|
Correspondence from John Quinn to William Butler Yeats
31 Nassau Street
Feb. 25, 1915
My dear Yeats:
How are you? I wrote you on January 13, and sent the letter to 18 Woburn Building. I wonder if you got it?
Lady Gregory has been lecturing in the Middle West. She returns next Tuesday. She has sent me two short notes while she has been away but seems to have kept well. She gave out a good interview on Ireland which perhaps she sent you. Devoy attacked her mildly, in The Gaelic American, but not viciously, as he did during The Playboy row.
I took your father on a motor trip on Sunday up into the country. He looked well but his eyes trouble him still. I told him at lunch that I had feared for years that he might be knocked down but that now I felt that he would be more careful and would therefore be safe. I myself have some narrow escapes that have made me careful.
I told Lady Gregory when she first came here, casually, of Crowley's calling on me. I had a wonderful pencil drawing of him by Augustus John. He wanted to see it and wanted the right to reproduce it. John had written several times about it and asked me to have it lithographed and send him some copies. So I had it lithographed here and I sent copies to John and sent some copies to Crowley.
He seemed desperately hard up and I believe still is hard up. He invited me several times to dine with him, but every invitation I declined, and have never dined with him at any hotel or at his apartment. I mentioned the fact that he was here to Miss Coates, who was here a month or so in the autumn on her way from the Adirondack Mountains to the South. Finally, I asked her and your father to meet me at dinner and invited Crowley. He did not talk badly, but he is not an interesting talker. Your father and Miss Coates did most of the questioning. Frankly, his "magic" and astrology bored me beyond words. Whatever he may be, he has no personality. I am not interested in his morals or lack of morals. He may or may not be a good or profound or crooked student or practitioner of magic. To me, he is only a third- or fourth-rate poet.
In my letter of Jan. 13th to you I said that "he seems hard up." One hears all sorts of stories about him, but, aside for an appetite for strong drink, I have seen nothing wrong about him. His brand of the occult does not interest me in the least. I have never dined or lunched with him, and have no interest or curiosity in what he is or is not doing and have not taken up with him in any way. He is not my kind of person. There is another more or less crooked "man of letters" out here now also, whom you perhaps know, Mr. Frank Harris. Intellectually, he is as crooked as the biblical ram's horn, if there was a ram's horn in the bible, and from what I heard he is financially as crooked as two ram's horns. [ . . . ]
|