https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ Theses Digitisation: https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/research/enlighten/theses/digitisation/ This is a digitised version of the original print thesis. Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] THE LITERARY WORKS OF JACK B. YEATS by JOHN WHITLEY PURSER Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Department of English Literature University of Glasgow Scotland. Copyright (0 John Whitley Purser 1988 ProQuest Number: 10970945 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10970945 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In such an undertaking one's debts to others are extensive. My family was used as a sounding-board and suffered the follies that are not presented here as well as the ones that, no doubt, are. My tutor, Professor Butter, suffered a like fate and has been both patient and helpful. Persons upon whom I had no call found time to write to me, ferry me, entertain me and inform me. That they did so so generously and freely reflects both on their personal kindness and on the homage and affection which the mention of Jack Yeats invariably evoked. Nothing but kind words was ever uttered with respect to his name. My chief acknowledgement is therefore to Jack Yeats himself whom I have studied happily for eight years, continuing throughout to enjoy his company as expressed through his work and his letters. The debt which I owe to Anne Yeats and Michael Yeats is acknowledged in the list of manuscript sources, and this list includes the names of most of the institutions whose librarians have been unfailingly helpful. Special mention must, however, be made of the University of Glasgow. The magnificent library there was quite exceptionally efficient and its staff wonderfully helpful: and the Department of English Literature was, of course, my first stimulus and my mainstay. The Scottish Education Department funded my research. The work itself is dedicated to my wife, Barbara, without whom it would never have been completed. All others to whom I owe a debt of gratitude are listed below. It would take many pages to acknowledge them properly, but they know, and I know wherein their kindness lay. Ivan Allen; Samuel Beckett; Professor Peter Butter; Maurice Craig; Dr. H. Eyre-Maunsell; Dr. E. Fitzpatrick; Anthony Graham; Mrs. Hilda Graham; Patrick Graham; Professor Robert Hogan; Miss Bay Jellett; Mrs. Olda Kokoshka; Louis Le Brocquy; Sean McBride; Wil'liam McQuitty; Mr. and Mrs. J. Meddlycott; Mrs Morgan; Mrs. R. Phillips; Serge Phillipson; John Pilling; Barbara Purser; Mr. and Mrs. J.W.R.Purser; Sean Purser; Sarah Purser; Vasco Purser; Hilary Pyle; Helen Hooker-Roeloffs; Professor Robin Skelton; Dr. Clement Smith; Professor William Stewart; Mrs. F. Vickermann; Tim Vignoles; Victor Waddington; James White; Terence de Vere White; Anne Yeats; Michael Yeats. CONTENTS PAGE Abbreviations 1 Introduction and Summary 2 Chapter 1 Chronology Life 4 Works 15 Chapter 2 The Theatrical Context 21 Chapter 3 Creating a Theatrical Rhetoric: 32 The Deathly Terrace and the Silencer Chapter 4 The Trilogy: 42 Apparitions, The Old Sea Road and Rattle Chapter 5 The Context of War (1) 61 Harlequin's Positions and La La Noo Chapter 6 The Context of War (2) 76 Harlequin's Positions and La La Noo Chapter 7 The Context of War (3) 88 The Green Wave and In Sand Chapter 8 Jack Yeats and the Novel 97 Chapter 9 Sligo and Sailing Sailing Swiftly 108 Chapter 10 The Careless Flower and The Amaranthers 116 Chapter 11 The Charmed Life 140 Chapter 12 Ah Well and And To You Also 160 Chapter 13 Jack Yeats' Style 169 Conclusion 176 Appendix 1 BBC Interview Transcript 177 Appendix 2 Jack Yeats Manuscript Sources 187 Bibliography 188 Notes to the Introduction and Chapters 197 ABBREVIATIONS WRITINGS ON JACK B. YEATS Caldwell Martha Bell Caldwell. Jack B. Yeats. Painter of Life in the West of Ireland. PhD Thesis. Indiana 1970. Order No. 4648-A. Pyle Hilary Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Biography. London. RKP 1970. Skelton Robin Skelton. The Collected Plays of Jack B. Yeats. London. Seeker & Warburg 1971. Skelton 2 Robin Skelton. Themes and Attitudes in the Later Drama of Jack B. Yeats. Yeats Studies No.2, pp 100-120. Dublin. Irish University Press. Bealtaine 1972. Mays James Mays. Jack B.Yeats: Some Comments on His Books, in Irish University Review 2 i. Dublin. 1972. Rose Marilyn Gaddis Rose. Jack B. Yeats: Painter and Poet. European University Papers XVIII Volume 3. Berne. 1972. Murphy William M. Murphy. Prodigal Father. Ithaca. Cornell University Press 1978. McGuinness Nora McGuinness. The Creative Universe of Jack B.Yeats. PhD. Thesis. University of California. 1984. Order No. DA 8507315. NOVELS AND PLAYS BY JACK B. YEATS SI SLIGO Am THE AMARANTHERS SSS SAILING SAILING SWIFTLY CL THE CHARMED LIFE CF THE CARELESS FLOWER AW AH WELL ATYA AND TO YOU ALSO DT * THE DEATHLY' TERRACE Si THE SILENCER Ap APPARITIONS HP HARLEQUIN'S POSITIONS OSR THE OLD SEA ROAD LLN LA LA NOO Ra RATTLE GW THE GREEN WAVE - IS IN SAND The * following persons are referred to in the notes and text mostly by their surnames or initials only:- John Butler Yeats J.B.Y. W.B.Yeats W.B. George Russell A.E. Thomas Bodkin Joseph Hone Thomas MacGreevy John Quinn James Starkey The editions of Yeats' works referred to are, for all the plays/ Skelton; and for all the novels, the latest. This affects only The Charmed Life and Ah Well and And To You Also, but it is the pagination of these later editions that is referred to. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY "It is my considered opinion that he was a man full of deception."1 Victor Waddington, who wrote the above, was Jack Yeats' dealer for many years. He was therefore well placed to understand Yeats' relationship with the buying public, and his "considered opinion" has to be taken seriously. Being "full of deception" does not mean that he was positively deceiving people (Waddingtom made that clear), but it certainly ’ implies the more negative quality of deceptiveness, just as distances are deceptive in a mist. The trouble is that Yeats' literary works have thoroughly deceived his commentators and the question arises as to whether the mist is of his own creating, or simply the result of our not having wiped our spectacles. Jack Yeats did not write for literary critics any more than he painted for the art critics. He frequently failed to satisfy the latter, painting no portraits, no nudes, no still lives, no studied landscapes, his subject matter almost exclusively Irish and his style idiosyncratic. But he is regarded by many as Ireland's greatest painter and by a significant few as one of the masters of the twentieth century. Why have his writings failed so to impress? The answers are simple. Much of Jack Yeats' literary output is virtually unobtainable, even from libraries, and that includes all his third person novels. Nora McGuinness is the only person to have devoted a whole thesis to his writings. He is in the shadow of himself as a painter. He is in the shadow of his brother as a writer. But, crucially, he is very much cleverer than has been supposed -and, as with his work as a painter, he is unconventional and innovative. He has not so much been willfully deceptive as astonishingly misunderstood. Yeats was educated among people in the West of Ireland without the social and literary preconceptions of the universities. They had become wily, and clever in-their use of symbolism in order to deceive the authorities. They knew what was meant by "the dear silk of the kine", "the green linnet", "the bonny-bunch of roses" and "the garden so green". To such people an ace of clubs was obviously a shamrock and "the harp without a crown" required no explanation. They would have had a good guess at the bearing The Green Wave might have upon In Sand, and knowing what a Bowsie was, might well have understood why he was companioned by a man called No Matter in a novel called The Charmed Life. With this background in mind, and with the aid of evidence which has not previously been referred to, including a new chronology; new interpretations are given for many of his works and an over­ all pattern in the novels is revealed. The religious imagery of Thie Careless Flower and The Amaranthers is developed, and the significance of the theme of inheritance in The Amaranthers is brought out for the first time, allowing the two halves of the novel to be seen much more clearly as part of an integrated whole.