Young Eliot (82 page)

After Kim Scott Walwyn at Oxford University Press published my first book, with help from John Carey and others I worked at St Hugh's College, Oxford, then at Glasgow University. Since
1989
at the University of St Andrews I have taught Honours-level courses on Scottish literature and on T. S. Eliot, looking out the classroom window over the North Sea while reading ‘Marina' or ‘The Dry Salvages'. Generations of bright St Andrews undergraduates have confirmed that this was the right thing to do, and I have learned much from their comments. Among my graduate students I would like to thank especially Will Gray and Josh Richards for their insights, help and advice. Over the years all my School of English colleagues at St Andrews have contributed to my understanding of poetry in general, and of Eliot's in particular.

This book could not have been written without the award of a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship for the academic session
2012
–
13
, supplemented by a semester's research leave awarded by the University of St Andrews. Lecturing to the T. S. Eliot Society in St Louis, addressing the T. S. Eliot International Summer School in London and reading ‘Little Gidding' with Seamus Heaney to the T. S. Eliot Society of the UK at Little Gidding, as well as the invitation to deliver the British Academy's Warton Lecture on English Poetry in
2009
, were among the immediate spurs to the writing of the book. Crucial has been the long-standing support of my shrewd, demanding editor at Jonathan Cape, Robin Robertson, who commissioned this biography; to Jonathan Galassi, my editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, I owe gratitude for his trust. Patient help was supplied by Clare Bullock at Cape and by Christopher Richards at FSG. My agent David Godwin and his colleagues at David Godwin Associates in London have been essential to the project, supplying characteristically deft support. For copy-editing I thank the meticulous Lin Vasey and for indexing Marian Aird.

Going way beyond the bounds of friendship, my former student Dr Richard King and Dr Stephen N. Sanfilippo (editor of
Seasongs
) ingeniously tracked down the ballad about the schooner
Lapwing
which Eliot recalled hearing as a young man: Richard and Stephen, I salute your skill and generosity, as well as the assistance of Mr William Plaskon of the Jonesport Historical Society, Maine, and Ms Susan M. Sanfilippo, Curator, Pembroke (Maine) Historical Society. Carey Karmel alerted me to the Ether Monument in Boston, and Mark Storey to Eliot's application to join the London Library. Graciously, Aisha Farr and Cliff Boehmer went out of their way to take several photographs of buildings where Eliot lived; Rachel Falconer and colleagues at the University of Lausanne sent me copies of pictures of that city taken around
1921
. Late in the writing of the book Jeremy Hutchinson, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, shared with me his mother's memoirs of Eliot and let me record a substantial interview with him at his home. That was, as I anticipated, a delight, and gave me what I never expected: the chance to chat with someone in
2013
who remembered Eliot before the publication of
The Waste Land.

Warm thanks are due, too, to many people for advice, guided tours, winks, drinks and staunch support. Among them are Michael and Mary Alexander; Struther and Greta Arnott; David Bradshaw; Jewel Spears Brooker; John Burnside; Marilyn Butler; Peter H. Butter; Robert Christie; Tony Cuda; Robert M. Cummings; Robert Davis; Frances Dickey; Douglas Dunn; Ulla Dydo; Melanie Fathman; Graham Bruce Fletcher; Elizabeth Glass; Lyndall Gordon; John Haffenden; Jason Harding; Henry Hart; Hugh Haughton; Seamus Heaney; Roger Highfield; Rosalind Ingrams; Manju Jain; Iman Javadi; David Kinloch; Joan Langhorne; Sara Lodge; Jim McCue; Arthur E. Meikle; Edward Mendelson; Elizabeth Micakovicz; Edwin Morgan; Les Murray; Don Paterson; Diana Franzusoff Peterson; Richard Price; Patrick Reilly; Louise Richardson; Christopher Ricks; John A. M. Rillie; Carl Schmidt; Ronald Schuchard; Susan Sellers; Fiona Stafford; Jayme Stayer; Archie Turnbull; Paul Turner; Clifford Tym; Lynda Tym; Margaret Vickers; Mark Webster; Hamish Whyte.

At the Houghton Library, Harvard, thanks are due especially to Leslie Morris, Susan Halpert and their colleagues; at the Archive Centre of King's College, Cambridge, to Patricia McGuire and her colleagues. Other libraries and archives to be thanked for their consistent support and helpfulness include the Beinecke Library, Yale University, and the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library; the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; Glasgow University Library; Harvard University Archives; Haverford College Library; High Wycombe Library; the Library of Congress (not least for such digital resources as the Chronicling America newspaper database); the London Library; Margate Library; Marlow Library, Buckinghamshire; Merton College Library; Missouri History Museum; the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; the National Library of Scotland; New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox, and Tilden Foundations; St Andrews University Library; University of Missouri Library; Washington University, St Louis.

For permission to quote from the published and unpublished work of T. S. Eliot I thank the Estate of T. S. Eliot and Faber and Faber Ltd; particularly, I acknowledge their permission to quote poetry from Faber volumes including
Collected Poems 1909–1962
by T. S. Eliot,
Inventions of the March Hare
by T. S. Eliot (edited by Christopher Ricks), and
The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript
by T. S. Eliot (edited by Valerie Eliot); their permission to quote prose from
Selected Prose
by T. S. Eliot (edited by Frank Kermode), and from
The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volumes 1 and 2
(edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton); also for their permission to quote from uncollected prose, property of the Estate of T. S. Eliot, and from unpublished prose, poetry, and other materials which are also property of the Estate of T. S. Eliot. I owe a debt of gratitude to Clare Reihill and to Emma Cheshire for their patience and attention. I am grateful also for permission to quote in the United States and related territories excerpts from
Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917
by T. S. Eliot (text copyright
c
.
1996
by Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company; all rights reserved); also excerpts from
The Letters of T. S. Eliot
published by Yale University Press. Other quotations from published works in
Young Eliot
are used under the terms of fair use, and sources are cited in detail in the endnotes to this book.

For help with and/or permission to reproduce manuscript materials in their collections I am grateful to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (particularly Nancy Kuhl, Curator of Poetry, Yale Collection of American Literature); to the Bodleian Library, Oxford (where Dr Judith Priestman expedited my request); to the Cambridge Historical Society of Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts (particularly Gavin W. Kleespies); to the Hayward Bequest, King's College, Cambridge, England (where, as ever, the College Archivist Patricia McGuire and her colleague Peter Monteith were especially helpful); to the Houghton Library, Harvard University (thanks again to Leslie A. Morris, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, and her colleagues Susan Halpert, Christina Linklater, and Mary Haegert); to the Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford, for permission to quote from College records (thanks to Dr Julia Walworth and to Julian Reid); and to other rights holders. Though permissions to reproduce photographs in this book are acknowledged separately in the list of plates, I would like to thank especially the Bertrand Russell Archive at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, and Rick Stapleton, Archives and Research Collections Librarian there for generous help; also once again the Hayward Bequest, King‘s College, Cambridge (especially Patricia McGuire); the Houghton Library, Harvard (especially Leslie A. Morris); the National Library of Scotland (Sarah Moxey); and the Archives of Smith College (Nichole Calero).

Though the online publication of
The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition
(the first two volumes of which are now published by Johns Hopkins University Press along with Faber and Faber) and the new edition of Eliot's collected poetry (forthcoming from Faber) were not available in time for me to consult, I would like to thank Professor Ronald Schuchard, overall editor of
The Complete Prose
, for his guidance and generous support throughout this project and over many years; and I want to thank also Jim McCue and Professor Sir Christopher Ricks, joint editors of the poetry, for exchanging intelligence as they and I were working on our respective projects – and for their sheer wisdom. Future writers on Eliot will be in these great editors' debt.

My mother and father nurtured my love of the poetry of T. S. Eliot; my wife Alice and our children, Lewis and Blyth, have sustained it, sometimes to the limit. Without them this book would not have been written. Thank you.

R.C., St Andrews,
2014

 

Abbreviations

Books
by
T.
S.
Eliot

CC
:
To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings
(London: Faber and Faber, 1965).

CPP
:
The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot
(London: Faber and Faber, 1969).

Facsimile
:
The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts including the Annotations of Ezra Pound
, ed. Valerie Eliot (London: Faber and Faber, 1971). Facsimile pages on even-numbered pages, transcriptions on facing pages.

IMH
:
Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917
, ed. Christopher Ricks (London: Faber and Faber, 1996).

L1
:
The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898–1922, revised edn
, ed. Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton (London: Faber and Faber, 2009).

L2
:
The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 2: 1923–1925
, ed. Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton (London: Faber and Faber, 2009).

L3
:
The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 3: 1926–1927
, ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden (London: Faber and Faber, 2012).

L4
:
The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 4: 1928–1929
, ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden (London: Faber and Faber, 2013).

OPP
:
On Poetry and Poets
(London: Faber and Faber, 1957).

SE
:
Selected Essays
, third enlarged edn (London: Faber and Faber, 1951).

UPUC
: T. S. Eliot,
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
, Second Edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1964).

VMP
:
The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry
, ed. Ronald Schuchard (London: Faber and Faber, 1993).

Individuals

CCE: Charlotte Champe Eliot (TSE's mother)

EP: Ezra Pound

HWE: Henry Ware Eliot (TSE's father)

HWE, Jr: Henry Ware Eliot, Jr (TSE's brother)

TSE: Thomas Stearns Eliot

VE: Vivien Eliot (TSE's first wife)

Institutions

Beinecke: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Hayward Bequest: The Papers of the Hayward Bequest of T. S. Eliot Material, Kings College Archive Centre, Cambridge, England

Houghton: The Houghton Library, Harvard University

 

Notes

Introduction