic sound, that a back water may be created for the two dimensional silent film that had barely emerged from its rudiments when it was swamped.
