Page "W. B. Yeats" Paragraph 35

Yeats proposed in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him down.

According to Foster " when he duly asked Maud to marry him, and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter.

" Iseult Gonne was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old.

She had lived a sad life to this point ; conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short-lived brother, for the first few years of her life, she was presented as her mother's adopted niece.

When Maud told her that she was going to marry, Iseult cried and told her mother that she hated MacBride.

At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats.

A few months after the poet's approach to Maud, he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected.