Appendix: Roger Casement: "They ... Blackened His Good Name"
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Appendix: Roger Casement: "They ... blackened his good name" In the nineteen-thirties, the figure of Roger Casement, although on a lesser scale than Parnell, also provoked Yeats into mythic ballads. Actively campaigning for Irish independence through German help during the First World War, Casement did little to stir Yeats's imagination, as Sir William Rothenstein remembered: ... Casement ... was full, too, of the wrongs ofIreland. 'As long as he only bothers about present conditions,' said Yeats, 'it doesn't matter; but Heaven help him if he fills his head with Ireland's past wrongs. '1 Casement's fanatic hatred of England and reverence for Germany made others uneasy, and they doubted the effectiveness of his plans. John Butler Yeats, who had met him atJohn Quinn's, liked him, but noted that he "is about sick with grief over 'poor Kaiser' ".2 Writing to Quinn, AE described Casement as "a romantic person of the picturesque kind, with no heavy mentality to embarass him in his actions."3 However, when he was sentenced to death for treason, Yeats signed a petition on his behalf at Maud Gonne's urging, and wrote Eva Gore-Booth that "the argument for clemency is so strong that the government cannot disregard this argument .. " 4 When he was executed, however, Casement was not much more to Yeats than the unnamed sixteenth man of "Sixteen Dead Men" . To Maud Gonne, although his death was" a national loss' , , it was" a less terrible blow" than other deaths - and, like her, Yeats's imagination had been captured by other martyrs of 1916: evenJohn MacBride was mentioned in "Easter 1916" , and Casement was not. 5 152 Appendix 153 Yeats's involvement with Casement's image began only in March 1933, when Patrick McCartan, an American doctor and ex-I.R.B. man whom Yeats had met on his American tour, asked his help in obtaining a prominent author's introduction to William J. Maloney's book, The Forged Casement Diaries. At this time, Yeats probably had no special knowledge about the diaries: they purported to be Casement's, they apparently chronicled his homosexual activities in graphic detail, and they had been circulated by the British government when he was imprisoned to stir public revulsion and discourage a reprieve. The diaries discredited the only hero of 1916 that the British had to explain: to the British public, the others were rebellious Irish nonentities, whereas Casement was Sir Roger Casement, K.C.M.G. After Casement's death, Maloney and others had uncovered evidence that the diaries were forged, created purely to ruin Casement. The case echoed the Parnell and Wilde histories: the Pigott forgeries superimposed on the public outcry against Wilde's homosexuality, as if the British had sought a foolproof combination with which to discredit Casement. Yeats had not read Maloney's book, but he offered McCartan a letter ofintroduction to Shaw; letters of May andJune 1934 between Yeats and McCartan detailed Shaw's interest. In September, Yeats received Maloney's manuscript, although when he wrote to McCartan in October, he had done no more than "look at the chapter headings" before he sent it to Mrs Shaw, because he "did not want to delay it". In late November, Yeats was again an intermediary in the correspondence betwetn McCartan, Maloney, Shaw, and a cousin of Casement's, but that was the end of his activity on the subject until November 1936, by which time Maloney's book had found a publisher - without Shaw's intro duction - and Yeats had read it.6 The Forged Casement Diaries thoroughly documented the various British efforts to discredit Casement. From November 1914 on, the Foreign Office spread rumours to British newspapers that Casement was mad, and, from June 1916, "evidence" from the forged diaries began to appear in the press, as the government hoped to add "degeneracy" to his offences: ... the various ways in which the special theme of this diary was disclosed by the British press after Casement's capture ... ranged from plain terms like" sexual perversion" and "unnatural vice" 154 Appendix used by Nevinson in the Manchester Guardian, to the conventional euphemism, "a charge which is not specified" , or an' 'unspecified charge" , adopted by the nicer newspapers. 7 Although the charge of homosexuality was the most sensational, it was not the only one, but a part of an interlocking puzzle designed to alienate all possible supporters: . To offset Germany's declaration of friendship for Ireland, Casement was said to be mad for seeking it; or, alternatively, to have sought it as a German agent: and as proof he had not acted for Ireland, Irish loyalists were brought forward to repudiate both him and the pledge he had got. The reputed resentment aroused in the Irish soldiers by Casement's efforts to enlist them, destroyed the moral effect of the move to form an Irish Brigade. And ... the primary object of the degeneracy story was to secure popular sanction for the hanging. 8 Thus, the attack was a comprehensive fraud, which Maloney saw as part of a tradition of British political forgery and wartime propaganda; it was far more effective than the Pigott letters, for Casement was discredited by a falsified document displaying" ... the ravings of the victim of perversion" , and was thus executed.9 Maloney's conclusion was inescapable: ". the British Government ... forged, planted, published, authenticated, and used this atrocity diary to destroy their Irish enemy ... " .10 Once dead, Casement could not clear his name; he had died another victim of British "diplomacy" in his pursuit oflrish independence. Yeats's reaction to this evidence was intense and violent, as seen in his November 1936 letter to Ethel Mannin: I am in a rage. I have just got a book published by the Talbot Press called The Forged Casement Diaries. It is by a Dr. Maloney I knew in New York and he has spent years collecting research. He has proved that the diaries, supposed to prove Casement 'a Degenerate' and successfully used to prevent an agitation for his reprieve, were forged. Casement was not a very able man but he was gallant and unselfish, and had surely his right to leave what he would have considered an unsullied name. I long to break my rule against politics and call these men criminals, but I must not. Perhaps a verse may come to me, now or a year hence. 11 Appendix 155 He mentioned, as well, that he had just completed a ballad on Parnell: Parnell Vindicated and The Forged Casement Diaries enhanced and intensified one another. Although Casement had not achieved heroic ends, he had been another Irish victim of English dishonour. Yeats's rage quickly overwhelmed his restraint; he had written a ballad on Casement by the end of the month, and had described it to Dorothy Wellesley: Yesterday was a most eventful day .... I sent off a ferocious ballad written to a popular tune, to a newspaper. It is on 'The Forged Diaries of Roger Casement' a book published here, & denounces by name -- and --for their share in abetting the forgeries. I shall not be happy until I hear that it is sung by Irish undergraduates at Oxford. I wrote to the editor saying I had not hitherto sent him a poem because almost [alI] my poems were unsuitable because they came out of rage or lust. I heard my ballad sung last night. It is a stirring thing ... better written than my 'Parnell' because I passed things when I had to find three rhymes & did not pass when I had to find two. 12 After the Parnell model, it would be sung into the Irish memory, celebrating heroism and publicising English evil. Before its publication, however, letters passed among Yeats, Mannin, and Wellesley: Yeats angrily gleeful at the outrage his ballad would cause, Mannin pleased, but Wellesley made unhappy because of another attack on her government. Writing to Mannin, Yeats enclosed a copy of the ballad, as well as an explanation of his politics: although he had refused to assist her in her international political crusades, he was still enraged at past Irish controversies: Ifmy rage lasts I may go on in still more savage mood ... Some day you will understand what I see in the Irish National movement and why I can be no other sort of revolutionist - as a young man I belonged to the I.R.B. and was in many things O'Leary's pupil. Besides, why should I trouble about communism, fascism, liberalism, radicalism, when all, though some bow first and some stem first but all at the same pace, all are going down stream with the artificial unity which ends every civilisation? ... My rage and that ofothers like me seems more important - though we may but be the first of the final destroying horde. I remember old O'Leary saying 'N0 gentleman can be a socialistthough he might be an anarchist. '13 156 Appendix Any ideology was incompatible with his aristocratic individualism, the personal ideal ofthe solitary hero, cast in the O'Leary mould. By 1 December, Wellesley had replied to Yeats's excited and angry 28 November letter, with shock and agitation, even a reprimand of Yeats's extravagant behaviour: "Please please don't insist on this savage attack on -- at Oxford. Let us find out the facts first. If you were God Almighty I would say the same to you. "14 In his reply, three days later, Yeats attempted to establish the background of the forgeries, explain his impulse, and soothe her offended loyalties - still sensitive because of his recent Parnell ballad: I could not stop that ballad if! would, people have copies, & I don't want to.