PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

My first poetic "discovery" at my college, approximately five weeks after I had arrived there for my freshman undergad year, was to read some of the poems of T. S. Eliot whom, as a high school student, I had studiouly avoided.

My favorite professor in the English Department recommended I begin with The Waste Land, which he described as a nightmare turned inside out and upside down---and he meant that as praise.  From that poem, I proceeded immediately to Ash Wednesday, and by that moment I had fallen in love with Eliot's poetry.  (I have a fond memory of Christmas Eve, Friday night, 1976:  during the two hours between the two services at both of which I had the privilege of being assistant celebrant, with the church entirely empty, my Pastor and I had what, for me then, was a deep discussion of Ash Wednesday, which he had read during his theological training).

In the Autumn of 1977, which would have been my sophomore year, I conceived of what was then, among my friends, considered a rather daring, and possibly futile, attempt:  I intended to write a letter to Valerie Eliot, widow of the great Poet, who was, of course, the greatest living expert on his work.  A professor whom I will call ProfessorX, who was at that time considered to be our college's expert on Eliot (a professor with whom, during my Junior undergrad year, I would enter a very adversarial relationship that would actually become fairly well known on the campus) had been told of my ambition and invited me to his office to dissuade my from my intention in order to save me disappointment.  Mrs. Eliot, he assured me, would not be bothered to respond to an undergraduate's query.  With as much courtesy as I could muster, I told him I intended to mail my letter---and if no reply returned, then I was out only the cost of the postage and the few minutes required to compose the letter's text.

My letter was brief, as I already knew that Mrs. Eliot was an active employee, an editor, at the Faber firm; and I assumed that, with those responsibilities plus the ongoing administration of her husband's estate, she was very likely quite busy.  I thought I had detected, in Eliot's poetry, allusions to some of the novels of the French writer, George Sand, and I wanted to know more about that; and thus, I inquired of Mrs. Eliot.  I also told her that I wanted to become a poet myself, and that her husband's Poetry had become very vital to that ambition.  I mailed the letter in November from the post office in the rural village to which I had returned to spend the unusually long Christmas break at my parent's home.  I used the return address of my dormitory.

By January 2nd, 1978, the date of return to the college, no reply had arrived.  A week later, when my then Beloved broke off our relationship openly in front of a table of other students with whom we were lunching, my Beloved's parting words were, "Don't be so disappointed, you still have your letter from Mrs. Eliot to look forward to."  By January's end, no reply had returned to me.  People, including faculty, were pausing in the corridors to ask me about it, some of them smirking when I replied that I had received nothing.

Mid February was generally dismal, but one day I found, in my dormitory mailbox, a small letter, on lilac colored paper, with lilac scent on it (lilac was one of Eliot's most frequent symbols).  The letter bore the return address of Faber & Faber, Eliot's publisher, where he had worked as a director for some three decades.  I opened it gingerly, hands trembling.  In ordinary black ink of a business typewriter, and bearing below the text the signature in blue ink of Valerie Eliot, I read the couple of paragraphs of her reply.  She said that she had made a thorough search of her husband's library, and had found none of the novels of George Sand; and she said that, from personal recollection, she could not remember that her husband had ever mentioned the French novelist.

But the second and final paragraph nearly brought tears to my eyes.  She said she had enjoyed what I had told her about myself, and sent "cordial good wishes for your work" (her exact words).  This was like a validation from the wife of---and provider of the first domestic happiness to---the greatest Poet of the 20th century.  Her edition and notation of the Waste Land manuscripts had become my very favorite book; I still enjoy it more than the 1922 version of the poem that Ezra Pound had mangled while Eliot's nerves broke down.

I felt that the first objection to the letter would be that some clerk had written it, and that only the signature was Mrs. Eliot's.  I held the letter to the light and, in that bright glare, could see erasure marks all over the page---about every fourth or fifth word.  I had been told (and I say this most respectfully) that when Valerie Fletcher was hired by Faber to work as Mr. Eliot's secretary, he complimented her efficiency, but complained about her several typing errors.  This, of course, did not seem to have any bearing on proposing marriage to her, seven years after she began to work for him.  The erasure marks on the reply convinced me, and convinced others when they looked at them as I had, that Valerie Eliot had, indeed, typed the letter.

The next morning, before classes began, I strolled into Professor X's office and flung the letter across his desk.  He picked it up and said, "So she did reply," and handed it back to me, then resumed his other work so that I was, effectively, dismissed without further discussion.  A year later I learned, during a faculty gossip session at the local bar, that he had actually met Mrs. Eliot in London in the early seventies; and that he had urged her to publish an edition of Four Quartets with photography of each of the locations---the kind of illustrations that were expressly forbidden by Eliot's will.  When Mrs. Eliot, as Executrix of that will, refused, Proessor X apprently directed some very harsh words, some profane, at her; consequently, Professor X was asked to leave the premises of Faber & Faber and was told never to return.  Like several of Eliot's peers and friends, Professor X, I believe, was of the opinion that Valerie Eliot---whose education had ended with high school ---was unworthy of Eliot, socially, and of his Poetry intellectually.  Such assertions, when brought to the Poet's attention while he was alive, brought from him the most wrathful of rages---and, although always a gentleman in public and private, he is said to have had an enormous temper (which was witnessed only in response to these affronts toward his wife; and during the incarceration of Ezra Pound in Saint Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane, the director of which inadvertently having triggered Eliot's rage during an in-person conversation).  I would like to here acknowledge another biographical fact that, when Eliot proposed marriage to Valerie Fletcher he admitted, at first, that his doctors had told him that he had a remaining life expectancy of six months, to which Valerie replied that they "would see about that."  After the wedding, she limited the Poet to one scotch whiskey and one cigar per week; and to a healthier diet than he had been following at his dinner club prior to the marriage.  He lived approximately seven years longer than his doctors had estimated, and, some said, he was, for the first time in his entire life, completely happy.  (I also had read another poet's anecdote that, at an evening cocktail some months after the marriage, Eliot and several other poets stepped outside the host's residence to enjoy cigars.  No sooner had he lit his, but Mrs. Eliot temporarily joined the party, jerked the cigar out of his mouth, and crushed it beneath her shoe.  This struck the other people there into a momentary silence.)

By way of another anecdote, the truth of which I am unable to verify, I was told that, when David Dundas' pop song Jeans On came out in 1976, Mrs. Eliot is said to have found the tune "catchy."  To this day, I cannot hear the song without thinking of her, and of my first undergrad year when I was making the acquaintance of "Old Possum's" Poetry.

Some of my happiest moments at college were spent studying, in class and on my own, the Poetry of T. S. Eliot.  In my old age, now, I am rediscovering how much he meant to me, then, not only for his Poetry, but for his high-church Anglican faith.

Starward