YEATS AND WOMEN Also by Deirdre Toomey lHE COLLECTED LEITERS OF W. B. YEATS, Volume 11: 1896-1900 (co-edited with Warwick Gould and lohn I<elly) Yeats and Wonten Edited by Deirdre Toomey Second Edition Published in Great Britain 1997 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-333-69816-7 ISBN 978-1-349-25822-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25822-2 Published in the United States of America 1997 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-17408-8 cloth ISBN 978-0-312-17409-5 paperback Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yeats and wornen / edited by Deirdre Toomey. - 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-17408-8 (cloth). - ISBN 978-0-312-17409-5 (paper) 1. Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), I 865-1 939-Relations with wornen. 2. Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939-Characters--Women. 3. Wornen and Iiterature-lreland--History-2Oth century. 4. Wornen and Iiterature-lreland--History-l9th century. 5. Femininity (Psychology) in literature. 6. Poets, Irish-2Oth century- -Biography. 7. Poets,lrish-l9th century-Biography. I. Toomey, Deirdre. PR5906.Y435 1997 82I'.8---dc21 [Bl 97-2178 CIP © Deirdre Toomey 1992, 1997 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1997 978-0-333-67049-1 First edition (Yeats anti Warnen: Yeats Annual No. 9) 1992 Second edition 1997 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any Iicence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civj) claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10987654321 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 Contents Acknowledgements vü Notes on the Contributors ix Abbreviations x List of Plates xv Introduction xvi 1 Labyrinths: Yeats and Maud Gonne 1 Deirdre Toomey 2 At the Feet of the Goddess: Yeats's Love Poetry and the Ferninist Occult 41 Elizabeth Butler Cullingford 3 "The Music of Heaven": Dorothea Hunter 73 Warwick Gould 4 Away 135 Deirdre Toomey 5 Patronage and Creative Exchange: Yeats, Lady Gregory and the Econorny of Indebtedness 168 James Pethica 6 "Our Kathleen": Yeats's Collaboration with Lady Gregory in the Writing of Cathleen ni Houlihan 205 James Pethica 7 Yeats and Wornen: Michael Robartes and the Dancer 223 Elizabeth Butler Cullingford 8 "Secret Communion": Yeats's Sexual Destiny 252 John Harwood v vi Contents 9 Florence Farr: Letters to W. B. Yeats, 1912-17 281 Edited by Josephine Johnson 10 Olivia Shakespear: Letters to W. B. Yeats 323 Edited by John Harwood 11 W. B. Yeats's "Poems about Women: a Broadcast" 384 Edited by Warwick Gould Appendix: Manuscript Draft of Cathleen ni Houlihan 403 Transcribed by James Pethica Index 419 Acknowledgements My chief debt of gratitude is to Miss Anne Yeats and Mr Michael B. Yeats for granting permission (through A. P. Watt Ud) to use pub­ lished and unpublished materials by W. B. Yeats in this volume. Unpublished materials are the copyright of Michael B. Yeats and Anne Yeats. Many of the contributors, including myself, are further indebted to Michael Yeats and Anne Yeats for making unpublished materials available for study. Other unpublished materials have been made available through the kindness of Dr Ornar Pound. I am grateful to Colin Smythe Ud, on behalf of Catherine Kennedy and Anne de Winton for permis­ sion to use unpublished materials by Lady Gregory, and on behalf of Mrs Diarmuid Russell to use materials from the unpublished work of George Russell. Mr John Hunter allowed access to and quotation from the unpublished papers of Dorothea Hunter. The Society of Authors on behalf of the Estate of George Bemard Shaw and Professor Dan H. Laurence allowed quotation from Shaw's un­ published correspondence. A number of helpfullibrarians, includ­ ing Catherine Fahy and B. McKenna of the National Library of Ireland, the late Dr Lola L. Szladits of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library (Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations), Dr Cathy Henderson and Professor Thomas F. Staley at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, have provided materials and research assistance. Photographs reproduced in this volume have been provided through the generosity of Mrs Anna MacBride White and Professor A. Norman Jeffares, Mr John Hunter, a private collector, Josephine Johnson, Conrad A. Balliet, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Texas, the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, the National Library of Ireland, and the National Gallery of Ireland. Linda Shaughnessy of A. P. Watt & Son, Professor Roy Foster, FBA of Hertford College, Oxford, and Professor John KeHy of St John's College, Oxford, on behalf of Oxford University Press, were generous with permissions. Warwick Gould helped at every stage of the production of this book. At MacmiHan, Charmian Hearne and Tim Farmiloe were particularly helpful. vii viii Acknowledgements Six articles in this revised and enlarged edition of Yeats and Women originally appeared in Yeats Annual 9: Yeats and Women (1992): Elizabeth Butler Cullingford's "Yeats and Wornen: Michael Robartes and the Dancer" originally appeared in Yeats Annual4 (1986) and her "At the Feet of the Goddess" was published as Chapter 2 of her Gender and History in Yeats's Love Poetry (Carnbridge University Press, 1993; Syracuse, 1996). Jarnes Pethica's '''Our Kathleen'" origi­ nally appeared in Yeats Annual 6 (1988). John Harwood's "Olivia Shakespear: Letters to W. B. Yeats" originally appeared in Yeats Annual6 (1988). The editor's "Away" originally appeared in Yeats AnnuallO (1993). DEIRDRE TOOMEY Notes on the Contributors Elizabeth Butler Cullingford is Associate Professor of English, University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Yeats, Ireland and Fascism (Macmillan, 1981) and History and Gender in the Love Poetry of W. B. Yeats (Cambridge University Press, 1993; Syracuse, 1996). Warwick Gould is Professor of English, Royal Holloway, University of London. He is author (with Marjorie Reeves) of Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century (Clarendon, 1987) and co-editor of The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, volume 11: 1896-1900 (Clarendon Press, 1997). John Harwood is Reader in English at Flinders University of South Australia. He is the author of Olivia Shakespear and W. B. Yeats: "After Long Silence" (Macmillan, 1989) and Eliot to Derrida: The Poverty of Interpretation (Macmillan, 1995). Josephine Johnson is Professor of English, University of Florida at Coral Gables. She is the author of Florence Farr: Bernard Shaw's "New Woman" (Colin Smythe, 1975). James Pethica is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Richmond, Virginia. He is the editor of Lady Gregory's Diaries (Colin Smythe and Oxford University Press, 1996) and editor of Last Poems: Manuscript Materials by W. B. Yeats (Cornell, 1997). Deirdre Toomey is co-editor of The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, volume 11: 1896-1900 (Clarendon Press, 1997). ix Abbreviations The standard works listed below are cited by standard abbrevi­ ations, including volume number (where appropriate), and page number. Manuscripts are cited using abbreviations for the main coHections, listed below. Second or later citations of other works frequently referred to are usuaHy made with an abbreviation or acronym as explained in the note accompanying the first citation in a particular essay. Au Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955). AVA A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon certain Doctrines at­ tributed to Kusta Ben Luka (London: privately printed for subscribers only by T. Wemer Laurie, 1925). See also CV A. AVB AVision (London: Macmillan, 1962). Berg Books and Manuscripts, The Berg CoHection, New York Public Library (Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations). BL Add. MS Additional Manuscript, The British Library, London (foHowed by number). Manuscripts as yet uncatalogued are cited as BL Uncat. CLl,2,3 The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, volume 1: 1865-1895, ed. John KeHy and Eric Domville; volume 2: 1896-1900, ed. Warwick Gould, John KeHy and Deirdre Toomey; volume 3: 1901-1904, ed. John KeHy and Ronald Schuchard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986, 1997, 1994). CVA A Critical Edition of Yeats's AVision (1925), ed. George Mills Harper and Walter KeHy Hood (London: Macmillan, 1978). x Abbreviations xi Diaries Lady Gregory's Diaries 1892-1902, ed. & intro. James Pethica (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1996). E&I Essays and Introductions (London and New York: Macmillan, 1961). Emory Books and manuscripts in the Robert W. Woodruff Ubrary, Emory University, Atlanta Ga. Ex Explorations, seI. Mrs W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1962; New York: Macmillan, 1963). G-YL The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893-1938: Always Your Friend, ed. Anna MacBride White and A. Norman Jeffares (London: Hutchinson, 1992). I&R W. B. Yeats: Interviews and Recollections, ed. E. H. Mikhail (London: Macmillan, 1977) 2 vols. L The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954; New York: Macmillan,1955).