Have you ever wondered what W. B. Yeats looked like as a baby?
Of course you have. It keeps most of us up at night.
Well, wonder no more.
Earlier today, in honor of the Irish Nobel Prize winner’s 159th birthday, the Twitter account of Lissadell House (“the crucible of Ireland’s historic, literary and garden heritage”) posted this sketch of the wee babbie William, drawn by his vagabond artist father John Butler Yeats sometime in (I would guess) the autumn of 1865.
William Butler Yeats, born on this day 159 years ago, sketched by his Dad#WBYeats pic.twitter.com/goi3P8sl2w
— Lissadell House (@LissadellHouse) June 13, 2024
Look at him there, with his little fist in his eye, dreaming of falcons and revolutionaries and immortal lands and women who’ll refuse to marry him and the occult and ignorant theater audiences and the growing authoritarian movements of interwar Europe and Celtic mysticism and romanticized Irish fishermen and the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
Bless.
