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In 1927, the great Poet, T. S. Eliot---hitherto considered to be the leader and best example of the Modernist school of Poetry---stunned most of his fellow modernists, and a good many of Great Britain's and Europe's literary lights by making a modest announcement, in one of his essays, of his conversion to Christianity; specifically, to Anglican Christianity and the "high church," or very liturgical, practice of it.

After that, according to the literary historians whom I studied primarily in 1978-79 at college, several of Eliot's ostensible friends betrayed him by criticizing his decision, accusing him of hypocrisy, and pointing out what they believed to be implicit flaws in his practice of his new Faith.  (Eliot was painfully aware of his own flaws, and remained well aware of them for the rest of his life.)  Even Ezra Pound, who had "discovered" Eliot in 1914 and whose had compelled Harriet Monroe, owner and chief editor of Poetry Magazine out of Chicago to publish Eliot's early poem, The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, now turned against him and added a very influential voice to the cacophony of the extended and extensive attack upon Eliot's spirituality.  

That these betrayals disappointed, and perhaps even puzzled, Eliot is easily understandable.  Eliot was a fiercely loyal friend as well as a formidable opponent.  The efforts, behind the scenes, that he made to ameliorate Pound's subsequent incarceration for treason after WWII, are almost legendary.  I think Eliot, who was sometimes surprisingly naive, had expected his announcement to be received more quielty, and less vociferously among the same people who had hitherto applauded and commended The Waste Land and The Hollow Men.  

I think the most ironic and inane part of all the controversy (a part that still makes me laugh even though I have been familiar with it for at least forty-five years) is that the same people who openly despised Eliot's Faith also felt they were qualified to instruct him in the practice of it---specifically in what they believed to be his failures in the practice of it.  This would be analogous to the butcher at the local deli criticizing a credentialed surgeon on surgical procedures; or the maker of firecrackers advising a physicist on the process of fusion within stars' cores.

Ultimately, as several scholars have conclused, the motive of Eliot's critics arose from one of the cardinal sins:  envy and jealousy.  They resented the grandeur, already well manifested, of his literary accomplishment---which had been on the rise since 1922, and would find its supreme expression and conclusion in the Four Quartets during the forties, the war years.  

I do not know whether Eliot ever fully adjusted to the lingering echo of their attacks upon him.  I think, in his own age, it no longer mattered directly, although the memory of it must have seemed fresh.  And. we must add wryly, most of those who raised the loudest fuss are either entirely forgotten, or are remembered not for their own sakes or their own miniscule achievements but only for their association with the Old Possum.  Even Pound (who, from Italy, punctuated a radio broadcast review of the premiere of Eliot's play, Murder In The Cathedral with the phrase, "And, my gawd, them Cockney voices!") is now considered largely a failure on the basis of that topheavy wreck he called The Cantos.  

History has largely silenced those backbiters and small-minders who attempted to first ride on, and then snip and rip, Eliot's coattails.  But we still hear that profoundly dignified and worshipful voice in those words, Because I do not hope to turn again. . .