Some 18 of Ireland's leading writers and academics are heading a campaign to save the final residence of William Butler Yeats.
Riversdale, a solid and elegant 18th century farmhouse in Rathfarnham, Dublin, will be demolished if South Dublin County Council approves an application currently before its planning department to clear the site and build 28 apartments. Among those who signed a letter published in The Irish Times last Friday is Mr Terence Brown, Professor of Modern English Literature at Trinity College and author of the recently published W.B. Yeats - A Critical Biography. "It would be tragic if it were to be demolished," he said.
"After Lady Gregory's death Riversdale was at last somewhere which could replace Coole Park and give him that sense of ease he had found at Coole. He lived in Riversdale in the 30s with Georgie [his wife], Anne and Michael [their children]. It was there that he completed the New Poems and Last Poems and worked on the Oxford Book of Modern Verse."
Yeats took a 13-year lease on the house at the foot of the Dublin mountains in 1932. Standing on four acres of now somewhat overgrown garden, it was then in the countryside. The garden was kept well planted with flowers, fruits and vegetables, and he is said to have played an erratic game of croquet on the croquet lawn.
Two poems in New Poems, published in 1938, are about Riversdale, An Acre of Grass and What Then? In the latter, Yeats wrote: "All his happier dreams came true -/ A small old house, wife, daughter, son,/ Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,/ Poets and Wits about him drew;/ `What then?' sang Plato's ghost, `What then?'."
The house was also the setting for the last meeting between Yeats and Maud Gonne in late summer 1938.
A spokeswoman for South Dublin County Council confirmed that the demolition application was still to be considered.
