Evening star., 1945-07-01
Ella Young Presents
Memoirs of Life in
Ireland and America
FLOWERING DUSK
By Ella Young. (Longmans
Green & Co., $780,
By Mary-Carfer Roberts

By Mary-Cmfer Roberts
Ella Young is an Irish poet and
patriot, a member of the group
which created the Celtic Renaissance
movement and supported the ILL
fated rising" of 1916. Since 1925
now she has been living in the
United States, making her home in
California and associating with the
Southwest's various esthetic COL
onies. "Flowering Dusk" is her
memoirs, an autobiography told in
q series of vignetteS.
1t is hard to characterize the
work more definitely and, admit
ting that it is shopworn, call upon
the old tag, Irish charm" For
Miss Young's Irishness has been the
center of her life. True, she became
an American citizen in 1881, but
the leopard (or maybe one should
say leprechaun?) does not change
In Ireland Miss Young was the
familiar of various earth spirits.
She requested them to stop the
rain and they stopped it, They
accompanied her in groups of five
and six on her walks and helped
her set out seeds on the mountain
side. A particular elf named Gilpin
attached himself to her household
and was clearly visible to certain
of her friends, though she herself
knew him only by his pranks.
The effect of several decades of
f1Afr nf ft1ir1n ic MT onifan IN
be wiped out by late transplanta-
ton: moreover. in the atmosphere
engendered by the Southwest
esthetes the process is apt to be
the reverse of wiping out-every-
thing hourishes in California. So
Miss Young is able to express her
insouciance through the whole
length of her remarkable book. The
Anglo-Saxon, of course, confronted
by such fancy flinging, is apt to be
daunted and ask himself how much
of it is-to put it crudely-an act.
The only answer which I can give
is that the book is all of a piece
and that it does have-yes-great
charm.
From accounts of random child
hood memories (haunted by plumed
serpents) Miss Young goes into a
description of her meeting with the
Celtic Renaissance group - Yeats,
Russell, Colum and the others. With
these enthusiasts she plunged into
study of the occult and, under the
influence of Annie Besant, into
theosophy. Irish temperament,
helped out by the second sight,
manifested itself even on the Way,
and there were quarrels and splits,
which she passes by with sensitive
grace. Then there are the days of
the reviving Celtic drama and the
elimination of all this national pas
sion in the rising" Bright -colored
vagueness characterizes the books
style, so that it lacks somewhat
as a historical narrative, but Miss
Young admits to helping smuggle
and conceal arms both during the
Easter rebellion and the civil war
which followed. She keens over the
treaty of 1921 as betrayal of the
sovereignty of Ireland" and laments
Michael Collins and Arthur Grifiths
as inexplicable renegades. Her emo
ton on these matters expresses it
self in poetic cries and tragic ejac-i
ulations.
In America Miss Young met such
famous literary personalities as Van
Wyck Brooks, Elinor Wylie, the
Benets and Robinson Jeffers. That
representative citizen, Mabel Dodge
Luhan, entertained her in her cel-
ebrated Taos home. She lectured
at the University of Southern Cali
fornia. One of the best parts of her
book is a group of letters from Ken
meth Morris, grandson of William.
She made the usual round of the
Indian dances and reports the usual
awe at the beauty of these cere-l
monies. She is cat lover and
writes sensitively of a number of
feline acquaintance.
And somehow, through her whole
random record, she writes herself
down as a seeker whose quest has
never been fulfilled, as delicate,
tragic, passionate nature which has
beat against life with unyielding
insistence but without completion.
One smiles repeatedly at the deter
mined fancy of her narrative, but
the smile fades as one suspects that
the determination is edged with a
certain desperateness. 1t is the book
of one who dedicated herself to
life beyond the world but who
like all the rest of us-found that