BOOKS OF THE DAY
Yeats-Brown
Francis Yeats-Brown (1886-1944). By John Evelyn Wrench. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 15s.)
THOUGH he was continually trying to persuade the world of some- thing, Yeats-Brown knew in his heart that he himself, the man within, was of much greater value and interest than his opinions. His good breeding made him reluctant to acknowledge this, but he was aware of it, and it produced complicated results. His opinions about behaviour (as distinct from his philosophy) were neither consequent nor firm ; he could treat an idea abcut foreign politics or social reform or physical exercises as a kitten treats a paper ball, playing with it negligently at first, then becoming obsessed by it, then not so much rejecting as passing away from it as though it had suddenly ceased to exist.
This he knew. He had the grace, charming among cranks, of knowing that he was one, and of being able, when public affairs were in question, to smile his earnestness away. The odd thing was that the smile was one of diffidence and relief, as if to say, " Yes, I know I'm off my own ground." His own ground was never the reform of this world. It was himself : the man who, when he held fast to what he saw and smelt and touched, was among the best descriptive writers of our time ; and the man within. If ever he was to write a great book, it must, he knew, be autobiographical, and he must not for ever be running after the portentous paper balls. And yet the paper balls continually presented themselves to him as part of the autobiography.
What a problem for a biographer, particularly for one writing within four years of his subject's death ! It has been approached with an excellent mingling of courage, discretion and candour. It may be regretted that the author, who knew Yeats-Brown long and intimately, witholds himself so much ; it would have enriched the book if we had seen and heard the two men more often in each other's company ; but Sir Evelyn's self-detachment, his determina- tion not to judge or to dictate the judgement of his readers, has great compensations, and there can be little doubt that, in all the circumstances, the method he has chosen is the right one. Yeats- Brown left behind a mass of autobiographical writing, some already in his books, some in the form of notes and drafts. Sir Evelyn has made abundant and judicious use of this material, and of letters and recollections diligently gathered in from the ends of the earth, even from the wise men of India, and has resisted the temptation, if ever he felt it, to advance a formal psychological theory in explanation of the resulting enigma. As a consequence, the enigma remains, and the portrait is the more interesting, and perhaps the truer, for that reason. Every readers will interpret it differently, which is as it should be, for in life everyone interpreted Yeats- Brown differently. His was a mind that did not stand still to be
photographed and reproduced and passed from hand to hand. An impression that one friend had of him was often hardly recognisable by another. The only knowledge that we certainly had in common was that to be with him was exciting, and that he was, as few men we had ever known, exempt from the sin of hardness of heart.
Vulnerably exempt. The book communicates this in communi- cating the selfless loyalties and the seemingly irreconcilable misjudge- ments of his life. The young soldier in India and in the war of 1914 ; the would-be writer who took so long to find his feet ; the author of Bengal Lancer to whom major success came once, and once only, and then at a time when the other tastes of life were bitter in his mouth ; the eager observer of what he called the European jungle—all these are shown to the reader in a genuinely representative selection from the available material. The central contradictions of his political thought clearly emerge. A hater of Communism, he was incapable of seeing Nazism as being, in essence, a variant of the same tyranny. His notion that the corporate State would correct the inefficiencies of democracies blinded him to the military menace and led him to join in contempt for Mr. Churchill's warnings men with whom he differed on other subjects. Fortunately. I never met him on political ground during this phase of his life and had no discussions with him on the German problem. I am left, therefore, with an undisturbed recollection of him in 1931 at Portofino when the jungle was not our subject.
"Portofino," Sir Evelyn says, "was probably the place that Y.B. loved best . .. [He] went there whenever circumstances and finances permitted, and it would have been kind of fate to have let him end his days there." The Castello, once a Moorish fort, stands in a battlemented garden on a little promontory. You walk down through olive-woods to swim, and sit in the evenings to talk with such an outlook over land and water as puts all the wild beasts back in their cages. It was Yeats-Brown's home, the place of his child- hood, his immemorial place, where even politics became philosophy, where no one came except on foot and only the sun kept the time. Newspapers slid to the ground and were left there ; you went on with your book or your life. Yeats-Brown learned himself there, in happiness or unhappiness. Now and then he would hanker after Fleet Street and chase a paper ball, but soon reverted to his own true subject. All men write badly when they wobble, as Yeats- Brown often did in Golden Horn and much less often in Bengal Lancer, between what is suited and what is unsuited to their style— that is, to their nature, to the man within. Portofino would have chosen his subject for him and, to his salvation, have put all his newspapers out of date. It was his intention to go. Our last con- versation was of the resolve. How much may have been lost by his not going this biography indicates. CHARLES MORGAN.
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