Letter from George Yeats to Thomas MacGreevy. 26 July 1926.
[p.1 recto]Ballylee
Gort
July 26
My dear Tom.
I do think itsDraft of which poem?note improved, if my recollections of its father and grandfather are correct, but I still feel that each variation is its own theme and the main theme is built up out of all the variations instead of vice versa. WB. of course thought it too modern, too difficult, too EzraticInfluenced by Ezra Pound.note, and was intolerant of it because it hadnt the tightness of Red Hugh.
Chewing the cud over your expostulations on Anglo-Ireland that other day it occurred to me that truth was only to be discovered
in an uncivilised country by the highly civilised and slightly mad foreigner. By foreigner I mean the object of your animosity,
the Anglo-Irishman; probably the "native" can achieve the high civilisation and slight madness necessary bye a prolonged visit to some other country provided that he does not return to the motherland out of patriotism. Patriotism
would destroy any country, its going to destroy England very soon. Up to about the middle of the war we wernt patriotic, everyone
else was doing everything much better than we were, everyone elses goods were much better than ours. Thebn in spite of winning we began to come rather badly out of it, our unemployment iswas worse than anyone else's, we are very well hated by every other nation, we have a royalty who knits and [p.2 recto]collects postage stamps, breeds first rate bulls and fifth rate race horses, and so we have had to become patriotic to explain
all these things to ourselves and hide them from the world. For heavens sake dont become a wild goose Tom. I dont really like fat undulating Arnoldian countryPresumably Middlesex and the area surrounding London.note but your writing of it made me hate this arid stony ghost ridden country.
WELL... if not looking at postmarks or commenting on handwritings ("except Lennox's"....) is all the recommendations that you can make of her domestically....
Lennox is to get £400 a year from the Abbey which will make things easier, but its still a secret — W. told him a few days ago but its not finally arranged.
I havent been reading anything, my eyes have been troublesome and so I have to keep them till the evenings until we go to Dublin (for more than a weekend). There's no chance of W. going anywhere in the evening here, and his own eyes are rather bad at the moment.
You dont say if your headaches got any better?
Yours
George