Mrs. W. B. Yeats: A Review Essay

Mrs. W. B. Yeats: A Review Essay Ann Saddlemyer Becoming George: The Life of Mrs. W. B. Yeats Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. xxiii + 808 pp. $35.00 K. P. S. JOCHUM Universität Bamberg THE CRITICAL READER of a biography, who is familiar with its subject, is likely to have a set of expectations. He (or she) will want to be given the facts, as far as they can be ascertained, preferably in chronological order, because the book, especially when it runs to more than 800 pages, will have to serve as a reference tool for future research. But the reader will also expect a certain unifying point of view or perspective that organizes the mass of details into a readable and sensible whole. Certainly, he will want discussions of a number of problems and unresolved questions that are known to exist. On 20 October 1917, Bertha Géorgie Hyde Lees (1892-1968) was married to William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) in a drab London Registry Office. What made an independent and well-educated woman of twenty-five marry a poet, twenty-seven years her senior, under such unglamorous circumstances? How did she react to the discovery that her husband actually wanted to marry somebody else? How did she cope with his prolonged periods of absence and his infidelities, platonic or otherwise? How do we have to understand the occult practices of both partners, in particular the sessions of automatic writing that began immediately after their marriage and lasted for several years? Did Mrs. Yeats, or George, as her husband called her (and as I will refer to her henceforth), fake automatic writing or, in Ann Saddlemyer's words, was "the bond that first linked them ... her hoax, a joint self-deception, or daimonic intervention" (xix)? What was George's role in the composition 400 JOCHUM : A REVIEW ESSAY of his works? How and to what extent did she control the publication of his works after his death? How does Ann Saddlemyer deal with George's alcoholism, how with the vexed question of who is buried next to her in Drumcliffe Churchyard, her husband or, as has been suggested, an entire stranger? Ann Saddlemyer, retired Professor of English (University of Toronto), is well equipped to deal with these questions. She has been active in Yeats studies since the 1960s; she knew Mrs. Yeats personally and has had the full cooperation of the Yeats family. She has also profited from the reminiscences of Yeats scholars who knew Mrs. Yeats (Birgit Bramsbäck, Richard Ellmann, A. Norman Jeffares, Virginia Moore, and others). She has sifted a mountain of letters, manuscripts, and official documents, many of them hitherto unknown, as well as much-published material to produce an exhaustive and well-written narrative. The book is a treasure-house of Yeats material and will stimulate further research . But she is also aware of the fact that George Yeats would not have wanted a biography written about her, an impediment that has rendered much of the research difficult. The book is clearly structured in three major parts. "Géorgie" describes the young woman prior to her marriage; "George" deals with her twenty-two years of married life; "Mrs. W B." is the person she became after her husband's death, an executrix in more than a legal sense and an institution in her own right. Inside this great scheme there is another sensible structure, adequately described by the headings "Progressions ," "Conjunctions" (a word which Yeats would have appreciated), "Directions," "Transits," and "Mapping." Closely observed, however, some of these headings apply equally to George's and her husband's life, and this hints at another problem with which the book has to struggle. Is it possible to write a biography of George Yeats while, at the same time, minimizing the role of her husband? Professor Saddlemyer is convinced that it can be done: "WBY and his circle remain peripheral to the central figure, entering only as she encountered them or they somehow affected her life" (xx). She strives assiduously to live up to her promise, but is not always successful (for which Yeats scholars will be grateful). Many of the twenty-two chapter headings...