IT was not until after the publication of my first book that I made friends with anybody who was trying to write, or indeed practise any kind of art. At my prep school-Miss Hardy's-there had been Robert Lynd, but I did not know him well, though I remember walking with him and two other boys to Lisburn and back, along the banks of the Lagan. At my next school, the Royal Academical Institution-always called "Inst"-were J. W. Good and Paul Henry, but the latter, I think, was there only for two or three terms, and at any rate I had merely a nodding acquaintance with both. Lynd and Paul Henry eventually went to London; Good remained at home and joined the staff of a local newspaper, The Northern Whig. Those three were friends, but, as I say, I hardly knew them at that time, though later I became friends with Good and Paul Henry-of Lynd I never saw very much.
It was towards the end of my business career that The Kingdom of Twilight appeared, and an early result was that I learned of the existence in Belfast of a very minor echo of the Dublin literary and dramatic movement. The Ulster Literary Theatre had been founded, and had produced two plays-The Reformers, by David Parkhill, and Brian of Banba, by Bulmer Hobson. The experiment was written up in the columns of The Whig by Good, and in another paper, The Evening Telegraph, by Rathcol (W. B. Reynolds). Moreover, in imitation of Yeats's magazine Samhain, a literary quarterly called Ulad had been started, under the joint editorship of Reynolds and Parkhill, and it was from the former that I received a note asking me to call upon him.
The month was, I think, "the bleak December", and the hour between seven and eight, when I set out to pay this visit. I lived on the Malone Road, Reynolds in lodgings on the Antrim Road, so I had to take two trams and had plenty of opportunity to wonder what he wanted and what he would be like. I was at that time very shy of meeting strangers, but the moment I was shown into his sitting-room I knew there was no cause for alarm. A third person was present, but of him I can remember nothing except that he was sent out at once to the nearest pub to buy a bottle of marsala-then, though not later-the favourite drink of Reynolds-and that throughout the evening he rarely uttered a word.
My first impression of Reynolds was that he looked rather odd. He had thin sandy hair, a smallish face, and large round spectacles through the thick lenses of which he blinked at me benevolently. Years afterwards I described him, under the name of Bingham, in a long short story called Furnished Apartments, but I didn't like the story and never published it. Reynolds no doubt was plain, yet to my mind this plainness was completely redeemed by a pleasant and almost childishly innocent expression. He was, in fact, a distinctly pleasant person, and I liked him from the beginning. He told me of the Ulster Renaissance; he told me of the new quarterly that had been started; he gave me a copy of the first number, and he asked me to write something for the second. He had already received poems from A. E. and Padraic Colum; plays from Joseph Campbell, Parkhill, and Bulmer Hobson; he had been promised articles by Stephen Gwynn and Roger Casement; and the Celtic design on the cover was by John Campbell. Reynolds was eloquent, optimistic, and extremely enthusiastic: I felt ignorant, bewildered, and very much out of it. Although Irish, I had never been interested in politics ("a bloody scandal!", as Good used to say later), had never distinguished in my mind north from south, and the Ulster propaganda did not particularly appeal to me. It was not what to-day would be called Ulster propaganda, since it was definitely nationalist, and merely insisted that Ulster should play its part in the Irish Revival. I had no objection to that naturally, but I could not see why there should be two camps, nor why what Reynolds called "the Ulster genius" should necessarily be, as he said it was, satiric. If it came to that, it was the first time I had heard of "the Ulster genius", and I had certainly seen no sign of it. Therefore I listened to Reynolds without conviction. I didn't know what Ulad meant; I didn't know why Joseph Campbell should call himself Seosamh MacCathmhaóil. It seemed to me a most difficult name to pronounce, and since Reynolds got over that by pronouncing it Joe, the difficulty still remains. I asked him what he would like me to write, and received a sudden clue as to the real bent of his interests when he replied without a moment's hesitation, "an essay on The Future of Irish Opera."
The suggestion was highly characteristic, but I did not know this then, and it depressed me, I didn't believe in either the past, present, or future of Irish opera. It was not that I couldn't imagine it; it was rather because I could-in all its dreadfulness-having once sat through a performance of Stanford's Shemus O'Brien. But Irish opera, like English opera, was a thing to which I had learned to give a wide berth. Moreover, my sole qualification for writing about any kind of opera consisted in the fact that I was a devotee, and made an annual pilgrimage to Covent Garden. To me this appeared insufficient. Reynolds, however, found it perfectly satisfactory; so I had to refuse definitely, and imagined the interview to be at an end. But I did not know my Reynolds. In the twinkling of an eye opera was dismissed. The article might deal with any subject I liked, so long as it related to Ireland-preferably to Ulster, since the purpose of the magazine was to boost the Ulster movement.
I must say Reynolds was remarkably good-natured, for my failure to respond continued. It was not due to obstinacy; it was merely that I did not see how writing could ever be anything but the expression of an individuality, while Reynolds, I gathered, thought it should be the expression of the policy and aspirations of a group. He did not share Matthew Arnold's disapproval of thinking in batches of fifty: far from it. Everybody was to write expressing the aims of the group, and from the same point of view-which, in the event, to do him justice, was what actually happened. In the end we compromised, and I agreed to write a paper on the Lane collection of pictures, then on exhibition in the Harcourt Street Gallery in Dublin.
I did so, but I headed it, "Tout paysage est un état d'âme", and I knew it merely shelved the problem, which indeed cropped up again with my contribution to the May number. This was a short story about a little boy, and was called Pan's Pupil. I gave it to Reynolds diffidently, and he received it in silence. I guessed what he was thinking while he turned the leaves. There were so many Irish gods, and Pan was not one of them: there were so many little boys who spoke the Ulster dialect, and mine was not one of them. In self-defence I mentioned that I did not talk in dialect myself, and for that matter neither did he, though both of us had been born and had lived all our lives in Ulster. But I could see that to Reynolds the excuse rang hollow. Besides, the story was not satiric, and he had this theory about the Ulster genius firmly embedded in his soul-had even put it into practice himself by writing a parody on the overture to Tannhäuser, using Orange tunes as his themes.
Pan's Pupil nevertheless appeared, but my contributions to the August number did not. These, though in prose, had been inspired by the Greek Anthology, and their subjects were grasshoppers, trees, dogs, and our old friend the Lagan. If I couldn't be more Ulster than that! the expression on the face of Reynolds seemed to reproach me. And yet they were Ulster. The grasshopper was as busy and as happy on the banks of the Lagan as ever he had been on those of the Ilissos, and it wasn't my fault if he still played the same music. The things had been written on the spot, with my eye on the object, and as the spirit moved me. I admit they were also written with the feeling that if the members of the Ulad council didn't like them they could do the other thing.
The visit Reynolds paid me to announce that they didn't like them was memorable. From the hushed solemnity of his manner my first impression was that something tragic must have happened, and that he wanted to break the news very gently. Parkhill, who was with him, looked on in a kind of irritated aloofness. But presently he interrupted the rather elaborate preamble in which Reynolds was displaying so much tact, and said bluntly that if I wanted the things to go in they would go in, but there had been the hell of a row about them, and there would be another. He and Reynolds were prepared to back me up to the point of wrecking the magazine-and that was all.
Parkhill looked cross; Reynolds, for the only time that I remember, looked curiously religious. Fortunately the situation was eased by the fact that I didn't care whether they appeared or not. Nobody was paid for contributing, so I should lose nothing; I was on the point of going to Cambridge; I was correcting the proofs of The Garden God; Henry Newbolt had accepted an essay I had written for The Monthly Review; Arthur Symons had gone out of his way to write me a very kind note about it; and Robert Cromie had even reviewed the essay, and at the...
