{"id":9786,"date":"2010-01-07T10:39:02","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T15:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9786"},"modified":"2020-11-16T09:27:28","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T14:27:28","slug":"gonne-and-yeats-a-fragment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9786","title":{"rendered":"Gonne and Yeats: a fragment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ella Young wrote in her autobiography Flowering Dusk<\/i> of her glimpses of Maud Gonne and WB Yeats:<\/p>\n

I see her standing with WB Yeats, the poet, in front of Whistler’s Miss Alexander in the Dublin gallery where some pictures by Whistler are astonishing a select few. These two people delight the bystanders more than the pictures. Everyone stops looking at canvas and manoeuvres himself or herself into a position to watch these two. They are almost of equal height. Yeats has a dark, romantic cloak about him; Maud Gonne has a dress that changes colour as she moves. They pay no attention to the stir they are creating; they stand there discussing the picture.<\/p>\n

I catch sight of them again in the reading room of the National Library. They have a pile of books between them and are consulting the books and each other. No one else is consulting a book. Everyone is conscious of those two as the denizens of a woodland lake might be conscious of a flamingo, or of a Japanese heron, if it suddenly descended among them.<\/p>\n

Later, in the narrow curve of Grafton Street, I notice people are stopping and turning their heads. It is Maud Gonne and the poet. She has a radiance as of sunlight. Yeats, that leopard of the moon, holds back in a leash a huge lion-coloured Great Dane – Maud Gonne’s dog, Dagda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am glad THEY were able to find Grafton Street<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\"FP20Maud20Gonne.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\n\"w-b-yeats.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\nI just love reading about the two of them. It makes me feel lonely, but it connects me to something deep and continuous as well.<\/p>\n

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