'A young man's ghost': Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge

Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2004 by James Pethica

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1923 Yeats remarked that by rights 'two forms should have stood, one at either side of me,' to join in receiving the honour: 'an old woman sinking into the infirmity of age and a young man's ghost'. (1) In 'The Municipal Gallery Re-visited' written five years after Lady Gregory's death in 1932, he would evoke his fellow-Abbey Theatre Directors again--'John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory' (2)--now flanking him syntactically rather than physically. Yeats's self-positioning in both texts subtly reflects his sense of centrality and primacy in the influential triad. In the Nobel speech he places himself suggestively in median space between a spectre and a woman in her last years, thereby hinting at his long-running aspiration to use his art and adeptship to negotiate the boundaries between the actual and the metaphysical, life and death. But the self-positionings also elliptically express his sense of having been in middle ground 'between' his Co-Directors in the more mundane realm of their personal transactions. Although his writings typically celebrate the Abbey triumvirate as heroic figures working together in common cause--'We three alone' (3)--he was uniquely aware of and party to the personal and creative strains, and occasional outright hostilities, which divided Synge and Gregory. This essay seeks to highlight those strains, and to consider one occasion in which Yeats belatedly served as intermediary between his fellow Directors.

The ghosts in Yeats's poetry typically appear in response to invocation, when summoned rhetorically as a focus for poetic meditation and inspiration. Following his death in 1909, however, Synge made at least one unbidden, and consequently more troublesome, visit to Yeats's imagination.

In mid-February 1914, during his third USA lecture tour, Yeats attended a seance held in Detroit by the celebrated American medium, Etta Wreidt. He had participated in at least five sittings with her since 1912. At the first of these, a spirit voice called Leo Africanus introduced itself as Yeats's 'guide'. Leo quickly became a permanent companion of Yeats's imagination, providing him for years, as R. F. Foster has observed, with 'an imaginary alter ego'. At a subsequent sitting, Yeats was shaken to hear the voice of Maud Gonne coming from Mrs Wreidt's voice trumpet. (4) Unsettled, but impressed, he had sought out Mrs Wreidt again during her 1913 British tour, and now eagerly took the opportunity to visit her on her home territory. His record of the Detroit seance, written immediately afterwards, reads as follows:

   Just returned--8.45--from sceance with Mrs Wreidt. Heard
   faint voice in full but when lights put out got gradually clearer.
   First voice when in light was 'Lady Gregory' It was a message for
   her. When I asked from who the voice said 'Shadow of the glen' It
   was or professed to be Synge. It was very anxious to speak to
   Lady Gregory. The speaker was greatly indeted to her. I asked
   where did you first see her. Voice said on 'Isle of Arran' I said
   who were you engaged to--& with difficulty got 'All good' spelling
   it & then said 'Sara'. I said you were not engaged to 'Sara' & the
   voice said 'I should think not' & laughed loudly. It said it could
   not get the right name through & so said Sara instead It went on
   to speak of Lady Gregory & I 'putting the MSS togeather' after his
   death & of Lady G getting his Arran book 'recopied'. I said 'say
   something Lady G will recognize as coming from you & it said
   'too men on barrels & one smoking' & laughed. It went on to say
   if Lady G were younger no one known to speaker would surpass
   her on the stage. He said 'she has more guides than you. Leo does
   not want to make a spiritist of you but an orator. Said he & Leo
   would help me. Said he was happy but when he saw me longed
   to live. He had hated to die. Repeated several times how much he
   owed to Lady G. I told him of her fame which he was unaware of.
   Asked something about what we were doing about Vaudeville
   but I could not get the sentence. (5)

On the face of it, the encounter offered Yeats a precious opportunity to renew contact with Synge--a man whose imagination had influenced him more powerfully than all but a handful of others in his life to that point--and to access hermetic knowledge of the kind he habitually sought at seances. But his record of the exchange notably fails to press for active connection with the spirit voice that emerged. Yeats's scepticism about what he was hearing is obvious in his opening comment 'it was or professed to be Synge' and his few initiatives in the encounter seem designed solely to test whether what he was hearing was authentic or not: 'where did you first see Lady Gregory'; 'who were you engaged to'; and 'say something Lady G will recognize'. But even more striking is that the spectral voice displays minimal interest in Yeats. Other than telling him that 'Leo does not want to make a spiritist of you but an orator', the voice treats him principally as a message-carrier to Lady Gregory, to whom it urgently wants to acknowledge a sense of debt. Yeats's account ends, as it begins, with Synge professing 'how much he owed to Lady G'. Whatever personal excitement Yeats may have initially been inclined to feel amidst his scepticism, then, was surely moderated by his lack of agency in the encounter. It must also have been disconcerting that the spirit voice depicted Lady Gregory--who had staunchly refused to show any interest in his occult studies to that point in their long friendship--as someone benefitting more from spirit guides than he, the long-time would-be mage: 'She has more guides than you'. Synge's voice also notably casts Gregory, not Yeats or Synge himself, as potentially the greatest dramatist amongst them.