“...a bit of a shock to find, all of a sudden, that I am driving Yeats!”

August 13, 2015 9:35 AM

A Lazarus Beside Me by Avies Platt [London Review of Books]

“‘Are you, by any chance, going to Norman Haire’s party?’ I inquired. ‘I rather think that is where I’m supposed to be going,’ he replied. A little strange, that, I thought. But I said, ‘That’s where I’m going, so perhaps I may give you a lift?’ ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That’s very kind of you.’ And we got into the car and drove off. At first neither of us spoke. I was concerned with joining the stream of traffic in Lower Regent Street. Then he asked abruptly: ‘Are you connected with the arts?’ ‘I don’t know about connected,’ I replied guardedly. ‘I’m interested.’ ‘And may I ask the name of my kind chauffeur?’ he continued. ‘Platt,’ I said. ‘Avies Platt. And may I ask yours?’ ‘Yeats,’ he said! ‘W.B. Yeats.’ And added: ‘I’m a poet.’.”

posted by Fizz (16 comments total)

A bit on the Steinach operation, if (like me) you aren't exactly clear on what it was.
posted by nubs at 10:04 AM on August 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Enchanting.
posted by y2karl at 10:09 AM on August 13, 2015

I somehow want to connect Alan Moore to this story
posted by thelonius at 10:26 AM on August 13, 2015

I won't put a spoiler here - it's too good an account - but I will say that the central realisation of the writer about the nature of the events of the evening... has (of course in totally incomparable circumstances) happened to me a handful of times, and I remember Every Single One of them in some detail. And I couldn't tell you, even now, exactly how I feel about any of them.
posted by Devonian at 10:37 AM on August 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

Amazing!
posted by mumimor at 11:29 AM on August 13, 2015

Thank you for sharing this.
posted by harrietthespy at 11:36 AM on August 13, 2015

Utterly thrilling. Thank you.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 11:51 AM on August 13, 2015

Wonderful and sad.
posted by corb at 1:07 PM on August 13, 2015

I almost missed the "contributor's note" tucked just to the left of the article:

'Avies Platt’s account of her meeting with Yeats was recently discovered by Peter Scupham in a carrier bag of diary entries and other bits and bobs. She died in 1976. "M.M." has not been identified.'

What an incredible discovery. Thank you, Fizz!
posted by steef at 1:50 PM on August 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Absolutely fascinating—thanks for the post! And without spoiling the revelation Devonian mentions, I think it's worth quoting this paragraph, which is very relevant to matters that have concerned MetaFilter lately:

Looking back, I think now as I thought then, that his greatness lay in his simplicity, that direct simplicity only possessed by the truly great. And this simplicity shone out now in two special ways – in his quietness and dignity. I might even say beauty, in that noisy, ugly room, and in his direct sincerity of speech with me, who was, after all, an unknown stranger. And I was a woman. Do not mistake me; this is no self-deprecation! The point is, and to me it is vital, that I am acutely aware that there are many men with alleged claims to greatness, sex equality creeds, and intimate friendships with women, who, nevertheless, cannot, in their inner being, accept women as fellow humans, and are therefore, in my eyes, completely damned. Some, of course, are better than their creed: what Yeats’s creed was, whether he ever formulated one, I do not know. I do know that he accepted me now as one with himself. Obviously, I am not speaking of personal achievement but of human existence. From the sex point of view, or from any other, as I saw him, there was no trace of patronage in him.

I'm glad to know that about Yeats.
posted by languagehat at 3:36 PM on August 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

Oh, and glands previously on MeFi: 2003, 2006.
posted by languagehat at 3:40 PM on August 13, 2015

This was a delightful read!

I didn't know much about Yeats, so I skimmed his Wikipedia page, and stumbled on this alarming paragraph:

According to Foster "when he duly asked Maud to marry him, and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter." Iseult Gonne was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a sad life to this point; conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short-lived brother, for the first few years of her life she was presented as her mother's adopted niece. When Maud told her that she was going to marry, Iseult cried and told her mother that she hated MacBride.[60] At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats. In 1917 he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected.

That September, Yeats proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (1892–1968), known as George, whom he had met through Olivia Shakespear. Despite warnings from her friends—"George ... you can't. He must be dead"—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October.

and this:

In 1917 Yeats, in his fifties, proposed to the 23-year-old Iseult, who did not accept. He had known her since she was four, and often referred to her as his darling child and took a paternal interest in her writings. Many Dubliners wrongly suspected that Yeats was her father.

He was clearly very attracted to youth.
posted by glass origami robot at 7:08 PM on August 13, 2015

Fascinating! He must have been near 70 when he encountered her, but the way she writes about him makes me think of 40s or 50s.
posted by corb at 10:45 AM on August 14, 2015

I'd love to share your sense of gratification, languagehat, but she strikes me as a rather unreliable narrator in this regard. Charming, doubtless, but one cannot trust innocence's eyes to read experience's heart.
posted by Diablevert at 2:43 PM on August 14, 2015

> I'd love to share your sense of gratification, languagehat, but she strikes me as a rather unreliable narrator in this regard. Charming, doubtless, but one cannot trust innocence's eyes to read experience's heart.

Well, in the first place she spent time with him and we didn't, and in the second, even if he wasn't as enlightened as she thought, even if there was in fact a trace of patronage in him, he was clearly lots better in that regard than the average male of the day (or, sadly, of any day), or she wouldn't have thought that about him, no?
posted by languagehat at 3:20 PM on August 14, 2015

She spent the night with him and I didn't, so she's one up on me there. But she also spent that night entirely oblivious to his motive for approaching her, something which was either so blatent to her host as to go without saying, or which Yeats was willing to discuss quite frankly with him while they were tête à tête. Perhaps she's right that he was a true egalitarian, but I can't quite trust her read of the situation. Even a thoroughgoing cad may pass for charming in the pursuit, and Yeats was a poet...
posted by Diablevert at 4:32 PM on August 14, 2015