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66 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
his contention that Pound's editing of Yeats' poems "rendered them
more compact and effective." 17
Although Yeats at first was angered by this presumption, he agreed
that the excised phrase had weakened the line, and the act was
forgiven. The outcome of this impertinence, recklessness, and discourtesy
of Pound's was that Yeats received a two hundred and
fifty dollar award by Poetry. He was enjoying comfortable circumstances
at the time, and he decided that the award should be given
to a younger and needier poet. He wrote to Miss Monroe in December,
1913:
"Why not give the 40 pounds to Ezra Pound? [Yeats had agreed
to keep 10 pounds and return 40 pounds to Miss Monroe for an
award to someone who needed it.] I suggest him to you because,
although I do not really like with my whole soul the metrical experiments
he has made for you, I think those experiments show a
vigorous creative mind. He is certainly a creative personality of some
sort, though it is too soon yet to say of what sort. His experiments are
perhaps errors, I am not certain; but I would always sooner give
the laurel to vigorous errors than to any orthodoxy not inspired." 18
Miss Monroe was a very tractable person in dealing with her
geniuses, and she agreed to award the forty pounds to Ezra, who
had already served two years as her foreign editor without pay.
He was quite pleased to get the award, and he wrote to William
Carlos Williams that he had purchased a new typewriter.
Two marriages resulted from the Yeats-Pound association, each
of the bachelors marrying young ladies introduced through the
other. Pound had met at Yeats' "Mondays" Mrs. Olivia Shakespear
and her daughter Dorothy, whom he married in 1914. The Pounds
had a very good friend, Miss Georgie Hyde-Lees, whom Yeats
married in 1917. Each was best man at the other's wedding.
One account of Pound's marriage is to be found in the Philadelphia
Evening Bulletin of February 20, 1928, in an interview with
Homer Pound:
" 'He always had a lot of nerve,' said Mr. Pound, the affectionate,
reminiscent smile appearing once more, 'even the way he met
his wife was nervy. He found funds were getting low, as usual, so
he went to the Polytechnic Institute in London (he was only about
21 years old) and presented his name. 'Do you want to register as