Young Eliot

by Robert Crawford

  105.    L2, 336 (the letters were destroyed by TSE after CCE died).

  106.    L1, 10.

  107.    Stayer, ‘T. S. Eliot as a Schoolboy’, 637.

  Chapter 4 – A Full-Fledged Harvard Man

      1.    L1, 5, 6.

      2.    L1, 6.

      3.    L1, 6; John J. Soldo, The Tempering of T. S. Eliot (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983), 49.

      4.    TSE, ‘William James on Immortality’, New Statesman, 8 September 1917, 547.

      5.    [HWE, Jr], ‘The Freshman’s Meditation’, from Harvard Lampoon (authorship attested on accompanying envelope) (Houghton bMS Am 1691.10 (21)).

      6.    Official Guide to Harvard University, ed. Harvard Memorial Society (Cambridge, Mass: The University, 1907), 142.

      7.    TSE to Winthrop Sprague Brooks, 18 July 1956 (Houghton bMS Am 1691.4).

      8.    Advertisements in Harvard Advocate, 83 (1907).

      9.    ‘Directory of Freshmen’, Harvard Crimson, 8 October 1906, 6–7; ‘Robert Haydock’ and ‘Constant Wendell’ entries in Harvard College, Class of 1910, Third Report (Cambridge, Mass: Crimson Printing Co., 1917), 151, 310; there is correspondence between Constant Wendell and Barrett Wendell in the Barrett Wendell papers (Houghton, Series IV. MS Am 1907.1 (1384)).

    10.    ‘The “verdant freshman” has become a College tradition’, according to ‘Review of First Advocate’, Harvard Crimson, 28 November 1906.

    11.    Lucien Price and Richard J. Walsh, ‘Goldkoastides’, Harvard Advocate, 81 (1906), 63.

    12.    Lucien Price, ‘A Fake Play’, Harvard Advocate, 82. 1 (27 September 1906), 8, 9, 11.

    13.    E. B. Sheldon, ‘The Philosophy of Horatio’, Harvard Advocate, 82. 1 (27 September 1906), 3, 4.

    14.    Sidney P. Henshaw, ‘Tactics for Teas’, Harvard Advocate, 82. 1 (27 September 1906), 16; HWE, Jr, ‘Endicott and the Janitor’, Harvard Advocate, 71 (1901), 121.

    15.    Frederick Garrison Hall, Edward Revere Little and HWE, Jr, Harvard Celebrities: A Book of Caricatures & Decorative Drawings (Printed for the Editors by the University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A., [n.d.]), ‘Wendell’. HWE, Jr’s inscribed copy is in the Houghton Library (bMS Am 2560 (76)).

    16.    TSE, ‘Donne in Our Time’, in Theodore Spencer, ed., A Garland for John Donne (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1931), 1.

    17.    Harvard College, Class of Nineteen Ten, First Report, April 1911 (Cambridge, Mass: Crimson Printing Company, 1911), 32.

    18.    E. H. Wells to HWE, 4 December 1906 (Harvard University Archives, UAIII 15.88.10).

    19.    Price and Walsh, ‘Goldkoastides’, 62.

    20.    TSE’s Harvard courses are listed in Manju Jain, T. S. Eliot and American Philosophy: The Harvard Years (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 251–6.

    21.    Wells to HWE, 4 December 1906.

    22.    L1, 11.

    23.    HWE, Jr, ‘Tillinghast, Stroke Oar’, Harvard Advocate, 70 (1900–1901), 16 (among copies of HWE, Jr’s articles in Houghton bMS Am2560 (75)); L1, 10.

    24.    Leon Magaw Little, carbon copy of piece written on 13 May 1968 for the TSE memorial issue of the Harvard Advocate (Houghton bMS Am1691.4 (136)); on TSE’s response to the Crimson editorial, see Soldo, The Tempering of T. S. Eliot, 50.

    25.    ‘1910 on College Courses: The Results of the Annual Post-card Canvass’, Harvard Illustrated Monthly, 11.8 (May 1910), 263–4.

    26.    CC, 80.

    27.    ‘Directory of Freshmen’, Harvard Crimson, 8 October 1906, 6–7.

    28.    Little, Harvard Advocate carbon copy.

    29.    Gilbert Murray, A History of Greek Literature (London: Heinemann, 1897), xv.

    30.    ‘Mr. Murray’s Lecture on the Iliad’, Harvard Crimson, 9 May 1907, 6.

    31.    This inscription, over a small door in the west wall of Memorial Hall, is quoted and translated in A Guide Book to the Grounds and Buildings of Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass; The University, 1898), 63.

    32.    George Herbert Palmer, ‘Necessary Limitations of the Elective System’, in G. H. Palmer and Alice Freeman Parker, The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), 250.

    33.    Official Guide to Harvard University (1907), 1, 9.

    34.    ‘1910 on College Courses’, 262–3, 261.

    35.    Conrad Aiken, ‘King Bolo and Others’, Harvard Advocate, 100. 3 (Fall 1966), 30.

    36.    CPP, 43 (‘Sweeney Erect’).

    37.    R. J. Walsh, ‘On the Decoration of College Rooms’, in Selections from the Harvard Advocate, 1906–1916 (Cambridge, Mass: The University Press, 1916), 143. Walsh was in the Class of 1907.

    38.    Details of the interior of the Union building are drawn from Official Guide to Harvard University (1907), 161–3.

    39.    TSE, ‘Donne in Our Time’, 1.

    40.    ‘Books Added to Union Library’, Harvard Crimson, 11 December 1906, 1; ‘Latest Books in Union Library’, Harvard Crimson, 26 February 1907, 3.

    41.    CPP, 15.

    42.    Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning, second edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 161.

    43.    Aristophanes, The Acharnians, ed. W. W. Merry, fourth edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893), v.

    44.    TSE in ‘Some Views of Readers’ on rear jacket flap of Douglas Young, The Puddocks: A Verse Play in Scots from the Greek of Aristophanes, second edn (Makarsbield, Tayport: The Author, 1958).

    45.    Charles Henry Conrad Wright, A History of French Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1912), 878, 794, 675, 792, 743, 744, 804, 805.

    46.    Walsh, ‘On the Decoration of College Rooms’, 141, 142.

    47.    T. S. Matthews, Great Tom: Notes Towards the Definition of T. S. Eliot (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 24–5; Matthews reproduces this photograph, then in the possession of Mrs B. J. L. Ainsworth, among the plates following page 108.

    48.    E. Lloyd Sheldon, ‘Undergraduate Literature at Harvard’, Harvard Illustrated Magazine, 7.6 (March 1906), 111.

    49.    Howard Morris entry in Harvard College Class of 1910 Fourth Report (Cambridge, Mass: Crimson Printing Co., 1921), 267.

    50.    Little, Harvard Advocate carbon copy.

    51.    Peters gave his address in The Digamma Club Year Book: 1908 (Harvard University Archives), 20; his parents’ names are in the Harvard College Class of 1910 Fourth Report, 304; family details from MyTrees.com.

    52.    ‘Results of the Interclass Tennis’, Harvard Crimson, 1 May 1907; ‘Progress of Tennis Tournament’, Harvard Crimson, 3 May 1907.

    53.    Anthony M. Sammarco, ‘Andrew J. Peters, Mayor of Boston’, Forest Hills Educational Trust website post, 28 January 2010; several books deal with the background and career of Andrew James Peters, including Francis Russell, The Knave of Boston (Boston: Quinlan Press,1988), 68–84.

    54.    Information on these friends of TSE is drawn from The Digamma Club Year Book: 1908 and from their entries in the Harvard College Class of 1910 Fourth Report.

    55.    A contemporary photograph of the Digamma Club appears opposite the title page of The Digamma Club Year Book: 1908.

    56.    James Hoopes, Van Wyck Brooks: In Search of American Culture (
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 30.

    57.    Again, information on these friends of TSE is drawn from The Digamma Club Year Book: 1908 and from their entries in the Harvard College Class of 1910 Fourth Report.

    58.    Hoopes, Van Wyck Brooks, 30.

    59.    Little, Harvard Advocate carbon copy.

    60.    TSE, ‘Ballade of the Fox Dinner’, reprinted in Soldo, The Tempering of T. S. Eliot, 59–60; information about fellow club members and their addresses comes from The Digamma Club Year Book: 1908.

    61.    Winthrop Sprague Brooks, letter of 14 November 1946 beginning ‘My dear Furgeson’ (Houghton bMS Am 1691.4 (132)).

    62.    Ibid.

    63.    TSE, to Leon Magaw Little, 11 October 1957 (Houghton bMS Am 1691.4).

    64.    TSE to EP, 7 January 1934 (Beinecke).

    65.    IMH 315, 317.

    66.    Ibid., 315 (‘[Columbo and Bolo verses]’).

    67.    Stanley Cobb, ‘Winthrop Sprague Brooks’, Auk, 82.4 (October 1965), 684.

    68.    digammaclub.org/

    69.    D. A. Sargent, ‘The Origin and Significance of the Inter-Collegiate Strength Test’, Harvard Illustrated Magazine, 9.7 (April 1906), 164, 165, 169. See below, p. 165.

    70.    John Hall Wheelock, The Last Romantic: A Poet Among Publishers: The Oral Autobiography of John Hall Wheelock, ed. Matthew Bruccoli with Judith Baughman (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 38.

    71.    Conrad Aiken, ‘King Bolo and Others’, in Tambimuttu and Richard Marsh, eds, T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (London: Tambimuttu and Mass, 1965), 20.

    72.    Little, Harvard Advocate carbon copy.

    73.    IMH, 318, 316 (‘[Columbo and Bolo verses]’).

    74.    Ibid., 315(‘[Columbo and Bolo verses]’).

    75.    TSE, ‘[Notes on characters and plots]’, n.d. (Houghton bMS Am 1691.14(14)).

    76.    TSE to Polly Tandy, 4 September 1935 (British Library).

    77.    Sandow on Physical Training, compiled and edited, under Mr Sandow’s direction by G. Mercer Adam (New York: J. Selwin Tait and Sons, 1894), 112, 12, 10, 15.

    78.    Aiken, ‘King Bolo and Others’, 20.

  Chapter 5 – A Rose

      1.    CPP, 596 (‘Song’, ‘when we came home across the hill’ (1907)); 591 (‘Song’, ‘If time and space, as sages say’ (revised 1905)); 597 (‘Before Morning’).

      2.    This anonymous spoof from the December 1908 Harvard Lampoon is quoted in John J. Soldo, The Tempering of T. S. Eliot (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983), 99.

      3.    Conrad Aiken, ‘King Bolo and Others’, in Tambimuttu and Richard March, eds, T. S. Eliot: A Symposium (New York: Tambimuttu and Mass, 1948), 20; in classical mythology Lamia was a dangerous seductress.

      4.    CPP, 600 (‘Song’, ‘The moonflower opens to the moth’), 598.

      5.    Their comments are quoted in Soldo, The Tempering of T. S. Eliot, 56, but Soldo does not realise that the first set of names are those of Monthly editors, and so the phrase ‘Gift from the Monthly’ that appears above Tinckom-Fernandez’s negative comment should be taken literally.

      6.    Ibid., 102.

      7.    CPP, 600.

      8.    ‘Improvements in Holyoke House’, Harvard Crimson, 3 March 1908; ‘Holyoke House Improved’, Harvard Crimson, 29 September 1908.

      9.    Fred E. Haynes, ‘Amusements’, in Robert A. Woods, ed., The City Wilderness: A Settlement Study (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898), 180.

    10.    ‘Sale of Hotel Caprio’, Boston Evening Transcript, 10 October 1905.

    11.    William I. Cole, ‘Criminal Tendencies’, in Woods, The City Wilderness, 159.

    12.    Facsimile, 125.

    13.    L4, 182.

    14.    H. P., ‘The Influence of the Comic Opera’, Harvard Advocate, 83 (1908), 99.

    15.    Ibid.

    16.    TSE, ‘Wilkie Collins and Dickens’, SE, 460; Barbara Meredith Waldinger, ‘No Mother to Guide Her’, Theatre Journal, 54.4 (December 2002), 654.

    17.    ‘“Fifty Miles from Boston” Proved Popular’, Evening Tribune (Providence, RI), 7 April 1908, 17.

    18.    Facsimile, 5, 125.

    19.    Facsimile, 125.

    20.    ‘Plays of the New Week’, Boston Evening Transcript, 8 January 1910.

    21.    Shef’s story, ‘The Mongol and the Chinaman’, was commended in ‘The Advocate’, Harvard Crimson, 24 February 1897; his 1909 Harvard Monthly article on ‘The Chinese Classics and Modern Research’ was regarded as ‘closely reasoned’ but lacking in vitality by H. D. Fuller, ‘Monthly Reviewed’, Harvard Crimson, 10 December 1909; Shef’s ‘Confucianism’ appeared in The Harvard Classics, Vol. 51 (1914), 451–6.

    22.    See L1, 11, which strongly suggests Tom and Shef had been meeting.

    23.    W. A. Neilson, ‘First Advocate Number’, Harvard Crimson, 6 November 1907.

    24.    John Davidson, The Poems, ed. Andrew Turnbull, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973), I, 65.

    25.    Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature, second edn (London: Archibald Constable, 1908), 1, 3, 8, 9.

    26.    Ibid., vi.

    27.    CC, 126–7 (the bracketed translation is mine).

    28.    L3, 768; Symons, Symbolist Movement, 17, 20.

    29.    TSE, ‘The Perfect Critic’, Athenaeum, 9 July 1920, 40.

    30.    Symons, Symbolist Movement, 24, 37, 70, 95, 153.

    31.    Ibid., 122, 101, 108, 102–3 (the bracketed translation has been supplied by David Kinloch, to whom thanks).

    32.    TSE, ‘Baudelaire and the Symbolists’, Criterion, January 1930, 357.

    33.    Symons, Symbolist Movement, 109; CPP, 601(‘Nocturne’), 15.

    34.    Gluyas Williams, quoted in Soldo, The Tempering of T. S. Eliot, 53.

    35.    Haniel Long’s 1908–9 diary (Brown University Archives), quoted in ibid., 55.

    36.    Alan Seeger, Letters and Diary (New York: Scribner’s, 1917), 184–5.

    37.    Alan Seeger, Poems (New York: Scribner’s, 1915), 117; CPP, 17.

    38.    The first, manuscript version of ‘The Deserted Garden’, dated 1908, is in Houghton bMS Am 1578 (10); revised, the poem appears in Seeger, Poems, 10–26.

    39.    Seeger, Poems, 47, 50, 49.

    40.    TSE, ‘Short Reviews’, Egoist, December 1917, 172.

    41.    TSE, ‘The New Elizabethans and the Old’, Athenaeum, 4 April 1919, 134.

    42.    CPP, 52; Alan Seeger to Edward Eyre Hunt, 30 July 1909, in M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the War against Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920), 111.

    43.    TSE, ‘Short Reviews’, 172.

    44.    CPP, 599.

    45.    Symons, Symbolist Movement, 84.

    46.    Long, diary in Soldo, The Tempering of T. S. Eliot, 55–8.

    47.    This letter is reproduced photographically in ‘A Short History of the Signet Society’, by Nathan C. Shiverick, which can be found on the Signet Society’s website.

    48.    John Hall Wheelock, The Last Romantic: A Poet Among Publishers: The Oral Autobiography of John Hall Wheeloc
k, ed. Matthew Bruccoli with Judith Baughman (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 35–6.

    49.    Shiverick, ‘A Short History of the Signet Society’, reproduces the 1910 Annual Dinner menu, and quotes this ‘perennial’ Signet drinking song.

    50.    Pierre La Rose, introduction to The Third Catalogue of the Signet (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1903), xxiv; Shiverick, ‘A Short History of the Signet Society’, 1910 menu.

    51.    Frederick Garrison Hall, Edward Revere Little and HWE, Jr, Harvard Celebrities: A Book of Caricatures & Decorative Drawings (Printed for the Editors by the University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A., [n.d.]), ‘Pierre’.

    52.    ‘Monthly Review by Prof. Schofield’, Harvard Crimson, 30 October 1909.

    53.    L1, 486.

    54.    ‘Review of Current Advocate’, Harvard Crimson, 15 November 1909.

    55.    ‘1910 on College Courses: The Results of the Annual Post-card Canvass’, Harvard Illustrated Monthly, 11.8 (May 1910), 264, 263.

    56.    ‘Prof. Palmer Repeats Library Talk’, Harvard Crimson, 31 March 1909.

    57.    George Herbert Palmer, Self-Cultivation in English (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), 43, vi; Palmer’s views on TSE as reported by R. F. A. Hoernlé in a letter of 11 February 1919 to Ralph Barton Perry (Harvard University Archives), cited in Manju Jain, T. S. Eliot and American Philosophy: The Harvard Years (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 34.

    58.    Palmer, Self-Cultivation, 37.

    59.    Ralph Barton Perry, quoted in Ronald P. Kriss, ‘As Student and Teacher, Santayana Left Mark on College’, Harvard Crimson, 30 September 1952.

    60.    VMP, 49; L1, 483.

    61.    George Santayana, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900), 263.

    62.    SE, 145 (‘Hamlet’) and 287 (‘The Metaphysical Poets’).

    63.    Palmer, Self-Cultivation, 43.

    64.    ‘Assignment of Rooms for Courses’, Harvard Crimson, 3 October 1908.