Letter from Thomas MacGreevy to Ernie O'Malley. 9 February 1940.
c/o Stanley Mann Esq.
8 Holland Villas Road,
London W.14.
9th February 1940
Dear Ernest,
That was a pleasant surprise to get a letter from you. I thought you must have gone off to America or somewhere for the summer and been unable to get back. For you had never made a sign since I sent you off the information they gave me at the National Gallery about the preservation in our unfriendly climate of your pictures and ikons.See O'Malley's letter of 27 June 1939.note Did you get it all right? And how have the works been faring? I daresay this dry if otherwise terrible winter has been less harmful to them than the usual dampness.
Except from my sisters in Kerry I get
practically no news from Ireland. Lennox Robinson and Jack Yeats write an odd time but
never "newsily". Mrs. [p.1 recto]Paul HenryGrace Henry, a noted painter
in her own rightnote writes too, but sketchily. She sent me a poem of
Colum's with a delightful
Jack Yeats drawingJack
Yeats's and Padraic
Colum's collaboration went back to 1908 when Yeats solicited poems from Padraic Colum for A
Broadside. note for a frontispiece published by the
Gayfield PressThe press was run by the poet Blanaid Salkeld (1880-1958)
and her son, the painter Cecil
ffrench Salkeld (1904-1969) from their home in
Morehampton Road.note apparently one of a
series by "Dublin Poets and Artists." I hope they
also do things by a younger generation than that of Jack Yeats and Colum. Or is there any kick in the
younger generation? Brian Coffey
sent me a card as from himself, his wife and his son but sent no address.
Somebody said the whole family lived in Clonskea now.
Denis Devlin's sister
tells me he is in Washington
now.I wonder what he makes of it after
Rome and Paris.Devlin
(1908-1959), a poet and friend of MacGreevy's, decided in 1935 on a career in the
Department of Foreign Affairs rather than an
academic career for which he was being groomed. In 1938 he was posted to
Rome as first secretary in the legation to
Italy. In 1939 he was appointed consul at the
Consulate General in New York, and the following
year was appointed first secretary in the Irish legation to
Washington.note Nobody ever crooned more
over old cultural things smiling through new than he did. I think if I had
to go to America I'd re-read my Henry James. His "Ambassadors" which I re-read after twenty-four years just
recently is the loveliest expression of the American search for what is
choice in human nature against the own
immemorial background that I know. Helen — I
forgot[p.2 verso] whether I am allowed
the liberty of her Christian name — probably knows it, but I
wonder whether you'd have the patience with it. I have to write a book on
the Louvre In late 1939
MacGreevy proposed to
R Holme, the Director of The
Studio, that he author a monograph entitled The Louvre and the Story of European Painting. MacGreevy already served
as chief
Art Critic for the magazine, and the idea was quickly approved.
Negotiations between MacGreevy
and The Studio got bogged down in
contractional details, and the monograph was never written.note and I
chose to re-read The Ambassadors
which in retrospect seemed to me the best preparation for
Paris that had had before I knew it — in
the way of books of course — the very first morning I landed at
Le Havre in the last war I recognized that I had
found something that I had wanted if I was to have faith in the world, and
every French peasant I was billeted on confirmed the fact.MacGreevy
jointed the Royal Field Artillery in March
1917, and on 20 December 1918 began his tour of duty when he disembarked
at Le Havre after sailing overnight from
Southampton. MacGreevy served as a Second Lieutenant on the Western
Front through October 1918 when wounded severely enough to be sent back
to England to convalesce.note But I was right
about Henry James's book too. I found
on re-reading it that it was everything I remembered it to have been a
quarter of a century earlier. I haven't read Cousine Bette or Cousin Pons or Pere Goriot. I think I shrink from immersing
myself in the hideousness of the new bourgeoisme of the early nineteenth century as Balzac depicts it. No doubt it is true, but human nature is
more comprehensive than that, and so I have[p.2 recto] limited myself to the Balzac books that are less purely "social" in the matter of
background. Dolly Lennox Robinson
gave me a complete set but they are in Ireland and I
haven't read half of them. The other day I re-read Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu but it did
not seem as good as I used to think it. Yeats used to get rapturous about Louis Lambert and Sacha Guitry has a story that when
somebody asked [unclear]
Wilde
what was the greatest sorrow of his life he said "The death
ofLucien de Rubempré"
but I don't think I ever really loved any book
or any character in a book by Balzac, whereas nearly everything and everybody in Diderot seems to me to be lovable, and
the few, like Madame de Pommeraye, who
are not, are pitiful even in their revoltingness. You are made to realize
that circumstances of character and environment are as much to blame
anything else for human unhappiness, and that lack of intelligence is the
greatest of all misfortunes since it leads to greater or lesser inability to
get a grip on the essentials of goodness, the [p.3 verso]source of all real happiness. Was Balzac Nazi by tendency? I think from my
memory of his book on Catherine de
Medicis that he was. If he was, it would account for
Yeats' enthusiasm for him and (I
hope) for my reserves about him.Yeats openly admired the apparent
achievements of Italy in the 1920s, and was
skeptical about the efficacy of democratic governments. In early 1933 he
aligned himself with the Irish Fascist movement the
Blueshirts, who, under the leadership of Eoin O'Duffy, was ready to overthrow
the government in Ireland were the Communists to
assume power. Yeats composed several
marching songs for the Blueshirts, although by 1934 he distanced himself
from the movement, and revised the songs for publication in the English
magazine the Spectator. note God preserve us
all. Your saying that revenge is as important a motive as love in Cousine Bette reminds one of
Adolf Hitler with his love for
Germany taking the form of revenge for
Versailles (as tho'
Versailles had not been in a way a revenge on
Germany and the result inthe Europe of to-day). This illuminatus
tends to be a bit of a cretin as well. There is a tragically absurd picture
of Adolf in the Valkyrie-like but
luxurious perch he has built for himself 6000 feet up in the mountains at
Berchetesgaden,Built in the
Bavarian Alps between
Germany and Austria for
Hitler's fiftieth
birthday, the "Eagle's Nest" was a futuristic folly accessible via a
lift-shaft carved out of the mountain. Below was an SS barracks and a
hotel for the thousands of pilgrims who flocked there daily.note in
the French Yellow Book.A
collection of diplomatic papers and documents related to the events and
negotiations which preceded the opening of hostilities between
Germany, on the one hand, and
Poland, Great Britain,
and France on the other.note One wonders
whether he sings Ho-yo-to-ho like BrynhildeFrom Wagner's Ring Cycle
which MacGreevy had
watched in its entirety many times, the first time in 1924 at the
Royal Opera. note to keep up his spirits, to
try and escape from his famous depression. Coulondre, the French Ambassador in
Berlin, seemed to me to come out of the whole sorry
business as an honest man. And a French honest man is the grandest person in
the world — at any rate this side of China.
I've been reading Arthur
Waley's translations of the Chinese poets and loving them for
their sensitively sympathetic detachment.
You didn't think we had any pictures at the National Gallery now? I helped to
take them all down during the ten days before the[p.1 recto] war.
MacGreevy began preparing
for the evacuation of the artwork in April 1939 at the behest of
William Gibson,
the Keeper of the National
Gallery. Throughout the spring and summer MacGreevy took part in drills as a
volunteer with the Air Raid Protection Services. In
August 1939, he worked tirelessly in the evacuation of the art work to
caves in Wales. note Alas, I had been
lecturing at the NG — with great success tho' I says it
— all the summer and was booked to go on all thro' the winter. But
now it's all off and my income which looked as if I might begin to be
solvent has in consequence been reduced by half. I am not grateful to the
Hitlers of the world who are
responsible for the war that put me back where I was. But one must go on
waiting one's time patiently and believing that God, or good sense or
whatever one likes to call it, will give one one's turn just the same, in
spite off all the politicians, whether they be
cretinous illuminati or unimaginative dullards. This
loss of income played a significant role in MacGreevy's decision to return to
Dublin.note
God's blessing and my love to you all.
Tom.
Dr. P. Browne might lend you Diderot's Jacques le fataliste if you can't buy a copy. You must read it. It is frivolous and wise and good at the same time. A kindly sense of humour — what Rousseau and perhaps Balzac lacked — what Adolf lacks too.