something that no biographical narrative can convey: tone. Quoted outside the context of the ongoing correspondence, George [Yeats]'s remark about the oil lamp ("you could surely not have imagined that it demanded Sanctuary oil") sounds exasperated, which it is, but the remark is also clever, bemused, loving, generous, meant to entertain--part of an intricately textured exchange between two people who know each other as well or better than they know themselves. So while Willy seems at times the absent patriarch, the dad who loves his work, it's also clear that George managed his absences, even condoning the last-gasp amorous liaisons of his final years; she appreciated help with the doddering "tiger," as she called him behind his back.from The Nation: An Imperfect Life: On George and W.B. Yeats
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