The Klassische
Walpurgisnacht
was too much for me & I
Acts 3 & 5.
Acts 3 & 5.
Samuel Beckett
4 [October-December 1936] 66-73).
In this essay he reprinted with admiration SB's translation of Eluard's poem, "Lady Love" (Eluard, Thorns ofThunder, 1; rpt.
72).
No letter to or from George Reavey regarding a reconciliation has been found.
"Malacoda," "Enueg 2," and "Dortmunder" were reprinted from Echo's Bones in transition 24 Uune 1936) 8-10.
14 The Thompsons moved to 71 Harley Street in 1936, where Geoffrey had a consulting room on the ground floor. Ursula Thompson had been ill with chickenpox.
15 EdwardandFlorenceRoe.
16 CharlesPrentice.
17 "SchoneGrtisse"(warmgreetings). HesterDowden.
364
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
Dear Tom
Heard from Frere-Reeves yesterday, a curt rejection. "On
commercial grounds we could not justify it in our list. " And of course what other grounds of justification could there be. I think
1
I have not seen the transition in which my poems appeared, nor heard what poems they used, nor received the payment
2
Sunday. I brought him back here for lunch, showed him the Yeats picture & lent him some Minotaures.
Geoffrey's mother died suddenly last Monday and he is over for the funeral. I have not seen him yet but shall do so to-day. His
4
the fuchsia picture again & liked it much better than the first time. He has an excellent new small picture also, shelling peas (green) in Moore St. It was one of my instantive afternoons and one can't peer in 18 without all kinds of perturbations to make sure the coast is clear. He inquired was there anything wrong with me, and advised 5 miles walking daily, whether it was
365
7 August 1936, McGreevy
Cooldrinagh. Foxrock.
Co. Dublin.
nowofdumpingtheworkonReavey. Ineithertrusthimnor like him, but know no other agent. Truck direct with publishers is one of the few avoidable degradations.
guaranteed by Mme. Jolas.
Seumas O'Sullivan has accepted the poem for Dublin Mag. I had a pleasant bathe & conversation with Brian last
3
brother Alan is also ill, I think rather seriously.
I was with Jack Yeats Saturday afternoon. I saw the man in
7 August 1936, McGreevy
mental or physical. I thought, the ice is breaking at last. He was very pleased with Read's very favourable review in the Spectator of Amaranthers, and even though it was Read, so was 1. 5
[. . . ]
Read Cecil's life of Cowper, The Stricken Deer. Very bad. But what a life! 6 It depressed & terrified me. How did he ever manage to write such bad poetry?
Am stuck in Hughes's High Wind in Jamaica, A. A. Milne &
7
surprising amount of irrelevance for the work of a lifetime. In
8
I hope you saw W. B. 's advise [for advice] to young Indian
9
apparently not relishing the prospect of another long spell in
what he now calls the "Turmoil". When he heard Heinemann
had turned down the book he said, "Why can't you write the way
people want", when I replied that I could only write the one way,
i. e. as best I could (not the right answer, by the way, not at all the
right answer), he said it was a good thing for him he did not feel
obliged to implement such a spirit in 6 Clare St. Even mother
begins to look askance at me. My departure from here is long
overdue. But complicated by my owing them £10 apiece. The
10
copper in the face from correcting Moore proofs. He was crying
366
Rum.
Am half way through Faust Part I. There seems to be a
Auerbach's Cellar & the Witches' Kitchen for example. But perhaps it justifies itself later. I think he was the kind that couldn't bear to shorten anything.
poets quoted in the Irishman's Diary.
Frank came back from his 10 days in Donegal last Tuesday,
Yeats picture is paid off at last.
How is your own work going and how are you yourself?
I hope Dilly's sales keep good. I saw Joe Hone one day,
7 August 1936, McGreevy out for a book to translate in the long winter evenings. I sug
11
good old men go surrealiste. Haven't observed it myself. Tuohy
apparently said also when asked by Sean O'Sullivan why he
did not promote his income with contributions to Punch, that
only old men had a sense of humour. Sean looks forward to
getting a teaching job in the reorganized School of Art, at £6
a week, that will relieve him from the necessity of painting
12
Love ever Sam
"Schone Grosse" to Hester13
ALS; 2 leaves, 8 sides; letterhead; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens,
LONDON SW 3; pm illeg, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/104.
1 SBhadsentMurphytoFrere-Reeves(see7July1936,n. 6).
SB sent Murphy to George Reavey's European Literary Bureau, asking him to act as agent; he wrote to McGreevy: "As you say, they are all the same, & with Reavey I will be spared the labour & embarrassment of introducing myself. I had also thought of Wishart & suggested it to Reavey. They have rejected work of mine before" (Wednesday [19 August 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/105).
2 SB was aware that his three poems from Echo's Bones had been published in transition in June (26 July 1936, n. 13; the request for these poems: 7 July 1936). Maria Jolas served as Managing Editor of transition.
3 "Cascando,"DublinMagazine,3-4.
4 BrianCoffey. MorningbyJackB. Yeats.
Presumably SB lent Coffey some issues ofMinotaure, a lavishly illustrated art journal published in Paris from June 1933 to May 1939.
Geoffrey and Alan Thompson's mother, Lillian Thompson (nee Bourne).
5 JackYeatslivedat18FitzwilliamSquare.
SB describes In Tir na n6g: 17 July 1936, n. 8. Shelling Green Peas, Moore Street (Allied Irish Bank Collection, Dublin, Pyle 461) (Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 420; III, 199).
Herbert Read compares Yeats to Joyce, Soupault, and Sterne, writing "The book is a magnificent satire, an irrational and hilarious farce written with the greatest verve and wit" ("A Surrealist Novel," The Spectator 31 July 1936: 211).
367
gested Breton's Nadja.
Leventhal says Faust Part 2 is very surrealiste & that all
at all.
Write very soon.
7 August 1936, McGreevy
6 Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer; or, The Life of Cowper (1930). English poet William Cowper (1731-1800) suffered from periods of melancholia, and attempted suicide several times.
7 RichardHughes,HighWindinJamaica:TheInnocentVoyage(1929). AlanAlexander Milne (1882-1566).
8 For SB's notes on Goethe's Faust, in an edition by Robert Petsch (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, [19251), see BIF, UoR, MS 5004 and MS 5005; for a descrip tion, see Dirk van Hulle, "Samuel Beckett's Faust Notes," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 283-297. SB elaborated on his reading in his next Jetter to McGreevy:
I have been working at German & reading Faust. Finished Part I last night. It leaves me with an impression of something very fragmentary, often irrele vant & too concrete, that perhaps Part 2 will correct. Auerbach's Cellar, the Witches Kitchen & Walpurgisnacht, for example, - little more than sites & atmospheres, swamping the corresponding mental conditions. All the on & up is so tiresome also, the determined optimism a la Beethoven, the unconscion able time a-coming. The vinegar & nitre of Kant & Heraclitus. It takes a German to apotheose the busybody. I can understand the "keep on keeping on" as a social prophylactic, but not at all as a light in the autological darkness, or the theological. And the "pure doing" affects me like the "cordial fornica tion" of DHL, the "Sentimentique" of a fidgeter, fit for the D. -J. Reddins. (SB to McGreevy, Wednesday [19 August 1936], TCD, MS 10402/105)
"Vinegar & nitre" refers to Proverbs 25:20: "As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singethsongs to an heavy heart," In this context, SB suggests opposition between German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Heraclitus.
SB refers to D. H. Lawrence: he mentions reading D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record by E. T. Uessie Chambers] (1935), "his mining district, on & off fiancee" (SB to McGreevy, Wednesday [19 August 1936], TCD, MS 10402/105).
"Sentimentique" (a French portmanteau word, combining the ideas of "sentimen tal" and "romantic": sentimantic).
D[istrict]-J[ustice] Kenneth Sheils Reddin (1895-1967), from 1922 to 1957 and from 1958 to 1964 Principal Justice, and his wife; he was a playwright, having had two productions at the Abbey Theatre in 1924, The Passing and Old Mag.
For SB's further notes on Goethe's Faust, BIF, UoR, MS 5004/33, see Dirk van Hulle, "Samuel Beckett's Faust Notes," 295; Nixon, "'Scraps of German,"' Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 272. SB's German-language study notes can be found in BIF, UoR, MS 5002 and MS 5003; the cover of the first notebook is dated 13/7/36.
9 AmessagefromW. B. YeatstoyoungIndianpoets:"Writeinyourmothertongues. Choose that smaller audience. You cannot have style and vigour in English . . . When you write, speak, think in English, you are a musical instrument without a sounding board" (The Madras Chronicle 17 June 1936: n. p. ; rpt. "The Irishman's Diary: Yeats and India," The Irish Times 6 August 1936: 6).
10 FrankBeckettisreferringtoBeckettandMedcalf,6ClareSt. Jack B. Yeats's Morning.
11 GeraldineCummins'snovel,FiresofBe! tane;see27June1936,n. 11. Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore (1936). Andre Breton, Nadja (1928).
368
19 September 1936, McGreevy
12 A. J. Leventhal. The classical witches' sabbath is in part II of Faust.
Irish artist Patrick Tuohy (1894-1930).
The Dublin Metropolitan School of Art was reorganized by the National Board of
Education as the National College of Art in September 1936, and invited applications for professorships at £500 per year Uohn Dowling, "The National College of Art," Ireland To-Day 1. 4 [September 1936] 54-55).
13 "Schone Grosse" (warm greetings). Hester Dowden THOMAS McGREEVY
LONDON
19/9/36 Foxrock
Dear Tom
No I have heard nothing ofthe Exagmination. I have no copy,
but think it was published by SylviA. No doubt we are being roule,
but I am too tired to do anything about it. When I think of that
10 year stale push, I would willingly withhold it & forgo the 1%,
1
if any. And ifl protested it would have to be in that sense.
I have booked passage in the Washington sailing from Cove 29th inst. , calling at Le Havre and reaching Hamburg Oct. 1sr_ Frank may have to go to Waterford about a job, in which case I would drive that far with him. Otherwise I shall go down by train next Monday week. The prospect of getting away is a great relief. My plans are none. Simply to get to Germany, & then selon le vent. 2 I hope to be away a loong, loong time. I was promising myself return by Holland, but by all accounts things there are
frightfully expensive, so I don't expect it will come off.
Frank has had an awful month with neuritis in his shoulder & it is only now that it begins slowly to improve. At the same time he is up to his eyes in the office, working till 8 every evening, with the feeling all the time in the not so remote background that he is strangling his life. But who does not.
369
19 September 1936, McGreevy
Only a question of the hold employed. I think it is perhaps a little easier for him when I am not here, though I think also he misses me.
[. . . ]
I think I told you about S. O'S. 's request for an inch off the poem. Circumcised accordingly, it now begins with the abortion dilemma. 3
I don't know exactly what Mrs Howe said to Dev. I know she
4
Rose. The first two are exquisite. The third less so. The refusal of
the rose to crumble, its embalming of itself instead, compelled
him to take it off the mantelpiece & on to a table with the room
all round. So that 3 is less of a flower than of an interior. I had
5
feel no inclination to go on, though I am told it improves in
6
(Hone's collaborator in Berkeley & Swift books). Lady Gregory
he apostrophises at length with opulent curves as coextensive
with the "spirit" of Ireland. Glendalough is a "luogo dolce".
Walter Starkie is the finest product of Trinity humanism
"homo singolarment vivace ed umano . . " [for "uomo singolar
mente vivace, umano"] & Gogarty is the all round man of the
Quattrocento. And a chapter is entitled: "Serenita Protestante. "
In fact the work of a professor. He wrote a "Saggio sul rimorso"
7
mentioned absurdity of not having reproductions available.
I saw J. B. last Saturday. He had extended his rose picture 2 stages further 1. Tyranny of the Rose. 2. Rose dying. 3. Dusty
him alone, Cotty spared us.
The Klassische Walpurgisnacht was too much for me & I
Acts 3 & 5. I have just read Viaggio in Irlanda by Mario Rossi
full of false teeth, as soft as the old man's mentula.
I do not know if Brian is back. I want to see him before I leave. He lent me Brunchwiffs Spinoza et ses Contemporains, the Ethica in the Classiques Garnier with Latin en regard, of
370
19 September 1936, McGreevy
which I have had time only for enough to give me a glimpse of
Spinoza as a solution & a salvation (impossible in English trans
lation), and Maritain's nauseating Docteur Angelique, which I
soon lay down. Feeling what a pity the tetragonal Peripatetic did
8
treatment.
Reavey still in Belfast, whence he sent a first chapter of a
translation of yet another Berdaiev [for Berdyaev] for the kind ness of suggestions. He promises to let me know about Murphy next week. Nothing from New York. 10
Now I have to go to Cabinteely Barracks & fill up application
11
1 SB refers to the reprint edition of Sylvia Beach, ed. , Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (London: Faber and Faber, 1936).
"Roule" (done, cheated), with reference to royalties for their essays.
SB probably refers to publication and promotion of Joyce's Work in Progress, which had been published in sections, the first fragment appearing as "From Work in Progress," Transatlantic Review 1. 4 (April 1924) 215-223.
2 SBleftfromCove(nowCobh).
SB had written to McGreevy on Wednesday [19 August 1936]: "I still live in hopes of getting away in September, but shall probably go direct from Cove to Hamburg. And perhaps this time next month I'll be on the Brocken" (TCD, MS 10402/105). The Brocken, also called Blocksberg, is the highest mountain in the Harz region of north ern Germany, and the site of rites enacted on Walpurgis Night (30 April), the setting for Walpurgisnacht in Goethe's Faust.
On 9 September [1936], SB had written to McGreevy: "! fl had the price of it I'd fly to Amsterdam" (TCD, MS 10402/107).
"Selon le vent" (as the wind takes me).
3 SB cut the first two lines of his poem "Cascando," for publication in Dublin Magazine; he wrote to McGreevy: "Seumas O'S. sent another proof with request to make one line of two somewhere, anywhere, in the interests of his pagination"
371
not fall for the whore proposed by his brother.
A letter from Charles. Still lingering on in London, having
9
for a new passport. I am wondering will it be put through in time. Love ever. If I don't hear before I leave, write Postlagernd,
12
ALS; 3 leaves, 3 sides; TCD, MS 10402/108.
Hauptpostamt, Hamburg. Sam
19 September 1936, McGreevy
(9 September [1936], TCD, MS 10402/107). In the same letter SB mentioned that O'Sullivan had proposed "that I should take over the editorship ofthe D. M. , he paying for the printing for 3 years. This entre nous. What I said at length was: Merci. "
"Entre nous" (between ourselves). "Merci. " (Thank you, no. )
4 In his letter of 9 September [1936], SB reported that "Mary Manning Howe interviewed DEV on eve of her departure. I told her to tackle him on the Gallery. She did & he promised to see about it" (TCD, MS 10402/107). Mary Manning Howe had spent the summer in Dublin, and, within her role as a freelance writer, arranged to interview Eamon De Valera, then Taoiseach of the Irish Free State. It was during this time that she later claimed to have had an affair with SB (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 215).
5 JackYeats"alwayspaintedwitharosepinnedtohiseasel,orplacedonthetable beside him" (Hilary Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Biography [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970] 133). The first painting, a "close up of a red rose," here called "Tyranny of the Rose," now is known as A Rose (private collection, Pyle, 484).
Yeats's series of paintings "showing a cut rose at various stages of its blooming until it finally withers" includes The Rose Dying (private collection, Pyle 486) and A Dusty Rose (private collection, Pyle 485) (Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 438-442: III, 207, 294).
Cottie Yeats.
6 The"KlassischeWalpurgisnacht"(ClassicalWalpurgisNight)isthefirstsceneof
Faust II, Act 2.
7 M[ario]M. Rossi'sViaggioinIrlanda(Milan:DoxaEditrice,1932)wastranslatedby Joseph Hone in a much abridged version, Pilgrimage in the West (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1933); Rossi, a Professor of Italian at the University of Edinburgh, collaborated with
Hone on two other books (see 5 January 1933, n. 6).
In Viaggio in Irlanda, Rossi addresses a four-page apostrophe to Lady Gregory:
"Sara necessario, Lady Gregory, che qui parli di Voi? Non ho parlato di Voi finche ho parlato dell'Irlanda - e dovunque ho scritto ii nome sacro della poesia? " ("Is it necessary, Lady Gregory, that I should speak of you here? Have I not spoken of you since I spoke of Ireland - and wherever I have written the sacred name of poetry? " (Viaggio, 182-185; Pilgrimage, 46-50). Lady Gregory died on 22 May 1931, the same day that Rossi sent his book to his Italian publisher: "the book which she had encouraged me to write - this book written for her" (Pilgrimage, 3).
Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, the site of seven churches founded by St. Kevin, is called "Un luogo dolce, disteso" ("a gentle open place") (Viaggio, 54; Pilgrimage, 26).
Walter Starkie is described by Rossi as "uomo singolarrnente vivace, umano" (a man of exceptional liveliness and humanity) (Viaggio, 125; excluded from Pilgrimage).
Rossi enumerates Gogarty's roles as "chirurgo, 'causeur', uomo politico, aviatore, poeta" ("surgeon, conversationalist, politician, airman, poet"). He claims that Gogarty "ricorda i grandi italiani de! '400" ("recalls the great Italians of the Quattrocento") (Viaggio, 177; Pilgrimage, 43-44).
Chapter 24 is called "Serenita Protestante" (Protestant Serenity) (Viaggio, 126-128; excluded from Pilgrimage).
Mario Rossi's Saggio sul rimorso (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1933) is a study of ethics and emotions.
372
8 Brian Coffey had been in Kerry with his father.
Spinoza et ses contemporains (1923) by French philosopher Leon Brunschvicg
(1869-1944), who studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure and taught at the Sorbonne. SB's spelling of Brunschvicg's name presumably reflects a private joke
with McGreevy.
Benedictus deSpinoza, Ethique, demontree suivant l'ordre geometrique et divisee en cinq
parties, Texte latin soigneusement revu, tr. Ch[arles] Appuhn, Classiques Gamier ( Paris: Gamier fo�res,1908; rpt. 1934 ). "Latin en regard" La( tin on facing page).
Jacques Maritain's Docteur Angelique (1930) is based on the life of Thomas Aquinas, whose brother Raynald tempted him with a prostitute to persuade him to break his vows to the church; but Thomas drove the girl from his room with a log from the fire, burning the sign of the cross on his door with the ember.
Maritain argued that theology should be peripatetic, moving out among the world and among other disciplines, following the example of Aquinas. "Tetragonal peripa tetic" refers to Aquinas's "peripatetic axiom. "
9 Charles Prentice.
10 George Reavey's family home was in Belfast. Having translated Smysl Istorii 1( 923;
The Meaning ofHistory,1936 ) by Nikolai Berdyaev, Reavey was preparing a translation of Ya i Mir Ob'ektov (1934 ; Solitude and Society,1938).
Murphy was being read by the London publisher, Stanley Nott (1887-19 78), co-publisher with Europa Press of Eluard, Thorns of Thunder; Reavey had said he "would have Knott's [for Nott's] verdict by the middle of the month" S( B to McGreevy,9 September 1[ 936], TCD, MS10402/10 7). SB had also sent a typescript of Murphy to Simon and Schuster, New York.
11 The Dublin Passport Office was at16 Upper Merrion Street, but paperwork and validation of identification were carried out at the Cabinteely Barracks Garda Station, on the Old Bray Road, Dublin18, and forwarded to the Passport Office.
12 "Postlagemd,Hauptpostamt" ( General delivery, Main Post Office).
THOMAS McGREEVY TOPPES FIE LD, ESSEX
30/9/36 Le Havre
Here for the day. On to Hamburg this evening. Wish I could
stay where I am. The place is charming & the people . . . French.
There's an old Peter Brueghel at the end of the street, but it
30 September 1936, McGreevy
won't see me. Love.
1
Sam
373
30 September 1936, McGreevy
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; "LeHavre. Bassin du Commerce et Place Gambetta"; to Thomas
McGreevyEsq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3, Angleterre. forwarded, AH, to The Block Hse, Toppesfield,Essx; pm 30-9-36, LeHavre, 1-10-36, Chelsea; T CD, MS 10402/109.
1 ThenamesofthetwogenerationsofthisfamilyofFlemishpaintersareusually spelled differently: the elder Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-1569) had two sons, Pieter Brueghel the younger and Jan Brueghel.
At the far end of the Rue de Paris from the Quai was the Musee des Beaux-Arts; it was destroyed in World War II. In the new Musee Malraux there are two paintings now ascribed to Pieter Brueghel the younger: Consultation at the Procurer's (77. 24) and Interior of a Peasant Kitchen (77. 14), but there is no record of one by the elder Pieter Bruegel.
THOMAS McGREEVY TOPPESFIELD, ESSEX
9/10/36 bei Hoppe Schliiterstrasse 44
Hamburg 13
Dear Tom
I collected your card all right at the Poste Restante. The
above, which I have tried to write clearly, is my address now & will be I expect for a fortnight at least. On n'est pas mal, au sein du chauffage central. 11 fait un froid a faire sauter les couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi. What in the world are you doing among the thatches. Was it then another journey from, like so many? I can't believe you'd go to Tappesfield [for Toppesfield] of your own free will. 1
I got here last Friday, 24 hours late. The town is superb, nothing older than middle 19th century. One exquisite green steeple (truly a guglia), that of the Petrikirche. And the Alster pieces d'eau are masterpieces. 2 I got a lovely vision ofT. C. D. & its terra infirma reclaimed from the land, the Liffey lying calm over Nassau Street, as no doubt once it did, washing the fringes ofLeinster Lawn, Lecky & the Kook ofBells submerged, & Frank
374
9 October 1936, McGreevy going to his lunch in a canoe. 3 That would be the only town
planning- away with the town! Manning Robertson would agree
4
right at the end of Altona's most charming promenade, under the inevitable snivelling lime, in the grip of ivy. "He who then liveth & believeth in me shall never perish. " Then I had a Bauernfriihsti. ick in the Hauptbahnhof. 5
The Gallery here was something of a disappointment, but
may improve. The building is magnificent and the pictures
admirably presented (one line hanging against matt white
throughout), but there is an appalling quantity of rubbish,
worse than unimportant locals. Meisters BERTRAM & FRANKE
6
Goyens, a Van Uden -Teniers not as good as the one in Dublin,
a so called Brouwer landscape that might conceivably be a pot
boiler, a couple of Everdingens and a characteristic landscape of
that German-Roman that you don't like & whose name I can
never remember. 7 Then roomfuls of Tischbein, Menzel & God
knows who else. There is a lovely Degas Portrait de Femme,
I am sure.
I found Klopstock, buried with his cockpecked wife & son,
don't say much to me either. There are a lot of lovely Van
another hardly up to standard by Lautrec, and a sentimental
Picasso Femme a l'Absinthe. 8 The modern Germans are more
interesting, Leibl, Corinth, Nolde etc. There is a lot of Munch
also, & I found an excellent portrait of a woman by one Jaeckel,
of whom I know nothing. He has nothing else in the Gallery.
Marc's Mandrill is amusing, but I think not so good as the
9
struggled into the language I don't think I'll be sorry to go. I begin to think that Germany's charm is perhaps after all mainly for me a matter of associations. I feel sad enough & often enough
375
Boccioni that Boss Sinclair had in Kassel.
It is nice to be away, but when I have seen the pictures &
9 October 1936, McGreevy
for that to be so. Now that Holland & France have come off the truce, I hope to return that way. 10 Holland in the early spring & Paris in the late, if Europe has not been obliterated before then.
Simon & Schuster turned down Murphy, with the usual kind
11
words, brilliance, 5 % appeal & ruisselant avenir.
Houghton &
Mifflin now have it. Nott has not yet made up his mind. Perhaps
he must get in touch with Mme. Beeton before he can reach a
12
To judge by quantity of spare space that follows it, the circum
cision was uncalled for. I see in the same number a harmless
paragraph on Dilly's book from the com[p]te-gouttes of Norah
13
but hoping soon to 'Take his leave' (! ! ) Richard mit vache is back
14
felt like a desertion. He was tearfully & continuously depressed for weeks before I left. Overwork, neuritis, sex worries, home gloom, etc.
God love thee & write incontinent. I don't seem to have had a proper letter from you for ages.
Ever Sam
Elsheimer is the man.
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/110.
1 "Onn'estpasma! ,auseinduchauffagecentral. IIfaitunfroidafairesauter! es couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi" (Comfortable enough, with the central heating all round one. It is brass monkey weather. The bread is black, so is the horizon). For further description, see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 217.
376
decision.
My truncated poem is in this number [of] Dublin Magazine.
Hoult.
A letter from the physical jerking Charles, still in London,
"big, red & jovial".
Frank drove me to Waterford. Very sad parting from him. It
9 October 1936, McGreevy McGreevy had the loan of a cottage (Black House) in the tiny village ofToppesfield,
Essex Uack B. Yeats to McGreevy, 30 November 1936,TCD, MS 8105/138).
2 SB arrived in Hamburg on 2 October. For images and detailed information about his stay in Hamburg, consult the website by Roswitha Quadflieg, Fritz-Renzo Heinze, and Clements-Tobias Lange: "Beckett in Hamburg 1936," 11 November 2007, www. beckett-in-hamburg-1936. de/.
Nearly a quarter of Hamburg was destroyed by fire in May 1842, which necessitated massive rebuilding in the mid 19th century. The tower of St. Peter's Church had burned at this time and was reconstructed in Gothic style with a 436-foot tower. "Guglia" (obelisk, hence spire).
The inner and outer Alster lakes are formed by locks on the Alster river; these sheets of water are bounded by tree-lined streets and promenades. "Pieces d'eau" (ponds).
3 SBimaginestheRiverLiffeyoverspreadingitsbankstocoverthelandoccupied by Trinity College Dublin and Nassau Street, with the water lapping the edges of the lawn that extends from Leinster House (the Parliament Building oflreland) to Merrion Square.
The statue of historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903) is on the library green ofTCD. In his wordplay, SB alludes to the Book ofKells, the illuminated manu script of the Gospels, created in Ireland c. AD 800, kept in the TCD Library. Frank Beckett's office was at 6 Clare Street, an extension of Nassau and Leinster Streets.
4 Irish urban planner Manning Robertson (1888-1945) wrote Dun Laoghaire: The History, Scenery and Development of the District (1936) in which he advocated preservation of open spaces.
5 German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) was buried in the Christiankirche cemetery, at the end of the Palmaille in Ottensen, in the Altona section of Hamburg. Also buried there is his first wife Margareta Miiller (Meta, 1728-1758), their stillborn son, his second wife Joanna Elisabeth Dimpfel von Winthem (1747-1821), and his brother Victor Ludwig Klopstock (1744-1811); the verse, John 11:26, is SB's trans lation (Samuel Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an: Das Hamburg-Kapitel aus den "German Diaries" 2. 0ktober-4. Dezember 1936, transcribed by Erika Tophoven ISchenefeld: Raamin-Press, 2003] 13. For SB's note about the cemetery, see BIF, UoR, MS 4848, and, in Facsimile with a photo, in Roswitha Quadflieg, Beckett was here: Hamburg in Tagebuch, Samuel Becketts von 1936 [Hamburg: Hoffinan und Campe, 2006] 31-32).
"Bauernfriihstiick" (country breakfast); "Hauptbahnhof" (central train station).
6 The Hamburger Kunsthalle was constructed in 1867-1869 in an Italian Renais sance style.
The chief work of Master Bertram von Minden (fl. 1367-c. 1415) is the Altarpiece of St.
No letter to or from George Reavey regarding a reconciliation has been found.
"Malacoda," "Enueg 2," and "Dortmunder" were reprinted from Echo's Bones in transition 24 Uune 1936) 8-10.
14 The Thompsons moved to 71 Harley Street in 1936, where Geoffrey had a consulting room on the ground floor. Ursula Thompson had been ill with chickenpox.
15 EdwardandFlorenceRoe.
16 CharlesPrentice.
17 "SchoneGrtisse"(warmgreetings). HesterDowden.
364
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
Dear Tom
Heard from Frere-Reeves yesterday, a curt rejection. "On
commercial grounds we could not justify it in our list. " And of course what other grounds of justification could there be. I think
1
I have not seen the transition in which my poems appeared, nor heard what poems they used, nor received the payment
2
Sunday. I brought him back here for lunch, showed him the Yeats picture & lent him some Minotaures.
Geoffrey's mother died suddenly last Monday and he is over for the funeral. I have not seen him yet but shall do so to-day. His
4
the fuchsia picture again & liked it much better than the first time. He has an excellent new small picture also, shelling peas (green) in Moore St. It was one of my instantive afternoons and one can't peer in 18 without all kinds of perturbations to make sure the coast is clear. He inquired was there anything wrong with me, and advised 5 miles walking daily, whether it was
365
7 August 1936, McGreevy
Cooldrinagh. Foxrock.
Co. Dublin.
nowofdumpingtheworkonReavey. Ineithertrusthimnor like him, but know no other agent. Truck direct with publishers is one of the few avoidable degradations.
guaranteed by Mme. Jolas.
Seumas O'Sullivan has accepted the poem for Dublin Mag. I had a pleasant bathe & conversation with Brian last
3
brother Alan is also ill, I think rather seriously.
I was with Jack Yeats Saturday afternoon. I saw the man in
7 August 1936, McGreevy
mental or physical. I thought, the ice is breaking at last. He was very pleased with Read's very favourable review in the Spectator of Amaranthers, and even though it was Read, so was 1. 5
[. . . ]
Read Cecil's life of Cowper, The Stricken Deer. Very bad. But what a life! 6 It depressed & terrified me. How did he ever manage to write such bad poetry?
Am stuck in Hughes's High Wind in Jamaica, A. A. Milne &
7
surprising amount of irrelevance for the work of a lifetime. In
8
I hope you saw W. B. 's advise [for advice] to young Indian
9
apparently not relishing the prospect of another long spell in
what he now calls the "Turmoil". When he heard Heinemann
had turned down the book he said, "Why can't you write the way
people want", when I replied that I could only write the one way,
i. e. as best I could (not the right answer, by the way, not at all the
right answer), he said it was a good thing for him he did not feel
obliged to implement such a spirit in 6 Clare St. Even mother
begins to look askance at me. My departure from here is long
overdue. But complicated by my owing them £10 apiece. The
10
copper in the face from correcting Moore proofs. He was crying
366
Rum.
Am half way through Faust Part I. There seems to be a
Auerbach's Cellar & the Witches' Kitchen for example. But perhaps it justifies itself later. I think he was the kind that couldn't bear to shorten anything.
poets quoted in the Irishman's Diary.
Frank came back from his 10 days in Donegal last Tuesday,
Yeats picture is paid off at last.
How is your own work going and how are you yourself?
I hope Dilly's sales keep good. I saw Joe Hone one day,
7 August 1936, McGreevy out for a book to translate in the long winter evenings. I sug
11
good old men go surrealiste. Haven't observed it myself. Tuohy
apparently said also when asked by Sean O'Sullivan why he
did not promote his income with contributions to Punch, that
only old men had a sense of humour. Sean looks forward to
getting a teaching job in the reorganized School of Art, at £6
a week, that will relieve him from the necessity of painting
12
Love ever Sam
"Schone Grosse" to Hester13
ALS; 2 leaves, 8 sides; letterhead; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens,
LONDON SW 3; pm illeg, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/104.
1 SBhadsentMurphytoFrere-Reeves(see7July1936,n. 6).
SB sent Murphy to George Reavey's European Literary Bureau, asking him to act as agent; he wrote to McGreevy: "As you say, they are all the same, & with Reavey I will be spared the labour & embarrassment of introducing myself. I had also thought of Wishart & suggested it to Reavey. They have rejected work of mine before" (Wednesday [19 August 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/105).
2 SB was aware that his three poems from Echo's Bones had been published in transition in June (26 July 1936, n. 13; the request for these poems: 7 July 1936). Maria Jolas served as Managing Editor of transition.
3 "Cascando,"DublinMagazine,3-4.
4 BrianCoffey. MorningbyJackB. Yeats.
Presumably SB lent Coffey some issues ofMinotaure, a lavishly illustrated art journal published in Paris from June 1933 to May 1939.
Geoffrey and Alan Thompson's mother, Lillian Thompson (nee Bourne).
5 JackYeatslivedat18FitzwilliamSquare.
SB describes In Tir na n6g: 17 July 1936, n. 8. Shelling Green Peas, Moore Street (Allied Irish Bank Collection, Dublin, Pyle 461) (Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 420; III, 199).
Herbert Read compares Yeats to Joyce, Soupault, and Sterne, writing "The book is a magnificent satire, an irrational and hilarious farce written with the greatest verve and wit" ("A Surrealist Novel," The Spectator 31 July 1936: 211).
367
gested Breton's Nadja.
Leventhal says Faust Part 2 is very surrealiste & that all
at all.
Write very soon.
7 August 1936, McGreevy
6 Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer; or, The Life of Cowper (1930). English poet William Cowper (1731-1800) suffered from periods of melancholia, and attempted suicide several times.
7 RichardHughes,HighWindinJamaica:TheInnocentVoyage(1929). AlanAlexander Milne (1882-1566).
8 For SB's notes on Goethe's Faust, in an edition by Robert Petsch (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, [19251), see BIF, UoR, MS 5004 and MS 5005; for a descrip tion, see Dirk van Hulle, "Samuel Beckett's Faust Notes," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 283-297. SB elaborated on his reading in his next Jetter to McGreevy:
I have been working at German & reading Faust. Finished Part I last night. It leaves me with an impression of something very fragmentary, often irrele vant & too concrete, that perhaps Part 2 will correct. Auerbach's Cellar, the Witches Kitchen & Walpurgisnacht, for example, - little more than sites & atmospheres, swamping the corresponding mental conditions. All the on & up is so tiresome also, the determined optimism a la Beethoven, the unconscion able time a-coming. The vinegar & nitre of Kant & Heraclitus. It takes a German to apotheose the busybody. I can understand the "keep on keeping on" as a social prophylactic, but not at all as a light in the autological darkness, or the theological. And the "pure doing" affects me like the "cordial fornica tion" of DHL, the "Sentimentique" of a fidgeter, fit for the D. -J. Reddins. (SB to McGreevy, Wednesday [19 August 1936], TCD, MS 10402/105)
"Vinegar & nitre" refers to Proverbs 25:20: "As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singethsongs to an heavy heart," In this context, SB suggests opposition between German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Heraclitus.
SB refers to D. H. Lawrence: he mentions reading D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record by E. T. Uessie Chambers] (1935), "his mining district, on & off fiancee" (SB to McGreevy, Wednesday [19 August 1936], TCD, MS 10402/105).
"Sentimentique" (a French portmanteau word, combining the ideas of "sentimen tal" and "romantic": sentimantic).
D[istrict]-J[ustice] Kenneth Sheils Reddin (1895-1967), from 1922 to 1957 and from 1958 to 1964 Principal Justice, and his wife; he was a playwright, having had two productions at the Abbey Theatre in 1924, The Passing and Old Mag.
For SB's further notes on Goethe's Faust, BIF, UoR, MS 5004/33, see Dirk van Hulle, "Samuel Beckett's Faust Notes," 295; Nixon, "'Scraps of German,"' Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 272. SB's German-language study notes can be found in BIF, UoR, MS 5002 and MS 5003; the cover of the first notebook is dated 13/7/36.
9 AmessagefromW. B. YeatstoyoungIndianpoets:"Writeinyourmothertongues. Choose that smaller audience. You cannot have style and vigour in English . . . When you write, speak, think in English, you are a musical instrument without a sounding board" (The Madras Chronicle 17 June 1936: n. p. ; rpt. "The Irishman's Diary: Yeats and India," The Irish Times 6 August 1936: 6).
10 FrankBeckettisreferringtoBeckettandMedcalf,6ClareSt. Jack B. Yeats's Morning.
11 GeraldineCummins'snovel,FiresofBe! tane;see27June1936,n. 11. Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore (1936). Andre Breton, Nadja (1928).
368
19 September 1936, McGreevy
12 A. J. Leventhal. The classical witches' sabbath is in part II of Faust.
Irish artist Patrick Tuohy (1894-1930).
The Dublin Metropolitan School of Art was reorganized by the National Board of
Education as the National College of Art in September 1936, and invited applications for professorships at £500 per year Uohn Dowling, "The National College of Art," Ireland To-Day 1. 4 [September 1936] 54-55).
13 "Schone Grosse" (warm greetings). Hester Dowden THOMAS McGREEVY
LONDON
19/9/36 Foxrock
Dear Tom
No I have heard nothing ofthe Exagmination. I have no copy,
but think it was published by SylviA. No doubt we are being roule,
but I am too tired to do anything about it. When I think of that
10 year stale push, I would willingly withhold it & forgo the 1%,
1
if any. And ifl protested it would have to be in that sense.
I have booked passage in the Washington sailing from Cove 29th inst. , calling at Le Havre and reaching Hamburg Oct. 1sr_ Frank may have to go to Waterford about a job, in which case I would drive that far with him. Otherwise I shall go down by train next Monday week. The prospect of getting away is a great relief. My plans are none. Simply to get to Germany, & then selon le vent. 2 I hope to be away a loong, loong time. I was promising myself return by Holland, but by all accounts things there are
frightfully expensive, so I don't expect it will come off.
Frank has had an awful month with neuritis in his shoulder & it is only now that it begins slowly to improve. At the same time he is up to his eyes in the office, working till 8 every evening, with the feeling all the time in the not so remote background that he is strangling his life. But who does not.
369
19 September 1936, McGreevy
Only a question of the hold employed. I think it is perhaps a little easier for him when I am not here, though I think also he misses me.
[. . . ]
I think I told you about S. O'S. 's request for an inch off the poem. Circumcised accordingly, it now begins with the abortion dilemma. 3
I don't know exactly what Mrs Howe said to Dev. I know she
4
Rose. The first two are exquisite. The third less so. The refusal of
the rose to crumble, its embalming of itself instead, compelled
him to take it off the mantelpiece & on to a table with the room
all round. So that 3 is less of a flower than of an interior. I had
5
feel no inclination to go on, though I am told it improves in
6
(Hone's collaborator in Berkeley & Swift books). Lady Gregory
he apostrophises at length with opulent curves as coextensive
with the "spirit" of Ireland. Glendalough is a "luogo dolce".
Walter Starkie is the finest product of Trinity humanism
"homo singolarment vivace ed umano . . " [for "uomo singolar
mente vivace, umano"] & Gogarty is the all round man of the
Quattrocento. And a chapter is entitled: "Serenita Protestante. "
In fact the work of a professor. He wrote a "Saggio sul rimorso"
7
mentioned absurdity of not having reproductions available.
I saw J. B. last Saturday. He had extended his rose picture 2 stages further 1. Tyranny of the Rose. 2. Rose dying. 3. Dusty
him alone, Cotty spared us.
The Klassische Walpurgisnacht was too much for me & I
Acts 3 & 5. I have just read Viaggio in Irlanda by Mario Rossi
full of false teeth, as soft as the old man's mentula.
I do not know if Brian is back. I want to see him before I leave. He lent me Brunchwiffs Spinoza et ses Contemporains, the Ethica in the Classiques Garnier with Latin en regard, of
370
19 September 1936, McGreevy
which I have had time only for enough to give me a glimpse of
Spinoza as a solution & a salvation (impossible in English trans
lation), and Maritain's nauseating Docteur Angelique, which I
soon lay down. Feeling what a pity the tetragonal Peripatetic did
8
treatment.
Reavey still in Belfast, whence he sent a first chapter of a
translation of yet another Berdaiev [for Berdyaev] for the kind ness of suggestions. He promises to let me know about Murphy next week. Nothing from New York. 10
Now I have to go to Cabinteely Barracks & fill up application
11
1 SB refers to the reprint edition of Sylvia Beach, ed. , Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (London: Faber and Faber, 1936).
"Roule" (done, cheated), with reference to royalties for their essays.
SB probably refers to publication and promotion of Joyce's Work in Progress, which had been published in sections, the first fragment appearing as "From Work in Progress," Transatlantic Review 1. 4 (April 1924) 215-223.
2 SBleftfromCove(nowCobh).
SB had written to McGreevy on Wednesday [19 August 1936]: "I still live in hopes of getting away in September, but shall probably go direct from Cove to Hamburg. And perhaps this time next month I'll be on the Brocken" (TCD, MS 10402/105). The Brocken, also called Blocksberg, is the highest mountain in the Harz region of north ern Germany, and the site of rites enacted on Walpurgis Night (30 April), the setting for Walpurgisnacht in Goethe's Faust.
On 9 September [1936], SB had written to McGreevy: "! fl had the price of it I'd fly to Amsterdam" (TCD, MS 10402/107).
"Selon le vent" (as the wind takes me).
3 SB cut the first two lines of his poem "Cascando," for publication in Dublin Magazine; he wrote to McGreevy: "Seumas O'S. sent another proof with request to make one line of two somewhere, anywhere, in the interests of his pagination"
371
not fall for the whore proposed by his brother.
A letter from Charles. Still lingering on in London, having
9
for a new passport. I am wondering will it be put through in time. Love ever. If I don't hear before I leave, write Postlagernd,
12
ALS; 3 leaves, 3 sides; TCD, MS 10402/108.
Hauptpostamt, Hamburg. Sam
19 September 1936, McGreevy
(9 September [1936], TCD, MS 10402/107). In the same letter SB mentioned that O'Sullivan had proposed "that I should take over the editorship ofthe D. M. , he paying for the printing for 3 years. This entre nous. What I said at length was: Merci. "
"Entre nous" (between ourselves). "Merci. " (Thank you, no. )
4 In his letter of 9 September [1936], SB reported that "Mary Manning Howe interviewed DEV on eve of her departure. I told her to tackle him on the Gallery. She did & he promised to see about it" (TCD, MS 10402/107). Mary Manning Howe had spent the summer in Dublin, and, within her role as a freelance writer, arranged to interview Eamon De Valera, then Taoiseach of the Irish Free State. It was during this time that she later claimed to have had an affair with SB (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 215).
5 JackYeats"alwayspaintedwitharosepinnedtohiseasel,orplacedonthetable beside him" (Hilary Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Biography [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970] 133). The first painting, a "close up of a red rose," here called "Tyranny of the Rose," now is known as A Rose (private collection, Pyle, 484).
Yeats's series of paintings "showing a cut rose at various stages of its blooming until it finally withers" includes The Rose Dying (private collection, Pyle 486) and A Dusty Rose (private collection, Pyle 485) (Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 438-442: III, 207, 294).
Cottie Yeats.
6 The"KlassischeWalpurgisnacht"(ClassicalWalpurgisNight)isthefirstsceneof
Faust II, Act 2.
7 M[ario]M. Rossi'sViaggioinIrlanda(Milan:DoxaEditrice,1932)wastranslatedby Joseph Hone in a much abridged version, Pilgrimage in the West (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1933); Rossi, a Professor of Italian at the University of Edinburgh, collaborated with
Hone on two other books (see 5 January 1933, n. 6).
In Viaggio in Irlanda, Rossi addresses a four-page apostrophe to Lady Gregory:
"Sara necessario, Lady Gregory, che qui parli di Voi? Non ho parlato di Voi finche ho parlato dell'Irlanda - e dovunque ho scritto ii nome sacro della poesia? " ("Is it necessary, Lady Gregory, that I should speak of you here? Have I not spoken of you since I spoke of Ireland - and wherever I have written the sacred name of poetry? " (Viaggio, 182-185; Pilgrimage, 46-50). Lady Gregory died on 22 May 1931, the same day that Rossi sent his book to his Italian publisher: "the book which she had encouraged me to write - this book written for her" (Pilgrimage, 3).
Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, the site of seven churches founded by St. Kevin, is called "Un luogo dolce, disteso" ("a gentle open place") (Viaggio, 54; Pilgrimage, 26).
Walter Starkie is described by Rossi as "uomo singolarrnente vivace, umano" (a man of exceptional liveliness and humanity) (Viaggio, 125; excluded from Pilgrimage).
Rossi enumerates Gogarty's roles as "chirurgo, 'causeur', uomo politico, aviatore, poeta" ("surgeon, conversationalist, politician, airman, poet"). He claims that Gogarty "ricorda i grandi italiani de! '400" ("recalls the great Italians of the Quattrocento") (Viaggio, 177; Pilgrimage, 43-44).
Chapter 24 is called "Serenita Protestante" (Protestant Serenity) (Viaggio, 126-128; excluded from Pilgrimage).
Mario Rossi's Saggio sul rimorso (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1933) is a study of ethics and emotions.
372
8 Brian Coffey had been in Kerry with his father.
Spinoza et ses contemporains (1923) by French philosopher Leon Brunschvicg
(1869-1944), who studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure and taught at the Sorbonne. SB's spelling of Brunschvicg's name presumably reflects a private joke
with McGreevy.
Benedictus deSpinoza, Ethique, demontree suivant l'ordre geometrique et divisee en cinq
parties, Texte latin soigneusement revu, tr. Ch[arles] Appuhn, Classiques Gamier ( Paris: Gamier fo�res,1908; rpt. 1934 ). "Latin en regard" La( tin on facing page).
Jacques Maritain's Docteur Angelique (1930) is based on the life of Thomas Aquinas, whose brother Raynald tempted him with a prostitute to persuade him to break his vows to the church; but Thomas drove the girl from his room with a log from the fire, burning the sign of the cross on his door with the ember.
Maritain argued that theology should be peripatetic, moving out among the world and among other disciplines, following the example of Aquinas. "Tetragonal peripa tetic" refers to Aquinas's "peripatetic axiom. "
9 Charles Prentice.
10 George Reavey's family home was in Belfast. Having translated Smysl Istorii 1( 923;
The Meaning ofHistory,1936 ) by Nikolai Berdyaev, Reavey was preparing a translation of Ya i Mir Ob'ektov (1934 ; Solitude and Society,1938).
Murphy was being read by the London publisher, Stanley Nott (1887-19 78), co-publisher with Europa Press of Eluard, Thorns of Thunder; Reavey had said he "would have Knott's [for Nott's] verdict by the middle of the month" S( B to McGreevy,9 September 1[ 936], TCD, MS10402/10 7). SB had also sent a typescript of Murphy to Simon and Schuster, New York.
11 The Dublin Passport Office was at16 Upper Merrion Street, but paperwork and validation of identification were carried out at the Cabinteely Barracks Garda Station, on the Old Bray Road, Dublin18, and forwarded to the Passport Office.
12 "Postlagemd,Hauptpostamt" ( General delivery, Main Post Office).
THOMAS McGREEVY TOPPES FIE LD, ESSEX
30/9/36 Le Havre
Here for the day. On to Hamburg this evening. Wish I could
stay where I am. The place is charming & the people . . . French.
There's an old Peter Brueghel at the end of the street, but it
30 September 1936, McGreevy
won't see me. Love.
1
Sam
373
30 September 1936, McGreevy
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; "LeHavre. Bassin du Commerce et Place Gambetta"; to Thomas
McGreevyEsq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3, Angleterre. forwarded, AH, to The Block Hse, Toppesfield,Essx; pm 30-9-36, LeHavre, 1-10-36, Chelsea; T CD, MS 10402/109.
1 ThenamesofthetwogenerationsofthisfamilyofFlemishpaintersareusually spelled differently: the elder Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-1569) had two sons, Pieter Brueghel the younger and Jan Brueghel.
At the far end of the Rue de Paris from the Quai was the Musee des Beaux-Arts; it was destroyed in World War II. In the new Musee Malraux there are two paintings now ascribed to Pieter Brueghel the younger: Consultation at the Procurer's (77. 24) and Interior of a Peasant Kitchen (77. 14), but there is no record of one by the elder Pieter Bruegel.
THOMAS McGREEVY TOPPESFIELD, ESSEX
9/10/36 bei Hoppe Schliiterstrasse 44
Hamburg 13
Dear Tom
I collected your card all right at the Poste Restante. The
above, which I have tried to write clearly, is my address now & will be I expect for a fortnight at least. On n'est pas mal, au sein du chauffage central. 11 fait un froid a faire sauter les couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi. What in the world are you doing among the thatches. Was it then another journey from, like so many? I can't believe you'd go to Tappesfield [for Toppesfield] of your own free will. 1
I got here last Friday, 24 hours late. The town is superb, nothing older than middle 19th century. One exquisite green steeple (truly a guglia), that of the Petrikirche. And the Alster pieces d'eau are masterpieces. 2 I got a lovely vision ofT. C. D. & its terra infirma reclaimed from the land, the Liffey lying calm over Nassau Street, as no doubt once it did, washing the fringes ofLeinster Lawn, Lecky & the Kook ofBells submerged, & Frank
374
9 October 1936, McGreevy going to his lunch in a canoe. 3 That would be the only town
planning- away with the town! Manning Robertson would agree
4
right at the end of Altona's most charming promenade, under the inevitable snivelling lime, in the grip of ivy. "He who then liveth & believeth in me shall never perish. " Then I had a Bauernfriihsti. ick in the Hauptbahnhof. 5
The Gallery here was something of a disappointment, but
may improve. The building is magnificent and the pictures
admirably presented (one line hanging against matt white
throughout), but there is an appalling quantity of rubbish,
worse than unimportant locals. Meisters BERTRAM & FRANKE
6
Goyens, a Van Uden -Teniers not as good as the one in Dublin,
a so called Brouwer landscape that might conceivably be a pot
boiler, a couple of Everdingens and a characteristic landscape of
that German-Roman that you don't like & whose name I can
never remember. 7 Then roomfuls of Tischbein, Menzel & God
knows who else. There is a lovely Degas Portrait de Femme,
I am sure.
I found Klopstock, buried with his cockpecked wife & son,
don't say much to me either. There are a lot of lovely Van
another hardly up to standard by Lautrec, and a sentimental
Picasso Femme a l'Absinthe. 8 The modern Germans are more
interesting, Leibl, Corinth, Nolde etc. There is a lot of Munch
also, & I found an excellent portrait of a woman by one Jaeckel,
of whom I know nothing. He has nothing else in the Gallery.
Marc's Mandrill is amusing, but I think not so good as the
9
struggled into the language I don't think I'll be sorry to go. I begin to think that Germany's charm is perhaps after all mainly for me a matter of associations. I feel sad enough & often enough
375
Boccioni that Boss Sinclair had in Kassel.
It is nice to be away, but when I have seen the pictures &
9 October 1936, McGreevy
for that to be so. Now that Holland & France have come off the truce, I hope to return that way. 10 Holland in the early spring & Paris in the late, if Europe has not been obliterated before then.
Simon & Schuster turned down Murphy, with the usual kind
11
words, brilliance, 5 % appeal & ruisselant avenir.
Houghton &
Mifflin now have it. Nott has not yet made up his mind. Perhaps
he must get in touch with Mme. Beeton before he can reach a
12
To judge by quantity of spare space that follows it, the circum
cision was uncalled for. I see in the same number a harmless
paragraph on Dilly's book from the com[p]te-gouttes of Norah
13
but hoping soon to 'Take his leave' (! ! ) Richard mit vache is back
14
felt like a desertion. He was tearfully & continuously depressed for weeks before I left. Overwork, neuritis, sex worries, home gloom, etc.
God love thee & write incontinent. I don't seem to have had a proper letter from you for ages.
Ever Sam
Elsheimer is the man.
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/110.
1 "Onn'estpasma! ,auseinduchauffagecentral. IIfaitunfroidafairesauter! es couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi" (Comfortable enough, with the central heating all round one. It is brass monkey weather. The bread is black, so is the horizon). For further description, see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 217.
376
decision.
My truncated poem is in this number [of] Dublin Magazine.
Hoult.
A letter from the physical jerking Charles, still in London,
"big, red & jovial".
Frank drove me to Waterford. Very sad parting from him. It
9 October 1936, McGreevy McGreevy had the loan of a cottage (Black House) in the tiny village ofToppesfield,
Essex Uack B. Yeats to McGreevy, 30 November 1936,TCD, MS 8105/138).
2 SB arrived in Hamburg on 2 October. For images and detailed information about his stay in Hamburg, consult the website by Roswitha Quadflieg, Fritz-Renzo Heinze, and Clements-Tobias Lange: "Beckett in Hamburg 1936," 11 November 2007, www. beckett-in-hamburg-1936. de/.
Nearly a quarter of Hamburg was destroyed by fire in May 1842, which necessitated massive rebuilding in the mid 19th century. The tower of St. Peter's Church had burned at this time and was reconstructed in Gothic style with a 436-foot tower. "Guglia" (obelisk, hence spire).
The inner and outer Alster lakes are formed by locks on the Alster river; these sheets of water are bounded by tree-lined streets and promenades. "Pieces d'eau" (ponds).
3 SBimaginestheRiverLiffeyoverspreadingitsbankstocoverthelandoccupied by Trinity College Dublin and Nassau Street, with the water lapping the edges of the lawn that extends from Leinster House (the Parliament Building oflreland) to Merrion Square.
The statue of historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903) is on the library green ofTCD. In his wordplay, SB alludes to the Book ofKells, the illuminated manu script of the Gospels, created in Ireland c. AD 800, kept in the TCD Library. Frank Beckett's office was at 6 Clare Street, an extension of Nassau and Leinster Streets.
4 Irish urban planner Manning Robertson (1888-1945) wrote Dun Laoghaire: The History, Scenery and Development of the District (1936) in which he advocated preservation of open spaces.
5 German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) was buried in the Christiankirche cemetery, at the end of the Palmaille in Ottensen, in the Altona section of Hamburg. Also buried there is his first wife Margareta Miiller (Meta, 1728-1758), their stillborn son, his second wife Joanna Elisabeth Dimpfel von Winthem (1747-1821), and his brother Victor Ludwig Klopstock (1744-1811); the verse, John 11:26, is SB's trans lation (Samuel Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an: Das Hamburg-Kapitel aus den "German Diaries" 2. 0ktober-4. Dezember 1936, transcribed by Erika Tophoven ISchenefeld: Raamin-Press, 2003] 13. For SB's note about the cemetery, see BIF, UoR, MS 4848, and, in Facsimile with a photo, in Roswitha Quadflieg, Beckett was here: Hamburg in Tagebuch, Samuel Becketts von 1936 [Hamburg: Hoffinan und Campe, 2006] 31-32).
"Bauernfriihstiick" (country breakfast); "Hauptbahnhof" (central train station).
6 The Hamburger Kunsthalle was constructed in 1867-1869 in an Italian Renais sance style.
The chief work of Master Bertram von Minden (fl. 1367-c. 1415) is the Altarpiece of St.
