Letter from Thomas MacGreevy to George Yeats. 17 February 1927.
[p.1 recto]Ecole Normale Superieure
45 rue d'Ulm
Paris Vme
17 February 1927
My dearGeorge,
How stupid of me. The point in writing when I sent the scenario was to give you my new address and tell you I was leaving last Saturday and I suppose I forgot. Anyhow, I did leave and here I am feeling very much on the whole as if I were in Brighter Dublin! but doing little but cope with my students, get myself arranged and persuade Alan to buy the Paderewski Liszt Rhapsodie for his gramophone instead of Tea for Two.
Alec Martin was keen enough about my going to Dublin I think. If he weren't I should regard my chances of getting it as fantastically slight. But he and W.B. together would probably mean also Sarah Purser, Dermod O'Brien, Hanson, even Lavery — six notes in all. However Bodkin appeared with a tale that seemed more like a wish than a fact that the "Free State Government" had approached him begging him to take the job and offering to give him not only the job in addition to his present job but also an assistant who could do his present work — for I suppose a couple of hundred a year! [p.1 verso]The Bodkins are of course remarkable but I don't see the Free State being quite as idiotically interested in Bodkin or his being at the Gallery as all that.
Yes my job here is year to year and this academic year's work comes to an end in June. Has the Gallery post been advertised yet? I'd have to send a formal application. Grundy is frantically interested in my going to Dublin. He has made me Paris correspondent of The Connoisseur (only for views of old pictures — nothing about these Bolshevik moderns). He was in America as representative of the British museums association and is full of ideas for energising museums on this side and as a result of what he saw there and he thinks I might consider some of the American ways — and why not? He also said he would reproduce some of the pictures in the gallery in The Connoisseur — they are I believe quite genuinely the best reproductions of their kind — and paying his share of the expenses leave the blocks to the gallery for future use etc. That he said could be done anyway probably but that he'd rather work with me etc. etc.
I hope Lady G. is better & that W.B. keeps well.
Love always to all
Tom
Excellent about Dolly
AM says he told Bodkin he'd vote for me if there was an election. Here I am getting in touch with Louvre people and others re "Connoisseur" which should help too. The ?? of Ecole knows them all.