Yeats and Marriage

In 1913, Yeats was feeling hostile to the Irish middle classes partly due to their lack of sympathy for the poor, in the Dublin Strike. But a few years later, he was shocked by the Easter Rising, which was led by Irish middle class nationalists who rose up and tried to fight against the British, while they were engaged in World War I with Germany. The British savagely repressed the Rising and swiftly executed most of the leaders. Even Irish people who had not supported the Rebellion were shaken by the brutal response of the Government, and sympathised with the men who had gone out to die. Yeats wrote poems where he admitted that he had not realised how passionate the Irish were about their freedom. He felt that the dull, bourgeois city of Dublin had been transformed and that a "Terrible Beauty" had been born. Maud Gonne had married an Irishman, John MacBride, and the marriage had failed within a couple of years. But now, her husband had been shot. Yeats began to consider getting married, as he was getting older and had no children. He fell in love with Georgina Hyde Lees, a much younger Englishwoman. He had met Georgie, as she was called, in 1910, through his mistress and friend Olivia Shakespear. Several years later, in 1917, he asked her to marry him. She agreed. Their marriage had its difficulties at times. Yeats had not started his sex life early... he had been a shy romantic minded young man who did not lose his virginity until he was older. But over the years he had had romances and affairs and Georgie felt unhappy about the women in his life. She and Yeats had a son, Michael and a daughter Anne. Yeats became a Senator in the Irish Free State and continued to write. Georgie grew to tolerate his mistresses, as looking after Yeats, an older man, in poor health who was demanding, wore her out. She was rather glad to let other women share in the task of looking after the great poet.