Nineteen-Sixteen

Abstract

T he voyage to America was villainous, and Yeats’ ship was several days at sea before he had an opportunity of picking up acquaintances, as always he liked doing, among his fellow passengers. The first day that he went on deck someone recognised him and opened conversation by asking him what he thought of George Moore’s article in the English Review. When others came out. of their cabins, he found himself at table with an American banker, an English boy chiefly interested in horses and Gaiety girls, a handsome, well-bred young German who talked of Mexico and sympathised with the rebels, and an American doctor, the head of a great laboratory in New York. After the first meal he was taken aside by the doctor and asked — “because my wife thinks you the greatest poet in the world” — to write something in a scrap-book.