Gluck by Diana Souhami (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📗

bones of the late poet were placed in the ossuary. There is no doubt whatsoever on this subject. Is it possible to find the bones of the poet Yeats in the ossuary? Yes! If we empty the entire contents of the ossuary and if we have details of distinctive characteristics which will enable us to reconstruct the skeleton after painstaking research carried out under the direction of a medical expert. These details would be based on the age of the deceased, his height, the circumference of his head, dental prosthesis, possible fractures, bones deformities, illnesses which might have affected his skeleton. The researches would be long, expensive, extremely difficult, but not impossible. The results would remain subject to the laws of probability. Absolute certainty is in my view impossible.

Skulls were in one section of the ossuary, fibulae and tibulae in another. Biancheri was reiterating the same story. None the less the reburial of bones of uncertain ownership was to go ahead.

For Gluck this was all too much. She had shown, for her, restraint in letting Edmund Dulac arrange things as he thought best. It was not in her nature to be passive while others got on with the action, nor would she stay silent while Ireland arranged a state funeral for, and a priest blessed, the bones of assorted Frenchmen. She wrote to George Yeats, against Edith’s wishes, and to avoid suspicion of Edith’s complicity, gave her own bank as her address:

Dear Mrs Yeats

In June 1947 I accompanied Edith Heald to the Cemetery at Roquebrune where, despite exhaustive search we were unable to find your husband’s grave. As Edith does not speak French with ease I made all the enquiries, firstly with the parish priest, the Abbe Biancheri, and after with M. Pierre Reynaut, Director of the Maison Roblot, undertakers at Menton. Both these men stated that your husband had been buried in a ‘fosse commune’, that the remains had been removed at the end of five years, and that these remains would be almost impossible to find, and that if found identity would be open to doubt.

Naturally all this was so shocking that I made sure by reiteration and investigation that their information was correct and that no possible mistake was being made. I have since had all the details confirmed to me in writing.

You will perhaps wonder why I have not written to you sooner. I placed the matter in other and more intimate hands as far as you were concerned, and so far I have preserved the utmost secrecy, but now that it has been published in The Times and other papers that you are contemplating exhumation and reburial in Ireland I felt I must write to you.

I have no desire to make things worse than they are, but because of my knowledge of the exact circumstances at Roquebrune (my enquiries were the first in eight years) culminating in the terrible discovery that there was no grave, I cannot view this reburial with equanimity.

Will you please, therefore, set my mind at rest by letting me know that in view of all the uncertainty you will reconsider any scheme for reburial.8

Dulac, an irascible man, was furious at what he saw as Gluck’s interference in matters that should not concern her. He called her threatening and high-handed and accused her of putting Edith and himself in an awkward position

I will now have to do my best to minimise the effect your letter has had upon George in order to save Edith from its possible consequences. I shall very naturally say that it is entirely your own effort and that neither Edith nor I had anything to do with its inspiration or its contents. Please let me know at once if I have Edith’s approval in doing so. If by misfortune I have not, and she tells me that she on the contrary approves of what you do, it will break our hearts but I shall very regretfully have to tell G. Y. that I have nothing more to do with this painful affair and leave it to you to handle in the way your own desires dictate.9

He was expressing more than just exasperation at the embarrassing muddle over Yeats’s bones. He was angry, like many of Edith’s friends, at the way Gluck seemed to be eclipsing Edith and taking over her life. In a sense this anger was justified. Gluck opened Edith’s letters, listened to her telephone calls and answered questions that were put to Edith. In a sardonic way Dulac was acknowledging that Edith’s approval or otherwise would come from Gluck, that Edith’s decisions would be made by Gluck. It was the ‘YouWe’ problem but in a different manifestation, the fusion of identity but now with a woman of unequal power. For Gluck it was a troublesome situation too. She was protective of Edith who anyway sought her help over the issue. She had been distressed by the Nora business, the splitting of the bond between the two sisters, the implacable resentment this caused among Edith’s friends, which she was unable to mend. But she was also dominant and scrupulous about facts. The truth, or what she felt to be the truth, no matter how painful, embarrassing or inconvenient, was the code by which she tried to live. Were it not for her involvement with Edith, she would have told The Times right away about her Roquebrune sojourn, for the sake of fact, not scandal. Now she was in the complicity. But she could not let Dulac have the last word.

She wrote to him saying that he had Edith’s permission to dissociate Edith from Gluck’s letter to George Yeats. He replied to Edith (8 March 1948) asking why Gluck was answering for her.

It is from you that I wanted that permission, since it is you that are obviously concerned first and foremost in this affair … I never expected Gluck would abruptly brush everybody on one side to satisfy what can only be an irresponsible desire to interfere