Olivia Shakespear
Encyclopedia
Olivia Shakespear, was a British novelist, playwright, and patron of the arts. She wrote six books that are described as "marriage problem" novels. Her works sold poorly, sometimes only a few hundred copies. Her last novel, Uncle Hilary, is considered her best. She wrote two plays in collaboration with Florence Farr
.
Olivia was the daughter of a retired Adjutant General
, and had little formal education. She was well-read however, and developed a love of literature. In 1885 she married London barrister
Henry Hope Shakespear, and in 1886 gave birth to their only child, Dorothy
. In 1894 her literary interests led to a friendship with William Butler Yeats that became physically intimate in 1896. Following their consummation he declared that they "had many days of happiness" to come, but the affair ended in 1897. They nevertheless remained life-long friends and corresponded frequently. Yeats went on to marry Georgie Hyde-Lees
, Olivia's step-niece and Dorothy's best friend.
Olivia began hosting a weekly salon frequented by Ezra Pound
and other modernist
writers and artists in 1909, and became influential in London literary society. Dorothy Shakespear married Pound in 1914, despite the less-than-enthusiastic blessing of her parents. After their marriage, Pound would use funds received from Olivia to support T.S. Eliot and James Joyce
. When Dorothy gave birth to a son, Omar Pound
, in France in 1926, Olivia assumed guardianship of the boy. He lived with Olivia until her death on 3 October 1938.
and at age 16 joined the British Indian Army
as an ensign
. He rose to the rank of Adjutant General in Bengal
, retiring in 1856 at age 48 due to ill health. Within a year of returning to Britain he married Harriet Johnson (b. 1821) of Bath. The couple moved to the Isle of Wight
where their two daughters were born: Florence in 1858 and Olivia on 17 March 1863. Soon after they relocated to Sussex
where their third child, Henry, was born in 1866. In 1877 the family moved to London and raised their daughters in a social world that encouraged the pursuit of leisure. Olivia often visited her many Johnson relatives in the country, and became particularly fond of her cousin Lionel Johnson
—the only one of many uncles and cousins not to join the military—who went on to become a poet and friend to W. B. Yeats. It is likely that Olivia received little formal education; she may have been educated by tutors, and appears to have become well-read as a young woman.
In 1885 Olivia married Henry Hope Shakespear, a man described by Terence Brown in The Life of W.B. Yeats: A Critical Biography as "worthy" but "dull". Born in India in 1849, he was descended from 17th-century East London
ropemakers and, like Olivia, came from a military family, although of less prestige and wealth than the Tuckers and Johnsons. John Harwood
, Olivia's biographer and author of Olivia Shakespear and W. B. Yeats: After Long Silence believes Henry probably saw an opportunity to increase his social standing and annual income in wedding Olivia. He had attended Harrow
, studied law, and joined a law practice in 1875. The couple were married on 8 December 1885, and honeymooned in Boulogne and Paris. Olivia's father endowed them with a comfortable income in the form of a trust. Nine months after the wedding their only child, Dorothy
, was born on 14 September 1886; they likely discontinued physical relations after the honeymoon, and Olivia realised quite soon that the marriage was devoid of passion. Yeats biographer Alexander Jeffares writes, "she was unselfcentered, unselfish, deeply imaginative and sympathetic and, until she met Yeats, she seems to have accepted the fact of her unhappy loveless marriage".
Shakespear dissolved his legal partnership in the late 1880s—his partner may have been embezzling from clients' trusts—and formed his own practice. Harwood writes that Shakespear's attitude to the situation showed a certain amount of "timidity" on his part and a definite "dislike of scenes". During this period Olivia moved from socialising with military wives to literary women: Valentine Fox (unhappily married to a Kent
brewer) and Pearl Craighie, a divorced American writer who published as John Oliver Hobbes
.
in Paris, Yeats was in London for the production of his play The Land of Heart's Desire
. The two were not introduced that evening but Yeats, probably through Lionel Johnson (who became disruptively drunk at the dinner), enquired about the woman seated opposite. Yeats was deeply affected, later writing in his memoirs of the encounter: "I noticed opposite me ... a woman of great beauty ....She was exquisitely dressed .... and suggested to me an incomparable distinction." Soon after Olivia attended a showing of The Land of Heart's Desire, and found herself moved by the performance. She wanted to meet the "tall and black haired" poet and asked Johnson to invite Yeats to tea on 10 May 1894, adding in her handwriting to the invitation, "I shall be so glad to see you". In his Memoirs Yeats referred to her as "Diana Vernon", writing, "In this book I cannot giver her her real name—Diana Vernon sounds pleasantly in my ears and will suit as well as any other".
They quickly established a strong friendship, with Olivia listening sympathetically to his obsessive love for Maud. When Yeats later described their friendship, he wrote, "I told her of my love sorrow, indeed it was my obsession, never leaving by day or night". Writing in The Last Courtly Lover, Gloria Kline suggests Olivia and Yeats began a friendship based on the discussion of literature and his willingness to review her work. John Unterecker, writing in "Faces and False Faces", sees friendship as the most important aspect in the relationship, explaining, "she found in Yeats, as he in her, a person who could discuss literature and ideas ... she was one of the few persons with whom he could be completely relaxed". Comparing the difference between Maud and Olivia he writes, "Maud Gonne offered Yeats subject matter for poetry, the 'interesting' life he had hoped for, and Olivia Shakespear offered him repose". According to Kline, Yeats compared Olivia to Diana
and Maud to Helen; he was attracted to dark coloured women, describing Olivia's skin as "a little darker than a Greek's would have been and her hair was very dark". Literary scholar Humphrey Carpenter
writes that Yeats' impression of Olivia was one of a woman with "a profound culture, a knowledge of French, English, and Italian and seemed always at leisure. Her nature was gentle and contemplative, and she was content, it seems, to have no more of life than leisure and the talk of her friends". Nevertheless she was working on her third novel, Beauty's Hour, and it is likely that Yeats read the manuscript, suggested revisions, and may have contributed to the characterisations. Kline believes the two began a friendship based on the discussion of literature and his willingness to review her work; Yeats biographer Foster adds they were drawn together by a mutual interest in the occult
. For Yeats, then aged 30, an important aspect of their friendship was the opportunity it presented for a sexual relationship with a woman, something he had not then experienced.
In August Yeats returned to Ireland, continuing his correspondence with Olivia, writing to her about Maud who had recently given birth to a daughter, Iseult
. In her letters Olivia may have been honest about her feelings toward him; in April 1895 he wrote to her, "I no more complain of your writing of love, than I would complain of a portrait painter keeping to portraits".
A few weeks later Yeats visited Olivia at her Porchester Square home to present his intentions but, to his bewilderment, was faced with a declaration of love. This was unexpected, and he took another absence. He decided that if Maud was unattainable he'd settle with Olivia, writing "but after all if I could not get the woman I loved it would be a comfort for a little while to devote myself to another". Olivia was prepared to risk the loss of her daughter, financial security, social standing, and the goodwill of her family. Although her husband had grounds to sue and destroy Yeats' reputation, her best hope against complete ruin was Shakespear's tendency to avoid a public scene. However, Yeats again lost his nerve, suggesting each seek advice from a friend (a "sponsor"). He probably chose Florence Farr to be his sponsor while Olivia chose Valentine Fox—Harwood speculates that the sponsors advised the two to have an affair, perhaps to Yeats' discomfort. On 15 July 1895, Yeats and Olivia travelled to Kent to visit Valentine Fox; the trip Harwood says "would have been, emotionally speaking a highly charged outing". Of the railway trip, Yeats wrote in his memoirs, "when on our first railway journey together—we were to spend the day at Kent—she gave the long passionate kiss of love, I was startled & a little shocked". They went on to share more passionate kisses in art galleries and at her home.
Still distressed about Lionel, Yeats turned to Arthur Symons
for companionship, moving into a room adjacent to his in October 1895. Preoccupied and thinking about Maud, he locked himself out one day while buying a cake in preparation for a visit from Olivia and her sponsor; after Olivia's visit he stayed up through the night talking to Symons about Maud. She arrived in London a few weeks later for a brief visit. Yeats was ambivalent about Olivia despite the advice of the sponsors; with no money to support her, he suggested she seek a legal separation (instead of a divorce), sparing her social ostracism and financial ruin. Ezra Pound biographer Jay Wilhelm suggests Shakespear knew that Olivia loved Yeats but seemed more concerned about the loss of social status in the event of divorce, causing Yeats and Olivia to decide that "it was kinder to simply deceive him than totally abandon him". In January 1896 Yeats moved again, into a small flat in Woburn Place, so as to be nearer to her. Finally after a charged bed-buying session, with Yeats describing "an embarrassed conversation upon the width", and his nervousness preventing them at first from becoming lovers, he eventually wrote in January 1896, "at last she came to me in my thirtieth year .... and we had many days of happiness". Yeats' happiness is apparent in the poems he wrote at that period, and for the duration of their affair, Olivia appears to have acted as a muse to the poet.Hassett describes Yeats' "He Remembers Forgotten Beauty", published in The Savoy
in January 1896, as a "moving encomium to Olivia" in which she is symbolically cast as a White Goddess or lunar goddess. See Hassett (2010), 18–19.
Six months later he was in back in Ireland, and in August Olivia was visiting Valentine Fox with her husband where she received news of her father's death. She left for an extended stay in Torquay
where she stayed until September before leaving for a visit to Scotland with her husband. Yeats left Ireland for Paris to visit Maud in November, and did not return to London until January 1897, with Maud following close behind and arriving in London in February. Yeats wrote of Maud's visit: "Maud wrote to me ... she was in London & would I come to dine. I dined with her & my trouble increased—she certainly had no thought of the mischief she was doing – & at last one morning .... [Olivia] found my mood did not answer hers and & burst into tears—'There is someone else in your heart' she said. It was the breaking between us for many years". The affair ended that spring when Yeats again returned to Ireland. Olivia did not visit him again at Woburn Place for many years, according to Yeats biographer Richard Ellmann.
. Pembroke Mansions was described by a friend as "an uninviting Bayswater slum". A few months later Olivia's mother died. Within a week Olivia received a letter of condolence from Yeats, possibly their first communication since 1897. Several scholars and biographers speculate that they resumed their love affair at some point between 1903 and 1910; Pound biographer Wilhelm believes they reconciled as early as 1903, while Yeats biographers Jeffares and Ross suggest the affair likely reignited for a period in 1906.
For a short time in 1901 Olivia held a position as a book reviewer for The Kensington Review, a small literary magazine, until it succumbed to poor sales. After, she dabbled in the occult
and became friendly with prominent London occultists. In 1902 she co-wrote with Florence Farr—who for a time led the Order of Golden Dawn
—two plays on the occult, The Beloved of Hathor and The Shrine of the Golden Hawk, which were subsequently published as a pair.
Although the family received an inheritance from Olivia's mother, they continued to live in Bayswater. For a period Dorothy was at boarding school, after which she was sent to a finishing school in Geneva
. To save money, the family often left London during the summer, to take long visits to relatives in the country, in particular her brother Henry Tucker. Not until 1905 did the family lease a house in Brunswick Gardens, near Kensington Palace
, when Dorothy returned home to live with her parents.
in London in 1909. Following her friends in Kensington
society, Olivia opened her home once a week for a salon
, beginning an important period in her life. When Yeats returned to London that year, Olivia became the centre of a blossoming literary movement. Yeats held a Monday evening salon; those who attended usually also visited Olivia's. She hosted, and became a nexis for, much of the pre-war literary activity in London. Notable attendees included Pound, Hilda Doolittle
, Yeats, Wyndham Lewis
, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
, Walter Morse Rummel
, Richard Aldington
, William Carlos Williams
, T. E. Hulme
and John Cournos
. The gatherings were held in her drawing room, a place Pound described in a letter as "full of white magic". Olivia was by now a well-known occultist and hosted séances in her drawing room. She became well-versed in astrology
and palmistry, passing on what she knew to Dorothy who shared her interest. Both read grimoire
s; Olivia was both familiar with the symbology of the occult and an expert at "drawing occult symbols".
Olivia met Pound in January 1909 at a Kensington salon hosted by a friend; she invited him for tea on 16 February 1909, and at his insistence introduced Pound to Yeats in May 1909. Yeats had recently returned to London and began a thorough investigation of spiritualism and the occult, turning to Olivia for advice. She took the young American poet to Yeats' rooms at Woburn Place, fostering their relationship.
Dorothy soon fell in love with Pound. In late 1909 and early 1910 Olivia and Dorothy attended his lectures at the London Polytechnic Institute; in June 1910 they joined him in Sirmione
, Italy. For reasons unclear to biographers Olivia prohibited the two from writing to each other during his extended visit to New York from 1910 to 1911. Despite the restriction Dorothy seems to have considered herself engaged to Pound, although uncertain whether he intended to stay in New York or return to London.
In 1910 Yeats thought his horoscope
suggested a return to Olivia; he distanced himself from Maud and in June began to see Olivia more frequently. Pound was fond of Olivia, which may have caused Yeats some jealousy as when, for example, Pound met the two at the theatre and took them afterward to tea—an occasion when Yeats was extremely rude to Pound. A year later, Olivia introduced Yeats to Georgie Hyde-Lees
, her 18-year-old step-niece and Dorothy's best friend, whom Yeats eventually married.Olivia's brother Henry Tucker married Georgie's mother Nelly Hyde-Lees in 1909. See Foster (1997) , 437.
Pound returned from America in 1911 and resumed his visits to Olivia and Dorothy, adhering to Olivia's restrictions. That October Pound formally asked to marry Dorothy; her father refused on the basis of Pound's meagre income. Neither Dorothy nor Pound gave up: he again asked for permission to marry her in March 1912 but was again rejected. In Dorothy's mind they continued to be engaged, although they were only allowed short visits in the family drawing room once a week or every two weeks.
Olivia became concerned about her daughter after Hilda Doolittle, who also believed she was engaged to Pound, arrived in London in 1911. Olivia welcomed H.D. to her home, but she witnessed the interactions between Dorothy, Pound, H.D. and Richard Aldington
, whom H.D. married in 1913. In September 1912 Olivia wrote a stern letter to Pound, in which she pointedly told him to break off his friendship with Dorothy:
In 1913, Olivia introduced Pound to vorticist
sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
at an art exhibition at the Albert Hall
. At the same exhibition the sculptor met Nina Hamnett
, whom he subsequently used as a model for a series of nudes bronzes, one of which Olivia bought. In 1914 Olivia translated a grimoire for Yeats and Pound, who spent November 1913 to January 1914 in the countryside at Stone Cottage in Ashdown Forest—Pound acting as secretary to Yeats—researching the occult. They read several grimoires, and Olivia provided for them a translation of the Abbot of Villar's 1670 grimoire Le Comte de Gabalis. Her translation was serialised in the literary magazine The Egoist
later that year.
By 1914 Olivia seems to have realised that Dorothy was determined to marry Pound, and finally consented; ironically Pound was then earning less than he had in 1911. Hope Shakespear relented when the couple agreed to a church wedding rather than a civil ceremony, which took place on 20 April 1914. Olivia gave them two early circus drawings by Pablo Picasso
.
, taking with her two maids who had been with the family for decades. Her life continued unchanged, filled with social events. In September 1926, Dorothy gave birth to a son, Omar Pound
, who in 1927 was brought from France to be raised in England. Olivia became his guardian and Dorothy spent summers with her mother and son.
In 1926 Yeats spent several weeks in London, likely visiting Olivia frequently. He showed regret for his behaviour in 1897, writing to her, "I came across two early photographs of you yesterday ... Who ever had a like profile?—a profile from a Sicilian coin. One looks back to one's youth as to a cup that a mad man dying of thirst left half tasted. I wonder if you feel like that?" The two maintained their correspondence, as they had for many years.
Olivia continued to socialise and had many friends, one of whom, Wyndham Lewis, painted her portrait; he enjoyed her company despite finding it difficult to relate to others. She stopped writing but remained an avid reader, turning to detective stories for light relief although she also kept up with literary authors. She became friendly with Thomas MacGreevy
, whom she invited for tea, later writing to him, "WBY has given me the new edition of Reveries and the Veil, & I am re-reading it all. It is very beautifully done. He was about 29 when I first knew him". McGreevy told Yeats that Olivia was "always a symbol of elegance, a kind of gold and ivory image". Harwood writes of her, "Olivia Shakespear was avant-garde in literature, agnostic in religion, and conservative in politics, at least later in life".
Olivia's correspondence with Pound continued throughout the 1920s and '30s, when she acted in part as his agent in London. In 1924, at Pound's request, she welcomed George Antheil
into her social circle, procured artwork and books that were sent on to Dorothy and Ezra in Rapallo
, and mediated in a dispute between Pound and Lewis. She was disinterested in Pound's politics and economic views and particularly disliked his later Cantos
. After her husband's death, Olivia's income was sufficient to support a comfortable lifestyle. During the 1920s and '30s she gradually increased Dorothy's income (which was also increased by various family bequests), and in the 1930s she made investments in Dorothy's name, sending the proceeds to Dorothy and Pound. In a very real sense, according to Harwood, Olivia Shakespear is the "unsung heroine" of the modernist period, because much of the money Ezra Pound generously used to support struggling writers such as T.S. Eliot and James Joyce
came from her.
Olivia died of complications brought on by gall bladder disease on 3 October 1938. The day before her death she wrote in a letter to Dorothy: "On Monday I was taken suddenly ill with gall bladder trouble—awful pain—sent for Doctor Barnes—he gave me dope & an injection and pain gradually went ... He says I am going on all right, but of course I feel rather a wreck". She died the following day of a heart attack. John Unterecker believes Olivia's death shattered Yeats, who died only months later, because she added warmth to his life. Yeats wrote of her death:
Dorothy was ill when her mother died, unable to travel to London. She sent Pound to organise the funeral and to clear out the house. Ezra sorted through Olivia's correspondence and returned to Yeats many of her letters. Unterecker writes that Yeats made an effort to keep the correspondence private: "Shortly before his death he methodically destroyed a large group of letters to Olivia Shakespear. These, returned to him after her death ... Yeats wanted no one to read".
The first two novels were published in 1894 to mixed reviews. Love on a Mortal Lease (title from George Meredith
) was released in June, followed in November by The Journey of High Honour, at 30,000 words considerably shorter than the 355 pages of Love on a Mortal Lease. Each novel sold only a few hundred copies. Harwood describes the early work such as Love on a Mortal Lease as showing stylistic similarities to contemporary women novelists such as Craighie and Rhonda Broughton, with witty dialogue in Craighie's style, although he thinks Olivia brought a more serious voice to her work. He describes Love on a Mortal Lease as a work in which the heroine is well-characterised but the background is weak.
She dedicated The False Laurel, published in 1896, to Lionel Johnson. The plot features a poetess who falls in love with and marries an insipid young poet, giving up her own writing to attend to his needs. She becomes bored, writes a successful play, and then goes mad. The False Laurel was the least successful of her books, selling fewer than 200 copies. It received a poor review from The Bookman
but a good one from The Athenaeneum.
Rupert Armstrong was published in 1899 by Harper and Brothers
, dedicated to Valentine Fox. In this, the fourth of her novels, Harwood believes her writing and voice became more original. The complicated plot—a mother and daughter struggle for "possession of the [father's] artistic soul"—shows hints of incestuous love, a theme found in her later work. Written during the affair with Yeats, Harwood sees the characters presented "in a precise, bitter intensity unlike anything in the earlier work".
The Devotees was published by Heinemann in December 1900. Like Rupert Armstrong, the plot of The Devotees depicts a mildly incestuous love: a young man and girl, raised together since childhood, devote themselves for decades to his drug-addicted mother before they marry. The reviews were mostly unkind.
Olivia's final novel, Uncle Hilary, was published in 1910 and is considered her best work. Of Uncle Hilary Jane Eldridge Miller writes in Rebel Women: Feminism, Modernism, and the Edwardian Novel, "Shakespear demonstrates the ways in which that ideal leads to disillusionment and resentment". In the complicated plot a young woman unwittingly marries her stepfather, leaves him, and accepts a marriage proposal from her guardian. Harwood believes her loveless marriage, the love affair with Yeats, the frustration with Dorothy, and Pound's unfaithfulness to Dorothy, built in her a strength and acceptance of life that bordered on the spiritual and she no longer needed to write. Miller writes that in the novel Olivia explores "marriage laws, divorce, and bigamy", with a focus on the nature of romantic love—rejected in favour of spiritual and intellectual pursuits. Leon Surette writes in The Birth of Modernism, Olivia's Uncle Hilary highlights the ties between spiritualism, occultism and feminism, seeing Uncle Hilary as a feminist novel which he describes as "quite readable".
Jane Miller characterises the works as "marriage problem" novels in which the wife confronts the reality of marriage, its restrictions, and the need to achieve independence. By finding interests outside marriage the wife loses the overwhelming need for love within the marriage. Miller writes that in Uncle Hilary Olivia examines issues such as marriage laws, divorce, and bigamy, while focusing on the nature of romantic love. It was in Uncle Hilary that Olivia wrote of love: "Love is the worst slavery that exists ... it is the most persistent of illusions".
Florence Farr
Florence Beatrice Emery Farr was a British West End leading actress, composer and director. She was also a women's rights activist, journalist, educator, singer, novelist, leader of the occult order, The Golden Dawn and one time mistress of playwright George Bernard Shaw...
.
Olivia was the daughter of a retired Adjutant General
Adjutant general
An Adjutant General is a military chief administrative officer.-Imperial Russia:In Imperial Russia, the General-Adjutant was a Court officer, who was usually an army general. He served as a personal aide to the Tsar and hence was a member of the H. I. M. Retinue...
, and had little formal education. She was well-read however, and developed a love of literature. In 1885 she married London barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
Henry Hope Shakespear, and in 1886 gave birth to their only child, Dorothy
Dorothy Shakespear
Dorothy Shakespear was an English artist, the daughter of novelist Olivia Shakespear, and the wife of the poet Ezra Pound. She was a member of the Vorticism movement, and had her work published in the literary magazine BLAST.Dorothy met Ezra Pound in 1909; after a long courtship the two were...
. In 1894 her literary interests led to a friendship with William Butler Yeats that became physically intimate in 1896. Following their consummation he declared that they "had many days of happiness" to come, but the affair ended in 1897. They nevertheless remained life-long friends and corresponded frequently. Yeats went on to marry Georgie Hyde-Lees
Georgie Hyde-Lees
Georgie Hyde-Lees was the daughter of Edith Ellen and Gilbert Hyde-Lees, and the wife of the poet William Butler Yeats....
, Olivia's step-niece and Dorothy's best friend.
Olivia began hosting a weekly salon frequented by Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
and other modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
writers and artists in 1909, and became influential in London literary society. Dorothy Shakespear married Pound in 1914, despite the less-than-enthusiastic blessing of her parents. After their marriage, Pound would use funds received from Olivia to support T.S. Eliot and James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
. When Dorothy gave birth to a son, Omar Pound
Omar Pound
Omar Shakespear Pound was an Anglo-American writer, teacher, and translator. He is the author of Arabic & Persian Poems and co-author of Wyndham Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography...
, in France in 1926, Olivia assumed guardianship of the boy. He lived with Olivia until her death on 3 October 1938.
Early life and marriage
Olivia's father, Henry Tod Tucker (b. 1808), was born in EdinburghEdinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
and at age 16 joined the British Indian Army
British Indian Army
The British Indian Army, officially simply the Indian Army, was the principal army of the British Raj in India before the partition of India in 1947...
as an ensign
Ensign (rank)
Ensign is a junior rank of a commissioned officer in the armed forces of some countries, normally in the infantry or navy. As the junior officer in an infantry regiment was traditionally the carrier of the ensign flag, the rank itself acquired the name....
. He rose to the rank of Adjutant General in Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
, retiring in 1856 at age 48 due to ill health. Within a year of returning to Britain he married Harriet Johnson (b. 1821) of Bath. The couple moved to the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
where their two daughters were born: Florence in 1858 and Olivia on 17 March 1863. Soon after they relocated to Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
where their third child, Henry, was born in 1866. In 1877 the family moved to London and raised their daughters in a social world that encouraged the pursuit of leisure. Olivia often visited her many Johnson relatives in the country, and became particularly fond of her cousin Lionel Johnson
Lionel Johnson
Lionel Pigot Johnson was an English poet, essayist and critic. He was born at Broadstairs, and educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, graduating in 1890. He became a Catholic convert in 1891. He lived a solitary life in London, struggling with alcoholism and his repressed...
—the only one of many uncles and cousins not to join the military—who went on to become a poet and friend to W. B. Yeats. It is likely that Olivia received little formal education; she may have been educated by tutors, and appears to have become well-read as a young woman.
In 1885 Olivia married Henry Hope Shakespear, a man described by Terence Brown in The Life of W.B. Yeats: A Critical Biography as "worthy" but "dull". Born in India in 1849, he was descended from 17th-century East London
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
ropemakers and, like Olivia, came from a military family, although of less prestige and wealth than the Tuckers and Johnsons. John Harwood
John Harwood (writer)
John Harwood was born in Hobart, Tasmania and is an Australian poet, literary critic and novelist.Educated at the University of Tasmania and Cambridge University, Harwood has worked as an academic at Flinders University in South Australia...
, Olivia's biographer and author of Olivia Shakespear and W. B. Yeats: After Long Silence believes Henry probably saw an opportunity to increase his social standing and annual income in wedding Olivia. He had attended Harrow
Harrow, London
Harrow is an area in the London Borough of Harrow, northwest London, United Kingdom. It is a suburban area and is situated 12.2 miles northwest of Charing Cross...
, studied law, and joined a law practice in 1875. The couple were married on 8 December 1885, and honeymooned in Boulogne and Paris. Olivia's father endowed them with a comfortable income in the form of a trust. Nine months after the wedding their only child, Dorothy
Dorothy Shakespear
Dorothy Shakespear was an English artist, the daughter of novelist Olivia Shakespear, and the wife of the poet Ezra Pound. She was a member of the Vorticism movement, and had her work published in the literary magazine BLAST.Dorothy met Ezra Pound in 1909; after a long courtship the two were...
, was born on 14 September 1886; they likely discontinued physical relations after the honeymoon, and Olivia realised quite soon that the marriage was devoid of passion. Yeats biographer Alexander Jeffares writes, "she was unselfcentered, unselfish, deeply imaginative and sympathetic and, until she met Yeats, she seems to have accepted the fact of her unhappy loveless marriage".
Shakespear dissolved his legal partnership in the late 1880s—his partner may have been embezzling from clients' trusts—and formed his own practice. Harwood writes that Shakespear's attitude to the situation showed a certain amount of "timidity" on his part and a definite "dislike of scenes". During this period Olivia moved from socialising with military wives to literary women: Valentine Fox (unhappily married to a Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
brewer) and Pearl Craighie, a divorced American writer who published as John Oliver Hobbes
John Oliver Hobbes
Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie was an Anglo-American novelist and dramatist who wrote under the pen-name of John Oliver Hobbes.-Life:...
.
Friendship
Accompanied by Pearl Craighie, on 16 April 1894 Olivia attended a literary dinner to launch The Yellow Book. Olivia was seated opposite W. B. Yeats. Recently returned from visiting Maud GonneMaud Gonne
Maud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars...
in Paris, Yeats was in London for the production of his play The Land of Heart's Desire
The Land of Heart's Desire
The Land of Heart's Desire is a play by Irish poet, dramatist, and 1923 Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats. First performed in the spring of 1894, at the Avenue Theatre in London, where it ran for a little over six weeks, it was the first professional performance of one of Yeats' plays.In this...
. The two were not introduced that evening but Yeats, probably through Lionel Johnson (who became disruptively drunk at the dinner), enquired about the woman seated opposite. Yeats was deeply affected, later writing in his memoirs of the encounter: "I noticed opposite me ... a woman of great beauty ....She was exquisitely dressed .... and suggested to me an incomparable distinction." Soon after Olivia attended a showing of The Land of Heart's Desire, and found herself moved by the performance. She wanted to meet the "tall and black haired" poet and asked Johnson to invite Yeats to tea on 10 May 1894, adding in her handwriting to the invitation, "I shall be so glad to see you". In his Memoirs Yeats referred to her as "Diana Vernon", writing, "In this book I cannot giver her her real name—Diana Vernon sounds pleasantly in my ears and will suit as well as any other".
They quickly established a strong friendship, with Olivia listening sympathetically to his obsessive love for Maud. When Yeats later described their friendship, he wrote, "I told her of my love sorrow, indeed it was my obsession, never leaving by day or night". Writing in The Last Courtly Lover, Gloria Kline suggests Olivia and Yeats began a friendship based on the discussion of literature and his willingness to review her work. John Unterecker, writing in "Faces and False Faces", sees friendship as the most important aspect in the relationship, explaining, "she found in Yeats, as he in her, a person who could discuss literature and ideas ... she was one of the few persons with whom he could be completely relaxed". Comparing the difference between Maud and Olivia he writes, "Maud Gonne offered Yeats subject matter for poetry, the 'interesting' life he had hoped for, and Olivia Shakespear offered him repose". According to Kline, Yeats compared Olivia to Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
and Maud to Helen; he was attracted to dark coloured women, describing Olivia's skin as "a little darker than a Greek's would have been and her hair was very dark". Literary scholar Humphrey Carpenter
Humphrey Carpenter
Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster.-Biography:...
writes that Yeats' impression of Olivia was one of a woman with "a profound culture, a knowledge of French, English, and Italian and seemed always at leisure. Her nature was gentle and contemplative, and she was content, it seems, to have no more of life than leisure and the talk of her friends". Nevertheless she was working on her third novel, Beauty's Hour, and it is likely that Yeats read the manuscript, suggested revisions, and may have contributed to the characterisations. Kline believes the two began a friendship based on the discussion of literature and his willingness to review her work; Yeats biographer Foster adds they were drawn together by a mutual interest in the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
. For Yeats, then aged 30, an important aspect of their friendship was the opportunity it presented for a sexual relationship with a woman, something he had not then experienced.
In August Yeats returned to Ireland, continuing his correspondence with Olivia, writing to her about Maud who had recently given birth to a daughter, Iseult
Iseult Gonne
Iseult Gonne , was the daughter of Maud Gonne and Lucien Millevoye, and the wife of the novelist Francis Stuart....
. In her letters Olivia may have been honest about her feelings toward him; in April 1895 he wrote to her, "I no more complain of your writing of love, than I would complain of a portrait painter keeping to portraits".
Love affair
Yeats delayed visiting Olivia in London a month later, instead tending to Johnson who was involved in the Wilde case and descending into alcoholism. Yeats seems to have persuaded himself that Olivia and her cousin shared a flaw, and wrote, "here is the same weakness I thought ... Her beauty ... dark and still, had the nobility of defeated things, and how could it help but wring my heart. I took a fortnight to decide what I should do". He constructed a plan to reconcile his desire with her perceived wickedness: he would ask her to leave her husband and come to live with him. Until then their friendship would remain platonic.A few weeks later Yeats visited Olivia at her Porchester Square home to present his intentions but, to his bewilderment, was faced with a declaration of love. This was unexpected, and he took another absence. He decided that if Maud was unattainable he'd settle with Olivia, writing "but after all if I could not get the woman I loved it would be a comfort for a little while to devote myself to another". Olivia was prepared to risk the loss of her daughter, financial security, social standing, and the goodwill of her family. Although her husband had grounds to sue and destroy Yeats' reputation, her best hope against complete ruin was Shakespear's tendency to avoid a public scene. However, Yeats again lost his nerve, suggesting each seek advice from a friend (a "sponsor"). He probably chose Florence Farr to be his sponsor while Olivia chose Valentine Fox—Harwood speculates that the sponsors advised the two to have an affair, perhaps to Yeats' discomfort. On 15 July 1895, Yeats and Olivia travelled to Kent to visit Valentine Fox; the trip Harwood says "would have been, emotionally speaking a highly charged outing". Of the railway trip, Yeats wrote in his memoirs, "when on our first railway journey together—we were to spend the day at Kent—she gave the long passionate kiss of love, I was startled & a little shocked". They went on to share more passionate kisses in art galleries and at her home.
Still distressed about Lionel, Yeats turned to Arthur Symons
Arthur Symons
Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy...
for companionship, moving into a room adjacent to his in October 1895. Preoccupied and thinking about Maud, he locked himself out one day while buying a cake in preparation for a visit from Olivia and her sponsor; after Olivia's visit he stayed up through the night talking to Symons about Maud. She arrived in London a few weeks later for a brief visit. Yeats was ambivalent about Olivia despite the advice of the sponsors; with no money to support her, he suggested she seek a legal separation (instead of a divorce), sparing her social ostracism and financial ruin. Ezra Pound biographer Jay Wilhelm suggests Shakespear knew that Olivia loved Yeats but seemed more concerned about the loss of social status in the event of divorce, causing Yeats and Olivia to decide that "it was kinder to simply deceive him than totally abandon him". In January 1896 Yeats moved again, into a small flat in Woburn Place, so as to be nearer to her. Finally after a charged bed-buying session, with Yeats describing "an embarrassed conversation upon the width", and his nervousness preventing them at first from becoming lovers, he eventually wrote in January 1896, "at last she came to me in my thirtieth year .... and we had many days of happiness". Yeats' happiness is apparent in the poems he wrote at that period, and for the duration of their affair, Olivia appears to have acted as a muse to the poet.Hassett describes Yeats' "He Remembers Forgotten Beauty", published in The Savoy
The Savoy (periodical)
This article is about the former British magazine, for other uses, see Savoy The Savoy was a magazine of literature, art, and criticism published in 1896 in London. It featured work by authors such as W. B. Yeats, Max Beerbohm, Joseph Conrad, and Aubrey Beardsley. Only eight issues of the magazine...
in January 1896, as a "moving encomium to Olivia" in which she is symbolically cast as a White Goddess or lunar goddess. See Hassett (2010), 18–19.
Six months later he was in back in Ireland, and in August Olivia was visiting Valentine Fox with her husband where she received news of her father's death. She left for an extended stay in Torquay
Torquay
Torquay is a town in the unitary authority area of Torbay and ceremonial county of Devon, England. It lies south of Exeter along the A380 on the north of Torbay, north-east of Plymouth and adjoins the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay. Torquay’s population of 63,998 during the...
where she stayed until September before leaving for a visit to Scotland with her husband. Yeats left Ireland for Paris to visit Maud in November, and did not return to London until January 1897, with Maud following close behind and arriving in London in February. Yeats wrote of Maud's visit: "Maud wrote to me ... she was in London & would I come to dine. I dined with her & my trouble increased—she certainly had no thought of the mischief she was doing – & at last one morning .... [Olivia] found my mood did not answer hers and & burst into tears—'There is someone else in your heart' she said. It was the breaking between us for many years". The affair ended that spring when Yeats again returned to Ireland. Olivia did not visit him again at Woburn Place for many years, according to Yeats biographer Richard Ellmann.
Pembroke Mansions
Olivia's life is not well documented between 1897 and 1908. It is known that she visited her cousin Lionel for the last time in 1897 before he was isolated by his alcoholism. He died alone of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1902. In 1899 the family suffered an unspecified financial setback that forced them to move into an apartment in BayswaterBayswater
Bayswater is an area of west London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west . It is a built-up district located 3 miles west-north-west of Charing Cross, bordering the north of Hyde Park over Kensington Gardens and having a population density of...
. Pembroke Mansions was described by a friend as "an uninviting Bayswater slum". A few months later Olivia's mother died. Within a week Olivia received a letter of condolence from Yeats, possibly their first communication since 1897. Several scholars and biographers speculate that they resumed their love affair at some point between 1903 and 1910; Pound biographer Wilhelm believes they reconciled as early as 1903, while Yeats biographers Jeffares and Ross suggest the affair likely reignited for a period in 1906.
For a short time in 1901 Olivia held a position as a book reviewer for The Kensington Review, a small literary magazine, until it succumbed to poor sales. After, she dabbled in the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
and became friendly with prominent London occultists. In 1902 she co-wrote with Florence Farr—who for a time led the Order of Golden Dawn
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...
—two plays on the occult, The Beloved of Hathor and The Shrine of the Golden Hawk, which were subsequently published as a pair.
Although the family received an inheritance from Olivia's mother, they continued to live in Bayswater. For a period Dorothy was at boarding school, after which she was sent to a finishing school in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
. To save money, the family often left London during the summer, to take long visits to relatives in the country, in particular her brother Henry Tucker. Not until 1905 did the family lease a house in Brunswick Gardens, near Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace is a royal residence set in Kensington Gardens in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, England. It has been a residence of the British Royal Family since the 17th century and is the official London residence of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Duke and...
, when Dorothy returned home to live with her parents.
Dorothy and Ezra Pound
Records of Olivia's life resume through Dorothy's letters and diaries surrounding the arrival of the American poet Ezra PoundEzra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
in London in 1909. Following her friends in Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
society, Olivia opened her home once a week for a salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
, beginning an important period in her life. When Yeats returned to London that year, Olivia became the centre of a blossoming literary movement. Yeats held a Monday evening salon; those who attended usually also visited Olivia's. She hosted, and became a nexis for, much of the pre-war literary activity in London. Notable attendees included Pound, Hilda Doolittle
H.D.
H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...
, Yeats, Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....
, Walter Morse Rummel
Walter Morse Rummel
Walter Morse Rummel was a prominent pianist, especially associated with Claude Debussy's works, as well as a composer and music editor. He was of German-English descent and active mainly in France....
, Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington , born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...
, William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
, T. E. Hulme
T. E. Hulme
Thomas Ernest Hulme was an English critic and poet who, through his writings on art, literature and politics, had a notable influence upon modernism.-Early life:...
and John Cournos
John Cournos
John Cournos , a writer of Russian-Jewish background, was born in the Ukraine, whence his family emigrated when he was aged 10. During the 1910s and 1920s, he lived in Britain, where his literary career started...
. The gatherings were held in her drawing room, a place Pound described in a letter as "full of white magic". Olivia was by now a well-known occultist and hosted séances in her drawing room. She became well-versed in astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
and palmistry, passing on what she knew to Dorothy who shared her interest. Both read grimoire
Grimoire
A grimoire is a textbook of magic. Such books typically include instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms and divination and also how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, and demons...
s; Olivia was both familiar with the symbology of the occult and an expert at "drawing occult symbols".
Olivia met Pound in January 1909 at a Kensington salon hosted by a friend; she invited him for tea on 16 February 1909, and at his insistence introduced Pound to Yeats in May 1909. Yeats had recently returned to London and began a thorough investigation of spiritualism and the occult, turning to Olivia for advice. She took the young American poet to Yeats' rooms at Woburn Place, fostering their relationship.
Dorothy soon fell in love with Pound. In late 1909 and early 1910 Olivia and Dorothy attended his lectures at the London Polytechnic Institute; in June 1910 they joined him in Sirmione
Sirmione
Sirmione is a comune in the province of Brescia, in Lombardy . It is bounded by the comunes of Desenzano del Garda and Peschiera del Garda in the province of Verona and the region of Veneto...
, Italy. For reasons unclear to biographers Olivia prohibited the two from writing to each other during his extended visit to New York from 1910 to 1911. Despite the restriction Dorothy seems to have considered herself engaged to Pound, although uncertain whether he intended to stay in New York or return to London.
In 1910 Yeats thought his horoscope
Horoscope
In astrology, a horoscope is a chart or diagram representing the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, the astrological aspects, and sensitive angles at the time of an event, such as the moment of a person's birth. The word horoscope is derived from Greek words meaning "a look at the hours" In...
suggested a return to Olivia; he distanced himself from Maud and in June began to see Olivia more frequently. Pound was fond of Olivia, which may have caused Yeats some jealousy as when, for example, Pound met the two at the theatre and took them afterward to tea—an occasion when Yeats was extremely rude to Pound. A year later, Olivia introduced Yeats to Georgie Hyde-Lees
Georgie Hyde-Lees
Georgie Hyde-Lees was the daughter of Edith Ellen and Gilbert Hyde-Lees, and the wife of the poet William Butler Yeats....
, her 18-year-old step-niece and Dorothy's best friend, whom Yeats eventually married.Olivia's brother Henry Tucker married Georgie's mother Nelly Hyde-Lees in 1909. See Foster (1997) , 437.
Pound returned from America in 1911 and resumed his visits to Olivia and Dorothy, adhering to Olivia's restrictions. That October Pound formally asked to marry Dorothy; her father refused on the basis of Pound's meagre income. Neither Dorothy nor Pound gave up: he again asked for permission to marry her in March 1912 but was again rejected. In Dorothy's mind they continued to be engaged, although they were only allowed short visits in the family drawing room once a week or every two weeks.
Olivia became concerned about her daughter after Hilda Doolittle, who also believed she was engaged to Pound, arrived in London in 1911. Olivia welcomed H.D. to her home, but she witnessed the interactions between Dorothy, Pound, H.D. and Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington
Richard Aldington , born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...
, whom H.D. married in 1913. In September 1912 Olivia wrote a stern letter to Pound, in which she pointedly told him to break off his friendship with Dorothy:
You told me you were prepared to see less of Dorothy this winter. I don't know if you wd rather leave it to me to say I don't think it advisable she should see so much of you etc. or whether you wd rather do it in your own way .... I don't know if she still considers herself engaged to you—but she obviously can't marry you—it's hardly decent! There's another point too—which is the personal inconvenience & bother to myself—I had all last winter, practically to keep 2 days a week for you to come & see her ... She must marry—She & I can't possibly go on living this feminine life practically à deux for ever, & we haven't money enough to separate ... You ought to go away—Englishmen don't understand yr American ways, & any man who wanted to marry her wd be put off by the fact of yr friendship (or whatever you call it) with her. If you had ₤500 a year I should be delighted for you to marry her!
In 1913, Olivia introduced Pound to vorticist
Vorticism
Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...
sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....
at an art exhibition at the Albert Hall
Albert Hall
Albert P. Hall is an American actor.Born in Brighton, Alabama, Hall graduated from the Columbia University School of the Arts in 1971. That same year he appeared Off-Broadway in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and on Broadway in the Melvin Van Peebles musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death...
. At the same exhibition the sculptor met Nina Hamnett
Nina Hamnett
Nina Hamnett was a Welsh artist and writer, and an expert on sailors' chanteys, who became known as the Queen of Bohemia.- Early life :...
, whom he subsequently used as a model for a series of nudes bronzes, one of which Olivia bought. In 1914 Olivia translated a grimoire for Yeats and Pound, who spent November 1913 to January 1914 in the countryside at Stone Cottage in Ashdown Forest—Pound acting as secretary to Yeats—researching the occult. They read several grimoires, and Olivia provided for them a translation of the Abbot of Villar's 1670 grimoire Le Comte de Gabalis. Her translation was serialised in the literary magazine The Egoist
The Egoist (periodical)
The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 to 1919, during which time it published important early modernist poetry and fiction. In its manifesto, it claimed to "recognise no taboos," and published a number of controversial works, such as parts of Ulysses...
later that year.
By 1914 Olivia seems to have realised that Dorothy was determined to marry Pound, and finally consented; ironically Pound was then earning less than he had in 1911. Hope Shakespear relented when the couple agreed to a church wedding rather than a civil ceremony, which took place on 20 April 1914. Olivia gave them two early circus drawings by Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
.
Later life and death
After Dorothy's wedding much of the documentation of Olivia's life ceases. She moved out of Brunswick Gardens in 1924, throwing away personal correspondence and giving away hundreds of books. Hope Shakespear died on 5 July 1923; within months Olivia moved to an apartment in West KensingtonWest Kensington
- Commercial/education :Local business consists of small shops, offices and restaurants, with the Olympia Exhibition Centre nearby. Indeed, it is the mix of local shops that give the area its character....
, taking with her two maids who had been with the family for decades. Her life continued unchanged, filled with social events. In September 1926, Dorothy gave birth to a son, Omar Pound
Omar Pound
Omar Shakespear Pound was an Anglo-American writer, teacher, and translator. He is the author of Arabic & Persian Poems and co-author of Wyndham Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography...
, who in 1927 was brought from France to be raised in England. Olivia became his guardian and Dorothy spent summers with her mother and son.
| Your hair is white My hair is white Come let us talk of love What other theme do we know When we were young We were in love with one another And therefore ignorant |
| —Draft of "After Long Silence" Yeats enclosed in a letter written to Olivia in 1929. |
In 1926 Yeats spent several weeks in London, likely visiting Olivia frequently. He showed regret for his behaviour in 1897, writing to her, "I came across two early photographs of you yesterday ... Who ever had a like profile?—a profile from a Sicilian coin. One looks back to one's youth as to a cup that a mad man dying of thirst left half tasted. I wonder if you feel like that?" The two maintained their correspondence, as they had for many years.
Olivia continued to socialise and had many friends, one of whom, Wyndham Lewis, painted her portrait; he enjoyed her company despite finding it difficult to relate to others. She stopped writing but remained an avid reader, turning to detective stories for light relief although she also kept up with literary authors. She became friendly with Thomas MacGreevy
Thomas MacGreevy
Thomas MacGreevy was a pivotal figure in the history of Irish literary modernism. A poet, he was also director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963 and served on the first Irish Arts Council .-Early life:MacGreevy was born in County Kerry, the son of a policeman and a primary...
, whom she invited for tea, later writing to him, "WBY has given me the new edition of Reveries and the Veil, & I am re-reading it all. It is very beautifully done. He was about 29 when I first knew him". McGreevy told Yeats that Olivia was "always a symbol of elegance, a kind of gold and ivory image". Harwood writes of her, "Olivia Shakespear was avant-garde in literature, agnostic in religion, and conservative in politics, at least later in life".
Olivia's correspondence with Pound continued throughout the 1920s and '30s, when she acted in part as his agent in London. In 1924, at Pound's request, she welcomed George Antheil
George Antheil
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...
into her social circle, procured artwork and books that were sent on to Dorothy and Ezra in Rapallo
Rapallo
Rapallo is a municipality in the province of Genoa, in Liguria, northern Italy. As of 2007 it counts approximately 34,000 inhabitants, it is part of the Tigullio Gulf and is located in between Portofino and Chiavari....
, and mediated in a dispute between Pound and Lewis. She was disinterested in Pound's politics and economic views and particularly disliked his later Cantos
The Cantos
The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered...
. After her husband's death, Olivia's income was sufficient to support a comfortable lifestyle. During the 1920s and '30s she gradually increased Dorothy's income (which was also increased by various family bequests), and in the 1930s she made investments in Dorothy's name, sending the proceeds to Dorothy and Pound. In a very real sense, according to Harwood, Olivia Shakespear is the "unsung heroine" of the modernist period, because much of the money Ezra Pound generously used to support struggling writers such as T.S. Eliot and James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
came from her.
Olivia died of complications brought on by gall bladder disease on 3 October 1938. The day before her death she wrote in a letter to Dorothy: "On Monday I was taken suddenly ill with gall bladder trouble—awful pain—sent for Doctor Barnes—he gave me dope & an injection and pain gradually went ... He says I am going on all right, but of course I feel rather a wreck". She died the following day of a heart attack. John Unterecker believes Olivia's death shattered Yeats, who died only months later, because she added warmth to his life. Yeats wrote of her death:
Olivia Shakespear has died suddenly. For more than forty years she has been the centre of my life in London and during all that time we have never had a quarrel, sadness sometimes but never a difference. When I first met her she was in her late twenties but in looks a lovely young girl. When she died she was a lovely old woman ... She came of a long line of soldiers and during the last war thought it her duty to stay in London through all the air raids. She was not more lovely than distinguished—no matter what happened she never lost her solitude ... For the moment I cannot bear the thought of London. I will find her memory everywhere.
Dorothy was ill when her mother died, unable to travel to London. She sent Pound to organise the funeral and to clear out the house. Ezra sorted through Olivia's correspondence and returned to Yeats many of her letters. Unterecker writes that Yeats made an effort to keep the correspondence private: "Shortly before his death he methodically destroyed a large group of letters to Olivia Shakespear. These, returned to him after her death ... Yeats wanted no one to read".
Novels: description and reception
Olivia had six novels published between 1894 and 1910, which as described by Foster are about women unhappy in love, with insipid and uninspiring male characters. The heroines—frequently orphaned, educated by elderly tutors, and depicted in country house libraries—fall in love with much older men in the later novels.The first two novels were published in 1894 to mixed reviews. Love on a Mortal Lease (title from George Meredith
George Meredith
George Meredith, OM was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era.- Life :Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two...
) was released in June, followed in November by The Journey of High Honour, at 30,000 words considerably shorter than the 355 pages of Love on a Mortal Lease. Each novel sold only a few hundred copies. Harwood describes the early work such as Love on a Mortal Lease as showing stylistic similarities to contemporary women novelists such as Craighie and Rhonda Broughton, with witty dialogue in Craighie's style, although he thinks Olivia brought a more serious voice to her work. He describes Love on a Mortal Lease as a work in which the heroine is well-characterised but the background is weak.
She dedicated The False Laurel, published in 1896, to Lionel Johnson. The plot features a poetess who falls in love with and marries an insipid young poet, giving up her own writing to attend to his needs. She becomes bored, writes a successful play, and then goes mad. The False Laurel was the least successful of her books, selling fewer than 200 copies. It received a poor review from The Bookman
The Bookman (London)
The Bookman was a monthly magazine published in London from 1891 until 1934 by Hodder & Stoughton. It was a catalogue of their current publications that also contained reviews, advertising and illustrations....
but a good one from The Athenaeneum.
Rupert Armstrong was published in 1899 by Harper and Brothers
Harper (publisher)
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...
, dedicated to Valentine Fox. In this, the fourth of her novels, Harwood believes her writing and voice became more original. The complicated plot—a mother and daughter struggle for "possession of the [father's] artistic soul"—shows hints of incestuous love, a theme found in her later work. Written during the affair with Yeats, Harwood sees the characters presented "in a precise, bitter intensity unlike anything in the earlier work".
The Devotees was published by Heinemann in December 1900. Like Rupert Armstrong, the plot of The Devotees depicts a mildly incestuous love: a young man and girl, raised together since childhood, devote themselves for decades to his drug-addicted mother before they marry. The reviews were mostly unkind.
Olivia's final novel, Uncle Hilary, was published in 1910 and is considered her best work. Of Uncle Hilary Jane Eldridge Miller writes in Rebel Women: Feminism, Modernism, and the Edwardian Novel, "Shakespear demonstrates the ways in which that ideal leads to disillusionment and resentment". In the complicated plot a young woman unwittingly marries her stepfather, leaves him, and accepts a marriage proposal from her guardian. Harwood believes her loveless marriage, the love affair with Yeats, the frustration with Dorothy, and Pound's unfaithfulness to Dorothy, built in her a strength and acceptance of life that bordered on the spiritual and she no longer needed to write. Miller writes that in the novel Olivia explores "marriage laws, divorce, and bigamy", with a focus on the nature of romantic love—rejected in favour of spiritual and intellectual pursuits. Leon Surette writes in The Birth of Modernism, Olivia's Uncle Hilary highlights the ties between spiritualism, occultism and feminism, seeing Uncle Hilary as a feminist novel which he describes as "quite readable".
Jane Miller characterises the works as "marriage problem" novels in which the wife confronts the reality of marriage, its restrictions, and the need to achieve independence. By finding interests outside marriage the wife loses the overwhelming need for love within the marriage. Miller writes that in Uncle Hilary Olivia examines issues such as marriage laws, divorce, and bigamy, while focusing on the nature of romantic love. It was in Uncle Hilary that Olivia wrote of love: "Love is the worst slavery that exists ... it is the most persistent of illusions".
List of works
- Love on a Mortal Lease (1894)
- Beauty's Hour (1894)
- The Journey of High Honour (1894)
- The False Laurel (1896)
- Rupert Armstrong (1898)
- The Devotees (1904)
- Uncle Hilary (1909)
- The Beloved of Hathor (1902)
- The Shrine of the Golden Hawk (1902)
Sources
- Brown, Terence. The Life of W.B. Yeats: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. ISBN 0-631-18298-5.
- Carpenter, Humphrey. A Serious Character: the life of Ezra Pound. London: Faber, 1988. ISBN 978-0-571-14786-1
- Ellmann, Richard. Yeats: The Man and the Masks. New York: Norton, 1999 edition. ISBN 0-393-00859-2
- Foster, R.F. W.B Yeats: A Life. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. ISBN 0-19-211735-1
- Harwood, John. After Long Silence. New York: St. Martin's, 1989. ISBN 0-312-03458-X
- Hassett, Joseph M. W.B. Yeats and the Muses. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-958290-7
- Hickman, Miranda. "Olivia Shakespear". in Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos and Stephen Adams (eds). The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005. ISBN 0-313-30448-3
- Jeffares, Alexander Norman. W.B. Yeats: A New Biography. London: Continuum, 2001. ISBN 0-8264-5524-7
- Jeffares, Alexander Norman. W.B. Yeats: Man and Poet. New York: St. Martin's, 1996. ISBN 0-312-15814-9
- Kline, Gloria. The Last Courtly Lover. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Research Press, 1983. ISBN 0-835-71409-8
- Miller, Jane Eldridge. Rebel women: Feminism, Modernism, and the Edwardian novel. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1997. ISBN 0-226-52677-1
- Reynolds, Ann, E. Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters 1909–1914. MagillOnLiterature. 1985.
- Ross, David. Critical Companion the William Butler Yeats. Facts on File, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8160-5895-2
- Stock, Noel. The LIfe of Ezra Pound. New York: Pantheon, 1970. ISBN 0-86547-075-8
- Surette, Leon. The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult. Montreal: McGill UP, 1993. ISBN 0-7735-0976-3
- Tryphonopoulos, Demetres, "Ezra Pound's Occult Education". Journal of Modern Language. 34 (1): Summer 1990.
- Unterecker, John. "Faces and False Faces". in Unterecker, John (ed). Yeats: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NY: Prentice Hall, 1963.
- Wilhelm, James J. Ezra Pound in London and Paris, 1908–1925. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 2008. ISBN 978-0-271-02798-2
- Wilhelm, James J. Ezra Pound: The Tragic Years 1925–1972. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1994. ISBN 0-271-01082-7
- Yeats, William Butler. Memoirs. London: Macmillan, 1973.