I hope you enjoy this new extract from my upcoming novel, A Life Before, a literary romance that tells the coming-of-age stories of the poet and mage, WB Yeats, and the English heiress turned Irish revolutionary, Maud Gonne. In this extract, WB's behaviour with his first love, and muse, shares much with his attitude to Maud Gonne. The narrator is Rosy Cross, "the oldest woman in Ireland", writing up these events 100 years after they happened.
His behaviour with his first love, and muse, shares much with his attitude to Maud Gonne.
He’d first met Laura a few years ago, when his family lived in Howth and she was spending a summer there. He’d been walking up the road towards home, lost in one of his reveries, when she pulled up her pony-drawn carriage alongside him. “Hello, I am Laura Armstrong,” she said, nodding a headful of red curls at him.
His first impression was of a pretty girl, unchaperoned and hatless, leaning down from the shaky cart. An ungloved hand—blue-white, with a dusting of faint, wondrous freckles—presented itself. At the touch of her hand, a shiver coursed through him, starting from the fingertips and sprawling across his being. He’d have like to present himself as a gallant bard, with a grand bow and a kiss for the fair maiden’s hand but all he could rise to was allowing his hand to be held until she dropped it. She said:
“I believe we have friends in common. You are one of the Yeats family, are you not? Residing at ‘Island View’?”
“Yes. I am William Butler Yeats."
"Well that's quite the mouthful. What do your sisters call you?"
"Willie."
“I believe, Willie… In fact, I’m told as a matter of certitude that I am your cousin.”
“Cousin?”
“Hop up, and I’ll explain.”
“I have to be home for tea,” he said, though it wasn’t true. His family was quite happy for him to roam the hills and would leave his collation under wraps in the pantry.
“Don’t worry, I’ll have you home in time for tea.”
He sat into the carriage. It was one of those old-fashioned contraptions with a high seat for the driver and a bench for passengers. Her perfume was sweet, a scent of violets. She flicked the reins, and explained how her father, an army sergeant, was distantly related to his. “I’m something like your fifteenth cousin twenty times removed,” she said, looking at him with intense, expectant eyes.
They rode along the road, apparently going nowhere, the clop, clop, clop of the pony's hooves beating beneath her sentences, which were mostly questions. Did he know Kid Rock House, where she was lodging, Judge Wright’s home? Was it true that he wrote poetry? She wanted to be an actress, perhaps he would pen a play for her? Did he ever feel like the island was watching them, as if something hiding in the dark was about to reveal that they were part of it? Was he still at school?
“I am about to start at the Art College.”
“Your father, I believe, is an artist?”
He nodded assent.
“And you are to follow in his footsteps?
“We are unsure. I had thought to be scientist.”
She looks at him, sceptical. “Really? I think it must be rather marvellous to be an artist, and to have an artist for a father. All my father thinks of is money and getting on. ‘Laura’,” she boomed in imitation of her father’s voice. ‘You have but one job. To find a well-heeled husband before you are one-and-twenty.”
She was a good mimic. He laughed.
“Then I say: “But what of love, Papa?” And he replies, ‘Oh love! You need not worry about love’.”
She was now promised to a certain Mr Henry Morgan Byrne who, she confided, did not deserve her. She detailed his painful doings, most of which amounted to him not giving her enough attention, and none of which sounded overly painful to WB, but the heart-hurt in her eyes was real, and the blaze of her anger too. She stopped the cart to show WB a letter in which Mr Byrne apologized for giving her pain and wished to make amends.
“My heart is too full of wanderlust, Cousin Willie, that's the problem. I yearn to explore this wide world of ours, to soak in all its splendor and mystery. I feel sure you understand me? I know you have a soul like mine. You want to voyage the vast seas, do you not? Climb rugged mountainsides, trek through jungles, and unearth hidden treasures in far-off lands? Sometimes I dream of a finer man sweeping me off my feet, before I bind myself to Henry.”
WB felt a great “yes!” forming inside. She dropped him home in time for tea, as promised, and he agreed to call to her at the Judge’s house next day. The prospect filled him excitement and dread in equal measure. Judge Wright owned the house they lived in and Father was, as ever, behind with the rent.
He went to tea, and she pulled him into her confidence, and he was soon caught in the tempest of her engagement, endless tiffs and tenderness, quarrelling and making up, that saw him tossed about in a sea of envy, rising and plunging between hopes buoyed and hopes dashed.
She asked him to write a play for her. Here, he had the advantage over Henry, and he made a grab for it. He cast her as the witch Vivien, a manipulative female character well known to drawing-room audiences through Mr Tennyson’s Merlin and Vivien. He introduced the character of the minstrel swain, Clarin, and gave Vivien her comeuppance for manipulating all before her and casting spells on poor Clarin and his virtuous lady love. Old Father Time saw her off in a game of chess.
On the night of the performance, the flickering gaslights washed Judge Wright’s packed drawing room in a golden glow, making the opulent tapestries and gold-trimmed frames shimmer and shine. And there, amidst all the grandeur, stood Laura, a sight to behold. With the tilt of her regal head, she held the audience captive, conjuring emotions without uttering a word. Truth be told, the plot of the play, an allegorical mystery wrapped in a riddle, was lost on the audience but knew the witch was no good and when her demise came, a great sigh of satisfaction swept through.
Then came the applause, suitably hearty, and praises for Laura pouring in. Judge Wright, with his booming voice declared it "A fine show, fine show indeed!" with real admiration and WB took the praise as his. Even better, Laura grew sultry in the glow of attention, touching his arm and his hand and once even his face, thanking him for revealing her true calling.
With Henry due to get the old heave-ho, WB sat to pen a new yarn, "The Island of Statues”, about a hunter on a quest to steal a magic flower that promised the ancient elvish knowledge and the secret of ongoing youth. He felt himself like a bee drunk on nectar, darting this way and that between all the new poems and ideas that were springing in his mind, and more significantly, blooming out onto the page. With Laura there, he wasn’t just thinking about work, or pushing himself to the page, or getting started only to stop. No more dabbling or dilly-dallying. With her by his side, the end wasn't just in sight; it was reached, touched, and celebrated! He felt wonderful, as if he’d been kissed by the faerie gods himself.
Of course he didn’t stop dreaming. He saw visions of the masterpieces he’d create, each one grander than the last. He felt her spirit weaving into his tales, their souls like two vines intertwining. The world now seemed vast and possibilities endless. With each tale he spun, they'd create a legacy, a treasure trove to enrich the dreams of future generations, etching their names into the annals of history. Oh how he dreamed.
Only that’s not how it turned out. Within eight weeks, the lady Laura was wed to her solicitor.
When she told him she’d set her mind to the marriage, they’d taken a final afternoon out at her suggestion, to walk out to the lake north-east of Howth, towards Kinsealy. It was early autumn. As they walked, she was uncharacteristically silent, collecting leaves in silence, thrusting them into her hair and bosom. He knew this gesture for what it was, a silent homage to Mosada, another dramatic poem he’d been writing for her.
When they sat, in a glade by the lake, she let her hair down, so it was an intoxicating, cascading mass of chestnut and fire, studded with foliage and bathed in the glow of autumn sun. She looked so fierce, so untamed, a falcon not yet used to the hand. “And all was dimness till a dying leaf slid circling down,” she said. She was quoting lines from his play, words by the character Mosada he had composed for her. “And softly touched my lips with dew, as though 'twere sealing them for death…”
He quoted the next line. “See how thick the dew lies on my face. I never knew a night so dew be-drowned.”
“Oh my dear Clarin," she said, veering away from his lines, in a voice that held a real tremor. Her intense, wild energy gave an almost feral gleam to her eyes. "You do know that dew is not tears?" And then she started to cry.
He sat looking at her, not knowing in the least how to comfort her, feeling like someone caught out in a sudden summer storm, who doesn’t know where to run for cover. Underneath was a desire to manfully sweep her into his arms, and shield her from whatever was whipping up this emotion, but the stronger urge to flee kept him rooted and unmoving.
She shook her head, impatient, and started to run in circles around him, a whole weight of sorrow and anger in her wild motions. Each time she circled, her breathing grew more ragged, her movements more frantic. Her laughter, high and eerie, both alarmed and captivated him. She was a woman hunted by her own choices into frenzied chaos, trying to outrun her own reality. Then as suddenly as she’d started she stopped, and collapsed into a heap beside him, breath heaving, and laid her head in his lap.
“Just promise me,” she said, staring into his eyes, “that we two shall meet somewhere in the footsore world, before we die. Promise me that when I call for you, you will come.”
Deeply touched, he’d made the vow. And for the first time he said to himself: I shall write about this.
Ephemera by WB Yeats
…The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
In bosom and hair.
'Ah, do not mourn,' he said,
'That we are tired, for other loves await us;
Hate on and love through unrepining hours.
Before us lies eternity; our souls
Are love, and a continual farewell.'
* * *
To Be continued... Next extract in two weeks. This book will launch in autumn 2023.
