Poets and the Peacock Dinner: The Literary History of a Meal

241 Pages·2015·7.18 MB·English

by  Lucy McDiarmid

POETS AND THE PEACOCK DINNER

POETS
& THE
PEACOCK
DINNER
The Literary History of a Meal
LUCY McDIARMID
1
1
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First Edition published in 2014
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For Frank

Acknowledgments
The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers
at the New York Public Library granted me a fellowship in 2005–2006
that gave me access to all the Library’s research collections, and I am
ever grateful for the year I spent in those marble halls. Most of the
unpublished letters by Wilfrid Blunt, Lady Gregory, and W. B. Yeats
that I cite in this book were transcribed that year from the originals
in the Berg Collection. I would like to thank Jean Strouse, Pamela
Leo, and Adriana Nova for their help and support, and all the other
fellows for their lively conversation, good ideas, and a few stories that
I continue to dine out on.
The Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Chair has provided financial sup-
port for all aspects of my work on this book since 2009. As the first
person to hold this generous professorship, I am grateful to the
Department of English at Montclair State University for honoring
me with it.
Although I wasn’t present for the peacock dinner, I got close: in
1995 I shared a taxi with Anne Yeats; I have a letter from Catherine
Aldington Guillaume (in 2004) giving me permission to quote a
poem of her father’s; Frank Flint’s grandson Oliver Flint and grand-
daughter Siddhimala (Linda Flint) have written giving me permis-
sion to quote from unpublished letters written by their grandfather;
Mary de Rachewiltz, Ezra Pound’s daughter, sent me a lovely mes-
sage, saying that she still had “a copy of the famous photograph” and
offering to “sacrifice a peacock” when I visit Brunnenburg; Leonie
Sturge-Moore and Charmian O’Neil, executors for their grandfather
Thomas Sturge Moore, have blessed this book; and in 1995 I spent a
day with Lady Gregory’s granddaughters, the late Anne Gregory de
Winton and the late Catherine Kennedy. Closest of all was my visit
to Newbuildings Place: on a bright, crisp spring day in 2009, Wilfrid
Blunt’s great-grandson, the fifth Earl of Lytton, and the Countess of
Lytton generously entertained me in their house, showing me the
viii Acknowledgments
room in which the peacock dinner was eaten, the wall against which
the famous photograph was taken, and Blunt’s grave.
Only Victor Plarr of the seven poets at the dinner has left no
heirs or executors, but I have unearthed both books written by
his daughter Marion Plarr (Barwell) and comment on them in
Chapter 5.
For taking the time to read and critique the entire manuscript at
an early stage, I would like to thank three friends, Maria DiBattista,
Adrian Frazier, and Nicholas Grene. In their different ways, each
recognized what I was after in this book and offered suggestions
accordingly.
I am grateful to my hosts on the occasions when I gave talks based
on material in this book, beginning in 2001: Rebecca Beasley at the
London Modernism Seminar, Christy Burns at the College of William
and Mary (Sara and Jess Cloud Professorship lecture), the members of
the Columbia Irish Studies Seminar, Claire Connolly at University
College Cork, Declan Foley at the Third John Butler Yeats Seminar,
Adrian Frazier at the Synge Summer School, Geraldine Higgins at
Emory University and the Yeats International Summer School, Emily
Isaacs and Naomi Liebler at the inaugural Marie Frazee-Baldassarre
Lecture at Montclair State University, Andy McGowan of the W. B.
Yeats Society of New York, Ronnie O’Gorman and Marion Cox at
the Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering, Jean Strouse and Pamela Leo
at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and Mary Helen
Thuente at North Carolina State University.
Without the many kinds of support offered by my assistant Janet
Dengel (research and accounting, among others) I couldn’t have man-
aged anything, and I am eternally grateful to her. For wise and care-
ful help with the proofs of this book, and for years of friendship, I am
also grateful to Nancy Pepper. I would also like to thank Michael
Copp for sending me much useful information about Frank Flint,
James Kelly for reviewing my transcriptions of Blunt’s diaries, and
Alec Marsh for answering many questions about Ezra Pound. James
Longenbach’s excellent Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism has
been of great help, and I feel lucky that I’ve had it to refer to. I was
also lucky to have met Geoffrey O’Byrne White, who generously
offered me an image of his grand-aunt Lady Gregory’s painting of
Galway Gaol.
Acknowledgments ix
For other help of various kinds, thanks are due to Lauren Arrington,
Lee Behlman, Veronica Crolius Boswell, Angela Bourke, Helen Carr,
Rimi B. Chatterjee, Patricia Coughlan, Jared Curtis, Julie Dalley,
Mia Foster, Jonathan Franzen, Christine Froula, Peter Gay, David
Getsy, Arin Gilbert, Jonathan Greenberg, Saskia Hamilton, Margaret
Mills Harper, Samuel Hynes, Alice Kelly, Declan Kiberd, Declan
Kiely, Harold Koda, Maureen Lees, Ann Lesch, Wendy Lesser, Ed
Maggs, Tricia Matthew, Sarah McKibben, Deirdre McMahon,
Mount Mansfield Maple Products, Wendy Nielsen, Eunan O’Halpin,
Tina O’Toole, James Pethica, William Pratt, Yopie Prins, Robert
Rubin, Ann Saddlemyer, Nicole Scimone, Sharon Setzer, Lauren
Shohet, Bonnie Slotnick, Colin Smythe, Judith Walkowitz, and
Maureen Waters. My dearly missed friend Pat Sheeran, who died in
2001, would have loved hearing about the peacock dinner. His essay
“Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: A Tourist of the Revolutions” remains as a
sign of his interest in Blunt, as well as a comment he once made to
me about Blunt’s play Fand: “It’s a curious thing. You ought to take a
look at it.” I hadn’t then, but I have since.
Here and there in this book I have drawn on earlier work of my
own, most of it published before there was much interest in the
peacock dinner or in Lady Gregory’s romance with Blunt: “The
Demotic Lady Gregory” (High and Low Moderns: Literature and Culture
1889–1939, 1996); “Lady Gregory, Wilfrid Blunt, and London Table
Talk” (Irish University Review, 2004); “A Box for Wilfrid Blunt”
(PMLA, 2005); and, most recently, “Resentment on the Menu:
Poets of the Peacock Dinner” (The Times Literary Supplement, 2014).
Thanks to Anne Fogarty, Judy Goulding, Alan Jenkins, and Eric
Worth for their editorial expertise. Thanks also to the many librar-
ians and archivists who have helped my work on this book: Isaac
Gewirtz, Curator, Anne Garner, and Philip Milito at the Berg
Collection of the New York Public Library; Stella Panayotova and
Emma Darbyshire at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Justine
E. Sundaram at the John J. Burns Library, Boston College; Declan
Kiely, Robert H. Taylor Curator and Department Head, Literary and
Historical Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum; Richard
Watson at the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at
Austin; Timothy Murray, University of Delaware Library; and
Frances Lansley, West Sussex Record Office.