An important link with Ireland's past was severed last week with the death of Michael Yeats, only son of the poet W B Yeats, and a distinguished jurist and politician in his own right.
I met Mr Yeats on one occasion on a June evening on Leinster Lawn, near Leinster House, some 20 years ago. The occasion was the launch of an illustrated volume dealing with the life and times of his father, with text by Benedict Kiely.
Dr Yeats, then in his mid-60s had a strong, firm handshake, and was well-informed on current developments in the North in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. Another guest on the occasion was the singer, the late Paddy Tunney who later told me that Michael had warned him to discourage any of his children from becoming poets, because Ireland was a difficult place for a poet to make a living. He was presumably speaking from personal experience in his own family, although the Nobel Prize which his father won in 1923 would have helped. It is said that when Yeats senior was informed by the then editor of the Irish Times that he had won the Nobel Prize, his first reaction was to enquire what it was worth. It is said that the Yeats household celebrated later that evening with a feed of sausages.
The Nobel money would have helped to send young Michael to the renowned St Columba's College school at Rathfarnam, south Dublin, where his best mate was Brian Faulkner, later to be the last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, under the old dispensation. In 1939, the year in which his father died in France, Michael Yeats entered Trinity College Dublin, where he was to achieve a first class degree in history and politics. He was later awarded a Bachelor of Law degree at the King's Inn, but never practised at the Bar.
William Butler Yeats was a member of Seanad Éireann in the 1920s, the senate having been devised as a mechanism whereby the old Ascendancy could still have some platform from which to articulate their points of view. Yeats took his duties quite seriously and was proud to celebrate the identity of the Anglo-Irish, who for several centuries had never been "beaten into the clay." His contempt for what he saw as the rise of a mediocre bourgeoisie drove him in sentiment to the idea of the Big House and the 'Great Man' theory of governance. He was to write a marching song for the Blueshirts, although he belonged to no party.
Michael, in contrast, described himself as a 'de Valera republican' since his teenage years and had little in common with his father's political views. He stood for election as a Fianna Fáil candidate in the Dail election of 1948 but failed to be elected. 1948 was the first time since Fianna Fáil failed to be elected since first taking office in 1932. A second bid failed in 1951, but Dev was back as Taoiseach and appointed Michael Yeats to Seanad Éireann. FF were out again by 1954 and so was Yeats. He took up a position as an organiser at party headquarters. He was elected to the Seanad in 1961 and was to be returned to it after every general election thereafter for the next 20 years.
Michael Yeats was always a committed European and saw Ireland becoming truly and independent nation through the new-found economic strength that was to come about in the wake of Ireland's joining the European Economic Community in 1973. In that year Yeats was appointed as a member of the European Parliament, a position which he held for six years, but losing out in 1979 at the time of the first direct elections to the parliament.
A pragmatic and level-headed politician, Michael Yeats did not share his father's (and his mother's) interest in spiritualism, automatic writing and the like. He once dismissed astrology as "complete nonsense". He did concede, "I'm prepared to believe in ghosts if I ever see one, but so far I haven't." He called his autobiography "Casting a Cold Eye".
Michael Yeats was most generous in making available to the Irish state and to posterity a vast volume of his father's notes, drafts, letters and other manuscripts. He refused a seven figure offer for his father's letters, opting instead to donate the collection to the Irish State. He always insisted that all scholars should have unrestricted access to his father's papers, foregoing the fortune he could have made by auctioning of such rights to the highest bidder. He is survived by his wife Gráinne (Ní hEigeartaigh), his son Padraig and daughters Caitríona, Síle and Siobhan. The current exhibition of Yeats material at the National Library would have been much the lesser, if possible at all, without his generosity and support.
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