George Yeats

Bertha Georgie Hyde-Lees was born in December 1892, but no one is sure of the exact date. According to her passport and birth certificate it was the 17th, but she and her mother, Nelly (Edith Ellen Hyde-Lees née Woodmass), always said it was on the 16th since the horoscopes for that day were better.^[1] It is said to have happened at 8.25am, but she may have also chosen the time; there is no proof. Her given name was Bertha, but she seems always to have been known as Georgie.

Nelly came from an aristocratic family, an “eccentric bunch” and had six siblings, but only she, the eldest, was legitimate; her mother was ‘flirtatious and easily bored’. In 1887 Nelly married Gilbert Hyde-Lees, captain of the 4th Battalion, Manchester Regiment. At that time he had two different addresses, but the couple soon moved to Brighton where Harold, their first child, was born in 1890. The following year they moved to Aldershot, where Bertha Georgie was born two years later.

Georgie’s grandmother Mrs Woodmass “banished and disinherited” her daughter Nelly until 1927 for daring to talk openly about her mother’s love affairs. However Nelly was just like her mother, ‘flirtatious and easily bored’ and had no time for her two children, who had lots of impressive godparents due to potential paternity. Some mysterious event happened to Georgie and Nelly on 29th November 1896, and another to Nelly on 27th December 1897, but no one knows any details except for the dates. The whole family was good at hiding embarrassing secrets. Moving house was a good way of avoiding embarrassing conflict.

All this time there had been a nanny to look after the children, but in 1898 Harold was eight and started prep school as a boarder, so the nanny had to go. From then on, from age six, tutors educated Georgie at home.

In 1899 the Hyde-Lees had another new apartment at 17D de Vere Gardens, Kensington, where they enjoyed the good life of the better-off section of society. However a year later in 1900 Gilbert Hyde-Lees acquired a passport, and in 1901 he, Nelly and Georgie set off to Florence and rented accommodation on La Pietra, a hill outside the city. By March 1902 they had moved into Florence, but by July the same year they were living at 38 Montpellier Street, Kensington. Shortly after they had arrived there Georgie was sent to boarding school, aged ten. She had become a good reader, preferring to be alone, a watcher, very used to being tacit and keeping face in public because of her parents’ problems.

As soon as she was in school the parents moved again to Carlisle Mansions, Westminster, and in 1905 to Yeomans Row nearby. Gilbert was in poor health as an inveterate alcoholic. Even Harold was affected at school; he had become a model of purity on the surface and a mine of dirt below, having learnt “everything there was to know about evil from visits to Paris”.^[2] Fairly soon after this, about 1907, Georgie’s parents separated. Divorce was only possible by passing a bill through parliament, very expensive and socially unacceptable; in any case as Nelly had not ceased to be technically married she could still rely on her husband’s income. At any rate by 1907 they were living apart: Nelly had moved to Kensington Palace Mansions, near de Vere Gardens where she had first lived as a married woman, and Gilbert moved into separate accommodation.

Harold was now leaving school and preparing to go to Oxford, while Georgie, aged fifteen, was boarding at St James’ School in West Malvern. She studied English, French, German, Latin and music as well as cookery, sewing, dancing and deportment. However she found it hard to fit in because she disliked being told what to do and hated bells and school timetables; after the chaos at home she could not settle to rigid routines. She left after only five terms. Instead she became a day pupil at a girls’ school in London where she continued languages and added piano and singing, ballet and ballroom dancing, elocution, flower arranging and dressmaking. The school also arranged visits to theatre, opera and art exhibitions.

In 1909 Gilbert, now a patient at a home for alcoholics, died, the third generation of the family to die this way.

Georgie was very sorry to lose her beloved father. She later became an alcoholic just like him and currently was over-controlled, hated being watched, hated routines and she had already become expert at masking her inner fears with external frivolity. Her biographer described her as “solitary”, “cunning” and “wily”. She had the facial flushing of an alcoholic, had nightmares and walked in her sleep. This was exacerbated by frequent family rows and having to keep face in public despite desolate atmospheres at home, adulterous relatives, alcohol and constant changes of home and school. It made Harold a wild teenager and Georgie desperate for a stable home, physically and psychologically.

 Nelly began to rebuild her social life by visiting salons and soirées to meet fashionable writers and poets, sometimes accompanied by Georgie. She was already acquainted with Olivia Shakespear, now editor of the ‘Kensington’, a new arts magazine featuring inter alia pieces by W. B. Yeats. As well as literature and poetry, Nelly and Olivia shared a fashionable interest in the occult, horoscopes, Ouija boards and automatic writing.

In 1911, two years later, Nelly married Harry Tucker, Olivia’s brother. Olivia and her daughter Dorothy were their witnesses, but not Nelly’s daughter, nineteen-year-old Georgie. During the ensuing marriage Harry was occasionally violent towards his wife, but as he lent some stability and provided money nothing was made public. Meanwhile Georgie, now with enough money of her own thanks to her father’s death, enrolled at the Heatherley School of Art (where John Butler Yeats, William’s father, had also studied). She stayed there almost a year attending art classes with Dorothy her new best friend. Georgie referred to herself as the “step- pest”. Later for some unknown reason she destroyed her portfolio.

In 1906 at the age of 14 Georgie had been initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Her mother and Dorothy were already members; it was a fashionable institution for the well heeled. However it required avowed secrecy in all activities, and constant self-scrutiny of conscience, motives, intentions and errors. William Butler Yeats initiated her, a famous, mature poet and senior mage. No wonder she idolised him.

Georgie was an enthusiastic member of the Golden Dawn simply because men and women were treated as full equals in what they did; no door was closed. The rites and costumes, chants and artifacts were exciting, spiritual, solemn and secret, and their goals were for their own moral, educational and religious good.

These objectives were determined by the founders including Yeats and proved that he saw women as equal to men. He had retained belief in God although he was no longer affiliated to Protestantism or Catholicism; his moral intent was above board. In his lifetime there had been many changes in women’s lives. In 1870 the first Married Women’s’ Property Act gave possession of earnings, and the Act of 1882 gave married women the same rights over their property as unmarried women, so goods and chattels owned before marriage such as clothing, jewellery, land and houses would no longer belong to the husband from the wedding day. The second 1893 Act gave married women full control over any kind of property acquired during marriage, even inheritance. Yeats’ occupations were nearly all gender-free in terms of roles and responsibilities: actors, poets, spiritualists and literary hosts could be either gender. Therefore Yeats gave Georgie’s words as much weight as his own.

When Olivia Shakespear introduced Yeats, her ex-lover, to her step-niece Georgie in London in late September 1917 she knew he was looking for a young wife and hoped they would be compatible. From Olivia’s point of view it would be very advantageous to be related to Yeats, and her niece would have a famous respected elderly husband who was expected to earn more during his lifetime. She might inherit from him and marry again when he died. If she had children, even one boy, she would be taken care of financially for the rest of her life.

Georgie was attractive, well off and well brought up with a cut-glass English accent. She shared Yeats’ interests in literature, poetry and avant-garde writers, spoke three languages, could translate from Latin, and had learnt astrological rituals and how to read horoscopic charts in great detail. Her social manners were polished and she had worked for the Red Cross. Ezra Pound had just become her brother-in –law now that his affair with Iseult Gonne was over. There seemed to be no need for hesitation. Yeats and Georgie were married in haste since there was no need to invite guests to Harrow Road Registry Office at 11.20am on 20th October 1917.

Yeats married Georgie because he needed a wife’s income and an heir, not because he was desperate to marry her personally. He did it reluctantly, unwilling to give up his bachelor life as a free spirit, renowned poet and professional charmer. George married him because she idolised him. She was curious about sex; though not enamoured of children, she was capable doing what was necessary. Moreover she was already twenty-five, which counted as ‘on the shelf’ and she had few other marital prospects.

Like Georgie, Yeats had lived at many addresses as a youngster and his family had constantly moved on because of poverty, so he shared her craving for stability and putting a gloss over failures. He had developed masks to obscure his own feelings, either theatrical with the Abbey Theatre or poetry recitals, or astrological with the Golden Dawn. However he was used to expressing his feelings with honesty, though wise enough to see the world realistically. On the other hand George – after her marriage she made her name masculine – was not used to being honest about her father’s alcoholism or her mother’s and grandmother’s adultery; she was more used to being tacit and hiding evidence.

The marriage was harmonious in most respects, but not sexually. They were not in love. George was an excellent housekeeper, astrologer and personal secretary and was well liked at a certain distance by her new relatives. However on the honeymoon she cast an horary to ask “ ... perche noi siamo infelice.” (why we are unhappy). Within two years Yeats had started his affair with Lily; he must have assumed that George would understand if he took another lover, as this was her mother’s and grandmother’s tradition.

After their marriage George began ’automatic writing’ whilst in trance. This was done privately while Yeats was present, never otherwise. As a good hostess and administrator she quickly made herself invaluable at his Monday ‘At Homes’. She contributed towards his long poem ‘The Vision’, and many others too. “Mrs Yeats has continued to occupy a curious position ... it is generally known that her hand wrote many of [his] ideas…”^[3]

George involvement with all aspects of her husband’s professional life began with the Abbey Theatre. Lennox Robinson had been manager since the end of 1909,^[4] and she quickly built a close relationship with him as she took over some of the backstage work, including costumes, make-up and scenery. After Yeats was chosen as a senator in 1923 she befriended some of his colleague politicians, in particular Kevin O’Higgins, whom she described to her friend Lady Ottoline in Oxford as a ‘coming’ man. She invited him and his wife to dinner several times so that he knew Yeats well. In time she grew very close to him.^[5]

O’Higgins was Catholic and nationalist unlike Yeats, and unlike Yeats he possessed a very forceful, highly efficient personality. About 1916 he had become Captain of the Carlow Brigade of the Irish Volunteers (later the Irish Republican Army) and was imprisoned in 1918, after which he was elected Minister of Parliament for Queen’s County (later Laois). After the first Dail was established in 1919, still Republican, he was made Assistant Minister for Local Government, serving under W. T. Cosgrave who thought him “not Republican enough” because of his dismissal of the Irish language and Republican self-sufficiency, and his support for militarism. When Cosgrave was arrested in 1920 O’Higgins was suddenly head of Local Government.

In 1922 Sinn Fein split from the government when the Free State came into being. O’Higgins moved, entirely  without qualms of conscience, from leading the Irish Republican Army one minute, to Minister for Home Affairs the next. He was more interested in power than niceties of politics, so he soon stood for Leix-Offaly as T.D.

At the outbreak of the ensuing civil war O’Higgins feared that lengthy conflict would allow the British to reassert control, so with haste in the early part of 1923 he established the Garda Sióchana. However General Richard Mulcahy commented in July or August that “O’Higgins’s personal presence in the Adjutant-General’s office ... was ... of a person who didn’t know what was going on.”^[6] By September indiscipline in the Garda was rife, so O’Higgins appointed Eoin O’Duffy as Commissioner in September 1923. O’Duffy was a well-known Catholic nationalist who shared his fascist militarism. He had retired as head of the South Western Command of the Irish Republican Army after the civil war, so he knew how to organise well and win respect from his forces. He was also more interested in power than politics.^[7]

But things were not going well for the Free State. In March 1924 an Army mutiny took place and Minister Joseph McGrath resigned. Cosgrave also fell sick, leaving O’Higgins suddenly as the de facto head of government. Once in post he immediately reversed Cosgrave’s policy and decisively defeated the IRA. The following June his title changed to Minister of Justice and External Affairs. He became the strongest minister in government and was blatantly fascist.^[8]In December he was installed as Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State whilst retaining his post as Minister of Justice. He had become all-powerful, and to prove it he ordered the execution of seventy-seven Republicans, fighters for a cause he had once espoused, as criminals. In protest the Anti-Treaty Republican Army murdered his father and set fire to his family home in Laois. This made him more determined than ever to use fascist tactics.

O’Higgins recruited men who shared his fascist outlook, including David Neligan, who had once worked for the British administration at Dublin Castle; whilst serving there he was Michael Collin’s spy. After Collin’s demise Neligan was promoted to Colonel in the IRA, and in 1923 he was made Chief Superintendent of Garda Sióchana, answerable directly to O’Duffy who was answerable directly to O’Higgins. It was a direct chain of command through which any order could be instantly transmitted, yet secret and secure enough to withstand any accusation. Accordingly Neligan’s autobiography did not record anything after the civil war.^[9] 

By 1925 George Yeats was well acquainted with O’Higgins. They had become very good friends because she had discovered someone as wily, cunning and cold- bloodedly efficient in finding solutions to problems as she was. They both saw themselves as better than others in society in terms of class and authority. Like many contemporary aristocrats, they were tacit fascists, supporters of Hitler, and believed that some people could be classified as ‘non-human’ and not worthy of attention.

One of George’s problems could be presented as political: the power that lower class, Catholic Lily O’Neill had over Anglo-Irish Senator William Butler Yeats. Lily had become mother to Yeats’s first-born son and heir, so she was in a position to blackmail him, whether she did or not. Moreover Yeats was sharing his political ideas with her, they talked freely, as his poems showed.^[10] Furthermore George understood that her husband eventually wished to divorce her, since after the birth of Lily’s illegitimate son Yeats uncharacteristically became interested in divorce legislation.

O’Higgins was well known for using Michael Collin’s technique: silent research on a specific enemy before using fast, direct action to annihilate him. O’Higgins had no trouble locating Lily because George supplied him with information regarding Yeats’s walks in Dublin.

In his poem “A Prayer to My Son” Yeats talks of knowing the people who want to murder his son; they were O’Higgins and George, whom Yeats knew well. George was intelligent enough to be aware of her husband’s fluctuating moods and preoccupations and watched him tacitly and closely. Her husband’s trips to the club were regular and he came back in a better mood. She was accustomed to her mother’s adultery, so it cannot have taken her long to work out that Yeats had a mistress. Like any wife she must have wondered how to bring her husband back. Eventually she observed his expert change of appearance.

Yeats dressed up as Michael Robartes, a sexy younger working class man, to meet Lily. He would tell George he needed a quiet atmosphere in which to concentrate on his work, so he could be gone for hours or days to the Hibernian Club on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin’s centre, half way between his family home in Merrion Square and Lily’s home in the Liberties. Only George and Yeats were capable of knowing where Lily was, Yeats because he went to see her secretly, George because only she could observe him disappearing and follow him.

Why would George have wanted to know where Lily lived? She had three motives for removing Lily and her son: her social position, her son’s inheritance, and jealousy. She had been married to Yeats since 1917, seven years by 1925. By all accounts their wedded bliss had vanished after the birth of their daughter in 1919,^[11] giving way to orders from the “instructor’ and various other voices all emanating from George about Yeats’s behaviour and sexual functioning, with very little passion. She was not an emotional woman, but she was very happy with their Georgian house and country castle that represented stability. She was used to the prestige of being the wife of a mage, a poet, a politician, and the creator of Irish coinage. He was Anglo-Irish, Protestant and upper class in her mind, tall and relatively handsome, used to public speaking and an important member of government. How could she give all of that up? Apart from losing her position and his possessions there was also the ignominy of becoming his rejected ex-wife, his discarded lover. How could Lily, this ‘country wench’, or ‘green wing’^[12] be better than herself in any way? How could Yeats be in love with Lily and not with her?

George had been key to many aspects of Yeats’ life, but her stars were fading. She had supplied him with money at the start of their marriage and was still a source of finance, although Yeats was now earning more. Recently he had been short of money due to expenditure on his new son and the mother, but George had not offered to help him out of fear that her rival would benefit. George had been a member of the Golden Dawn long before they married and now belonged to Stella Matutina; however as a Senator he was now embarrassed by it. She had been part of the London literary world of salons and ‘at homes’, but he had now outgrown them.  She had had his baby, but it was a girl. She redacted his poetry and articles before publication; he was grateful for the secretarial help, but not for her attempts to write with him. However in the political world she was still his well-presented wife.

Meanwhile Lily was using her husband’s money for the foster-mother and the baby, including rent, clothes and food, and their needs would grow in future. Yeats was growing poorer by the minute^[13], so George’s own lifestyle was being curtailed. In addition she was worried that Lily’s son was bound to usurp the Yeats inheritance, being first- born. Therefore George felt she had no option but to find Lily and persuade her, by force if necessary, to renounce her son’s claim, to go away. Her desperation and determination gave her full impetus.

There is no direct evidence about what subsequently happened since George, O’Higgins and his officers systematically destroyed it because their actions were illegal. To misquote Mandy Rice-Davies at the trial of John Profumo in 1963, “They would, wouldn’t they?” However there is plenty of circumstantial evidence.

Firstly Yeats wrote a personal poem about fear of people he knew who wanted to kill his son, and the son was obviously not Michael. He knew a limited number of people closely, and spent most of his time with his wife who naturally was very angry with his girlfriend and illegitimate son. Thus his wife and her close friends were the obvious candidates.

Secondly George befriended O’Higgins and according to Saddlemyer they became extremely close^[14], much closer than Yeats was to either O’Higgins, man or wife, and much closer than Mrs O’Higgins was to George. They were particularly close during 1925, according to various biographies,^[15] and often talked privately. So they had plenty of opportunity to arrange something together.

Thirdly only George knew when Yeats left the house for any period of time, and she was the only person he informed about his whereabouts. Therefore no-one else was in a position to follow him to find Lily’s address.

Fourthly she had access to all the places he normally went to. She was a member of every club he belonged to and she had complete access to the Abbey Theatre, especially to the wardrobe, since she often helped with scenery, make-up and costume. Thus she would be able to recognise Yeats in his working-class disguise, and what is more she would be able to disguise her own appearance.

Fifthly because she followed him she had no idea where Kevin lived, only Lily’s address. This was because Yeats had warned Lily, as shown in his poetry^[16], about the danger from his wife and friends, and accordingly her name and address had been changed. Kevin had been given a false name and false relatives to keep him safe at his own address.^[17] 

Secretly surveying the house where Lily lived, O’Higgins discovered the clandestine relationship between Lily’s best friend Madge Hopkins and married Patrick Purcell. On examining Peace Commissioner (magistrate) and General Practitioner Dr Purcell’s life he noted the relationship between him and his local Garda Superintendent Leopold J. Dillon. They had worked together dealing with crime and disaster for the past year and had become good friends.

O’Higgins therefore approached Superintendent Dillon to ask him to arrange for Purcell to give him a lift to Dublin the next time he was meeting his girlfriend, and persuade her to bring her friend Honor along as a blind date for Dillon. This was a foolproof way to set up a meeting between Dillon and Honor Bright without making her suspicious since the blind date would come from her own best friend.

Dillon had joined the Garda as a constable for a year in 1922, but then left the force. On rejoining in 1924 he was immediately promoted to become Superintendent of three large police districts south of Dublin, covering most of Wicklow and part of Carlow. He would have understood, even if it had not been made explicit, that he owed his boss a favour. Dillon was ordered to plead with or threaten Lily in order to persuade her to give up her son’s claim to inheritance and to have nothing more to do with Yeats. George gave Lily’s address to O’Higgins, who passed it on to Dillon.^[18] 

In 1925 the Irish Free State government was atempting to prevent the introduction of divorce bills “a vincula matrimonii” into the Dáil, and as early as June 1924 Yeats was warning that this would affect the Boundary between Protestant Ulster and the Catholic Free State: if the Catholic south refused to conform to the Protestant north and Britain, the current political and legal divide would yawn further apart. Yeats had introduced his political slogan ‘Unity of Being’ promoting a united Ireland on becoming a Senator, when his illegitimate Catholic son was two years old. He was not only trying to combine Catholics and Protestants, but also rich and poor.

The Divorce Bill was not part of Yeats’ usual remit, Culture. Although he had undertaken other functions in government, for example designing the Free State coinage, they were usually either mundane or related to his artistic talent or poetic creativity. His motive therefore may well have been to marry the mother of his heir. Although he had married in London, he would require a divorce in Southern Ireland in order to retain his position without embarrassment in Dublin. Thus he was prepared to stand up and oppose Cosgrave’s government, who wanted the Bill defeated. Yeats wanted to make the Divorce Bill succeed for political as well as for personal reasons.

The Bill was debated on 11th June 1925, which would have been Lily’s twenty-fifth birthday, had she not been murdered two days before. Yeats was still reeling in shock. It was also two days before his sixtieth birthday. Speaking against such a controversial Bill was an unusual activity for him; the dates were personally very emotive, and some of his audience in the Senate House knew of his turmoil or were curious about it. In retrospect it is surprising that he stood up to speak at all in the circumstances; he had no choice but to preserve order and to protect his wife.

Divorce in his case would have been completely unacceptable to the government or to the population in Ireland, because he was supposed to have greater integrity than most people as a respected poet. His life already included unorthodox occult activities frowned on by religious figures, his marriage included children, and his affair was with an unsuitable person. The fact that she had already given birth to his child added sparks to the fire. In addition his wife would be supported by many of his political colleagues, who would not support him. Politicians who knew about his private life, such as Joseph Hone and Oliver St John Gogarty amongst others, recognised these facts, which accounts for the tense atmosphere and Yeats’ passionate delivery. In particular it accounts for his last words: “... Genius has its virtue, and it is only a small blot on its escutcheon if it is sexually irregular.”^[19]

After Lily’s death, George systematically destroyed or edited all of of Yeats’s papers and other belongings. Whether he knew what was destroyed or edited, or gave permission for it, is a moot point, but they were his wife’s actions, not his. George kept an extraordinarily tight rein on his works after his death in 1939, She was well known for refusing permission for study of certain texts or for rebutting scholars from reaching certain conclusions about them.

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