Variety (1910–12)

J. b. yeats was now in New York on a “visit” which had already lasted three years. Late in 1907, after having been presented with a cheque by Hugh Lane, Andrew Jameson and other Dublin friends who wished to show their appreciation of a wonderful personality and their sense of what art in Ireland owed to the old painter, he had chosen to cross the Atlantic with his daughter Lily, who was giving an exhibition of her Dun Emer embroideries in New York, rather than visit Italian galleries, as had originally been proposed. Such was his interest in the American scene and such his delight in the reception accorded him by John Quinn — “the crossest man in the world and the kindest” — and by Quinn’s friends, that when the time came for his daughter to return he could not make up his mind to board the boat with her. To leave New York, he said, would be to leave a huge fair where at any moment he might meet with a huge bit of luck. Moreover, he had at last found a place where people did not eat too much at dinner to talk afterwards.