Fiction for Patrons: WB Yeats Publishes His First Poems

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 attempts to publish his first poems in the Dublin University Review. This is a fictionalisation of last week's open post, which you can read here.

If you’ve ever been to Dublin, you’ll have likely passed, or maybe even visited Trinity College, or TCD as some like to call it. The college was created, chartered she liked to call it, by the first Queen Elizabeth. She was one clever lady and she made it her job to firm the footing of the Protestant English in Ireland. Great power the power of knowledge gave them, as she knew it would, and to this day people queue up in Trinity College to see the all their stately trappings of old learning.

In my Dublin days, I used to always walk through its grounds to get from College Green to Nassau street. In under the arch, across the cobbled quad, past the old stone buildings so in love with themselves. Hard to blame them, and I loved them too, and the illuminated manuscripts and ancient books in the hallowed halls with vaulted ceilings anyone's allowed into. Anyone with the fee.

Back in old '80s, it was a different place. They'd let the Catholics in but they weren't too keen. They had ding-dongs going between Home Rulers and Unionists, And the first smell of suffrage demands was hitting their noses.

They were a noisy crew, who loved debating societies and talking clubs for the sound of their own arguments landing a point. The young scholar making the most noise was the energetic, Charles Hubert Oldham, leader of the Protestant Home Rulers, a group that was none too big in Trinity College.

Oldham had won gold medals in physics and mathematics but he was more interested in literature and politics and every Saturday, he invited like-minded students and scholars to his College rooms for informal discussions over tea and a pipe. The year prior, he'd approached the poet-journalist T. W. Rolleston to launch a magazine for such readers, The Dublin University Review. A high-toned monthly that invited political contributions from conflicting opinions.

This magazine gave WB his first publication, when they published two songs from his long dramatic poem, The Island of Statues in this magazine: “Song of the Fairies” and “Voices”. If there's nothing a debater loves better than the sound of their own voice, there's nothing a writer loves more than the sight of their name in print. Especially the first time. He nearly had a hole worn in the page he started at it that often and that hard.

What he wanted now was to get them to publish his entire play. Oldham came to the National Library sometimes, so he started going every day in the hopes of seeing him, and asking.

Days passed without a sign, then one Wednesday in he came and WB, after all the desire to see him, was suddenly reluctant. He hated being in the asking place and the request felt like a heavy ball chained to his back that he had to drag across the room in front of all. Others might even be watching, seeing his humiliating position. But stronger than his pride was his wish to see his little play up and out in the world. And he had to get him before he settled to his books, so over he went.

After a few pleasantries, he got to the point, and made his request. Oldham adopted a stance of pursed lips over steepled fingers to convey that wasn't impressed with such forwardness. He was a stripling, tyro who should've been undyingly grateful for any publication at all. “My dear fellow! That could easily take up our entire issue.”

“I meant—“

“The best I can do is commit two pages. One more if absolutely necessary."

"I meant--"

"We'd be pleased to consider any other pieces you may have that fit.”

He turned back to his books and WB clenched his fists, to stop himself from pleading. “I should clarify. What I meant, of course, was as a serialisation. Over some months.”

“I’m not sure if it’s good enough for such treatment, to be honest.”

WB blushed at the blunt rebuff, but kept going. "Thank you for your honesty, Oldham. I appreciate your feedback."

He softened. “Perhaps it is me. Political economy is my game, as you know, not poetry. Perhaps I'm too dull to understand it.”

WB took this as encouragement and started to explain. "The island represents the land of dreams, removal from family and country. The solitude that is only possible away from real life. The statues are..."

“Yes, yes. Would you be willing to read it to a gathering of critics and let them decide?”

“Critics?”

“Oh, just a group of our students. A select few. I’d love to know what Bury thinks.”

JB Bury was a contemporary of WB, and a rising intellectual star. Just the thought of him filled WB with trepidation. He hadn’t had sufficient confidence in his own academic abilities to sit the Trinity College entrance exams. It was a moot point, in the main, as his father couldn’t afford the fees. That was why he’d been sent to the art college, with his sisters. It wasn't moot in this this context. Tormented by shyness, he quailed at the prospect of reading to an audience that included such a figure.

"Come to my chambers in Trinity College on Saturday and read for us," Oldham said, and turned to his work in a way that said, interview over.

All week he practiced. When he got there he found Oldham has invited quite a large audience.

Oldham introduced him by telling them about his father who’d forsaken the Dublin Bar to be a painter, who possessed a great appreciation for literature and the written word, and who'd raised his son to be an artist and poet.

It was terrifying. He knew he was writing in the traditional English romantic movement, when they were all about the nesw.

And though his play was ambitious piece, it was an imitation of Spenser and, as his father said, he wrote too much from the life of books, rather than the life of life.

In the early part of the play Naschina, the heroine, is indifferent to Alimintor but when he is captured on an enchanted island she pines for him, and sets out to find him, leaving behind two shepherds fighting over her. Arriving on the island she is greeted by those there as the person “long years ago foretold” to end the powers of the enchantress. She is able to wake Alimintor and the other statues who are all figures from ancient stories—Knights of the Round Table, characters from The Iliad and The Aeneid--but possessing "the goblin flower of joy" she now embodies some of those important romantic obstructions of signify the possibility of transcending the everyday,

To her that wears that bloom comes truth,

And elvish wisdom, and long years of youth,

Beyond a mortal’s year.

Alimentor was experiencing for Nachina—a beautiful young woman who can create great hurt and discord but also bring intense happiness—what WB had been feeling for his own lost love, Laura Armstrong. The struggle to entertain and enrich the life of a sometimes interested, often indifferent lover. Alimentor gets nowhere and at the end, needs her more than she him. Nachina, like Laura, is a powerful force.

Oh, more dark thy gleaming hair is

Than the peeping pansy’s face,

And thine eyes more bright than faery’s,

Dancing in some moony place,

And thy neck’s a poisèd lily;

see I tell thy beauties o'er.

As within a cellar chilly

Some old miser tells his store;

And thy memory I keep,

Till all else is empty chaff.

Till I laugh when others weep,

Weeping when all others laugh.

His voice grew in strength as he read, and by the time he reached the end of the play, a hush had descended over the audience, but they didn't seem to realize it was over. Then, a few scattered claps broke the silence, and the others followed suit.

Afterwards, e was left alone for an embarrassing few moments with Bury, for a brief abrupt conversation, all through which he felt terrible turmoil and feelings of inadequacy. Then he found himself talking to a schoolmaster. They were both silent, going into their minds to try to gather some words but failing find them.

Eventually WB blurted, “I know you will defend the education system by saying that it strengthens the will. I disagree. It only seems to do so because it weakens the impulses.”

The master looked at him astonished and WB stopped, overtaken by shyness.

Oldham came over, and slapped his back. “Well done, m'boy. Well done."

He felt he hadn't been thoroughly impressed. But had he passed the test? He had no idea. Oldham would send him word on the morrow.

To Be continued... Next extract in two weeks. This book will launch in autumn 2023.