[Poem I 18 · Textual History II 327–28]
7 precisions: OED 1b: “An instance of precision; a nicety; in pl. exact minutiæ. Obs. rare”, with Locke the only example: “I have left out the utmost Precisions of Fractions in these Computations.”
8–9 street lamp · · · Beats: réverbère (Fr.) gas street lamp with reflector, from Latin verbere, to beat (Hands). “torchlight · · · reverberation”, The Waste Land [V] 321, 325. To John Hayward, 9 Sept 1942, concerning the proposed use of “lantern” in Little Gidding II: “On the other hand, any reference to the reverberes wd. take the mind directly to pre-war London”.
8–11 street · · · Midnight: Blake: “But most through midnight streets I hear | How the youthful harlot’s curse | Blasts the new-born infant’s tear, | And blights with plagues the marriage hearse”, London 13–16, quoted by TSE in William Blake (1920).
9 Beats like a fatalistic drum: Charles-Louis Philippe: “Le grand mot sortit, qu’il promenait à grands pas, et, comme un tonnerre, éclata, pendant qu’il marchait, et puis roula, battant sa marche comme un noir tambour” [it broke like thunder as he walked, and then rolled in time to his step like the beating of a black drum], Bubu de Montparnasse ch. IV. Henry King, An Exequy To his Matchless never to be forgotten Friend 111–14:
But heark! My Pulse, like a soft Drum
Beats my approach, tells Thee I come;
And slow howere my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by Thee.
In The Metaphysical Poets (1921), TSE quotes 99–114, commenting: “In the last few lines there is that effect of terror which is several times attained by one of Bishop King’s admirers, Edgar Poe.” For the impression made upon TSE as a child by King’s poem, see headnote to Elegy. fatalistic drum: “fatalistic horns”, Opera 2.
9, 12 Beats · · · drum · · · madman: Thomas Heywood: “Astonishment, | Fear, and amazement play against my heart, | Even as a madman beats upon a drum”, A Woman Killed with Kindness IV v (Grover Smith 302). Scene number from Mermaid; editions vary. In the copy of René Taupin’s L’influence du symbolisme français sur la poésie américaine which he gave to F. S. Flint, TSE wrote against the quotation of his own lines “Dekker!” (probably an error for Heywood). Two undated pages of notes by TSE on characters and plots in Heywood and Shirley are at Harvard. Wilde: “But each man’s heart beat thick and quick, | Like a madman on a drum!” The Ballad of Reading Gaol III xxxiv (Grover Smith 24).
11 Midnight shakes the memory: Wilde: “The troubled plumes of midnight shook | The plumes upon a hearse”, The Ballad of Reading Gaol III xviii.
12 madman shakes a dead geranium: “morning shook the long nasturtium”, Suppressed Complex 7.
[Poem I 18–20 · Textual History II 328–30]
12, 63 geranium · · · geraniums: after reading the poem at Columbia, 28 Apr 1958: “I can’t explain that now. I recognize the geraniums as Jules Laforgue’s geraniums, not mine, I’m afraid, originally. Adopted them.” Laforgue: “La bouche clownesque ensorcèle | Comme un singulier géranium” [The clownish mouth casts a spell like a singular geranium], Pierrots I 7–8 (TSE’s title: Suite Clownesque). Again: “Dans un album, | Mourait fossile | Un géranium | Cueilli aux Iles” [In an album, there was dying, fossilized, a geranium plucked from the islands], Rigueurs à nulle autre pareilles [Unparalleled Severities] 1–4. TSE quoted the first ten lines of Laforgue’s Derniers Vers x (“O géraniums diaphanes …”) in The Metaphysical Poets (1921). Laforgue “is at once the sentimentalist day-dreaming over the jeune fille at the piano with her geraniums, and the behaviourist inspecting her reflexes”, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 216 (and again, rephrased, 285). To John Collier, 4 Oct 1923: “Incidentally, Laforgue has made it impossible for anyone else to talk about geraniums.”
14 street-lamp sputtered: “gas-jet flickered”, Prufrock’s Pervigilium [8].
16–21 Regard that woman | Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door | Which opens on her like a grin · · · border of her dress | Is torn · · · the corner of her eye: “in corners | Where women took the air, standing in entries— | Women, spilling out of corsets, stood in entries”, Prufrock’s Pervigilium [5–7].
16, 50 Regard · · · Regard: “Regarde”, Le Directeur 18. “Regard”, Mandarins 2 5 (see note).
17 hesitates towards: OED “hesitate” 1e (not in 1st ed.): “To move in an indecisive, faltering manner”, citing only this line and H. G. Wells “He hesitated towards the door of the cabin”, The War in the Air (1908) ch. V.
23, 25 high and dry · · · beach: OED: “said of a vessel cast or drawn up on the shore out of the water”, from 1822: “Another surf sent Ensign George True high and dry on the beach.”
23–32 memory · · · twisted things · · · broken spring · · · clings · · · ready to snap: “twisted · · · snappiest · · · spring’s”, Humouresque 10, 15. To Middleton Murry [12 Apr 1925], on Vivien’s illness: “I don’t know what is the spring that is snapped, the formula of her mind, her temperament, personality · · · she dwells · · · on the past”.
25 twisted branch: “Twisting its branches”, The Death of Saint Narcissus 22.
35 the cat which flattens itself in the gutter: “Flattened itself upon the ceiling”, Prufrock’s Pervigilium [23]. “flickered against the ceiling · · · the sparrows in the gutters”, Preludes III 6–9.
35–38 the gutter · · · the child: “children’s voices · · · Delve in the gutter”, First Caprice in North Cambridge 4–9.
38 hand · · · automatic: see note to The Waste Land [III] 255, “She smoothes her hair with automatic hand”.
38–39, 41, 45 hand of the child, automatic | Slipped out and pocketed a toy · · · street · · · Gripped: Baudelaire recommends carrying a stock of penny toys when going for a stroll: “you must give your gifts to the unknown children and to the poor people whom you meet on the way · · · their hands suddenly grip the gift, and they take to their heels”, Le Joujou du Pauvre [The Poor Boy’s Toy] (tr. Symons) (Grover Smith 1983 8). TSE: “Record the motions of these pavement toys”, WLComposite 344. Arnold: “the humming street, and the child with its toy!” The Forsaken Merman 90.
39 variant quai: Bubu de Montparnasse has “le Quai aux Fleurs”, “le Quai de l’Horloge”, etc.
[Poem I 18–19 · Textual History II 328–29]
40 nothing behind that child’s eye: Laforgue: “ces yeux! mais rien n’existe | Derrière!” [Your eyes · · · but what exists | Behind them? What’s there?], Pierrots (Scène courte mais typique) loosely tr. Pound, under the pseudonym John Hall, Little Review May 1917, the issue that printed TSE’s Eeldrop and Appleplex I.
43–44 a crab one afternoon in a pool, | An old crab: Lewis Carroll: “One ancient crab, that was forever shuffling frantically from side to side of the pool, had particularly fascinated me”, Sylvie and Bruno ch. VIII. TSE knew Carroll’s book by 1899: see headnote to his Fireside verses. See note to The Dry Salvages I 20–1.
44–45 An old crab · · · Gripped the end of a stick which I held him: “a fish · · · held tight in his own fingers, | Writhing in his own clutch · · · ancient”, The Death of Saint Narcissus 24–26.
51 La lune ne garde aucune rancune: [The moon never holds any grudge]. Laforgue: “—Là, voyons, mam’zell’ la Lune, | Ne gardons pas ainsi rancune” [“Come now, Miss Moon, don’t cherish a grudge like that”], Complainte de cette bonne lune [Ballad of the Dear Old Moon] 7–8 (Grover Smith 302).
54 smooths the hair of the grass: Whitman: “What is the grass? · · · And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves”, Song of Myself 99, 110. Swinburne: “soft hair of the grass”, Hertha 9 (in Oxf Bk of English Verse). Pound: “very often a Romance or Latin word stands between two English words, or includes them: thus in the Pervigilium Veneris, ‘nemus resolvit comam’ can scarcely be translated ‘the grove unbinds its hair’; yet the Latin phrase is more picturesque than ‘puts forth its foliage’; as the word coma is used for hair, foliage,
standing corn or grass, indifferently”, The Spirit of Romance (1910) ch. 2.
55, 62–63 memory · · · The reminiscence comes | Of sunless dry geraniums: “Geraniums geraniums | Withered and dry | Long laid by | In the sweepings of the memory”, Easter: Sensations of April I 9–12. See note to 12, 63 on Laforgue’s geraniums.
56 washed-out · · · face: “face · · · washed-out”, The Little Passion: From “An Agony in the Garret” ms1 19–21.
57–59 Her hand twists a paper rose · · · alone: Laforgue has his Hamlet tell Kate to wait a moment, “le temps cueillir une fleur, une simple fleur en papier” [time to gather a flower, a simple paper-flower]. Remy de Gourmont: “Rose en papier de soie, simulacre adorable des grâces incréés, rose en papier de soie, n’es-tu pas la vraie rose, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence?” [Tissue-paper rose, adorable representation of increate graces, tissue-paper rose, are you not the true rose, the hypocritical rose, the rose of silence?], Litanies de la rose (1892): this prose poem appeared in Poètes d’aujourd’hui (see headnote to “Poems (1920)”, 4. WHAT FRANCE MEANT TO TSE). De Gourmont again: “ce que l’on peut recomposer avec les produits de la distillation d’un style ressemble au style comme une rose en papier parfumé ressemble à la rose” [what one can reconstitute thanks to the quintessence of a style resembles a style as a perfumed paper rose resembles a rose], Du Style ou de l’écriture in La Culture des idées (1900). TSE: “picking tissue paper roses · · · alone”, Convictions 9–10. “lilacs · · · twists one in her fingers · · · hands”, Portrait of a Lady II 2, 3, 5.
58 eau de Cologne: against a suggestion that the change from the original reading “old cologne” was a compositor’s error, TSE wrote: “It was the author, this time” (ts of Beare, U. Maryland). Two lines later: “old nocturnal smells”.
[Poem I 19 · Textual History II 329]
61 That cross and cross across her brain: Byron: “that such a thought should cross | Her brain”, Don Juan I lxxxiv.
65 Smells of chestnuts in the streets: “smell of heat | From the asphalt street”, Easter: Sensations of April I 7–8.
65–66 Smells of chestnuts in the streets | And female smells in shuttered rooms: Charles-Louis Philippe: “des odeurs de filles publiques mêlées à des odeurs de nourriture” [streetwalkers’ smells mixed with the smells of food], Marie Donadieu II ii (tr. eds) (Grover Smith 24). TSE: “so rank a feline smell | As Grishkin in a drawing-room”, Whispers of Immortality 27–28. Corbière’s story L’Américaine has “Ce poison, l’odeur de femme, m’emplissait les narines” [This poison, the smell of woman, filled my nostrils]; and his Bonne Fortune et fortune has as its epigraph “Odor della feminita”. Charles-Louis Philippe: “Ces chambres · · · une odeur de prostitution”, Bubu de Montparnasse ch. I. “les deux femmes et leur odeur s’étiraient, se secouaient et sautaient du lit vers midi · · · Connaissez-vous l’odeur du vice qu’une fois on respira? · · · Il y a l’atmosphère des prostituées, qui sent d’abord la liberté de vivre, puis qui descend et qui pue comme mille sexes tout un jour” [the two women in their odour, stretched, shook themselves, and towards noon, got out of bed · · · Do you know the odour of vice once it has entered the lungs? · · · There is the air of prostitution which at first smells of liberty, and which then sinks and stinks like a thousand sexes all the day], ch. VII. TSE: “Odours, confected by the cunning French, | Disguise the good old hearty female stench”, WLComposite 268–69. “un odeur fémelle”, Petit Epître 8. “Elle avait une odeur fraîche qui m’était inconnue”, Dans le Restaurant 14 variant. “une forte odeur de chienne”, Lune de Miel 4. “Improper Rhymes”: “I’m Sure that I Smell Bitches!” America Discover’d. “I Smell Whore!” (both sent to Bonamy Dobrée).
65–66 variant on the streets · · · in darkened rooms: “on the open street · · · darkened chambers”, Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think? 10–12. “darkened room”, Portrait of a Lady I 4; see note.
70, 77–78 “Four o’clock · · · sleep, prepare for life.” | | The last twist of the knife: Measure for Measure III i, DUKE (as Friar): “Reason thus with life · · · Thy best of rest is sleep”; “therefore prepare yourself to death.” IV ii, PROVOST: “Provide your block and your axe tomorrow at four o’clock”; “Well, go, prepare yourself.” DUKE (reading the warrant): “Let Claudio be executed by four of the clock”. See epigraph to Gerontion, “an after dinner sleep”, from Measure for Measure III i.
74 The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair: “at the foot of your stair · · · ring the lamp”, The Love Song of St. Sebastian 3–7. “a little lamp”, The Love Song of St. Sebastian 2 variant.
76 The bed is open: an 1871 Boston advertisement for Berry’s Patent Folding Spring Bed-Lounge illustrated it both “Closed” and “Open”. TSE: “On the divan · · · (at night her bed)”, The Waste Land [III] 226; see note. Vivien Eliot to Mary Hutchinson, 9 Oct [1917]: “Huxley quoted a saying of Gertler’s · · · that the Mallesons might be said to keep ‘open bed’”.
77–78 life · · · last twist of the knife: Ford: “in my fists I bear the twists of life”, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore V vi (Giovanni speaks, dagger in hand, having revealed his incest). TSE: “this revelation | Drives the knife deeper and twists it in the wound”, The Confidential Clerk III.
[Poem I 19–20 · Textual History II 329–30]
Morning at the Window
Published as the last of four Observations in Poetry Sept 1916, then 1917+.
Recorded 13 May 1947 at Harvard, as part of the Morris Gray Poetry Reading, following Preludes. “I’ll read next a short poem belonging to the following period, written that is to say, four years later, for comparison.”
Undated in Notebook. Dated “1915 Oxford London” by TSE in Morley’s US 1920; Oxford, 1915 by TSE in Hayward’s 1925 and by Poèmes. Dated 1914, “so far as I can remember”, to Norman Foerster, 15 June 1932. To Edward J. H. Greene, 30 June 1947: “Morning at the Window belongs with the 1915 poems. It is inferior to the earlier preludes.” Grover Smith 30: “Inspired by the neighborhood of Russell Square, where Eliot stayed in the autumn of 1914 · · · at 28 Bedford Place”. Assigned to Sept 1914 by Rainey 198; “1915 when Eliot was lodging in Bedford Square” by Gardner 1969; and “Early September? [1914]” in Letters Chronology (1988).
The whole poem draws upon Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance ch. XVII:
thick, foggy, stifled element of cities · · · sordid · · · loud voices · · · steps echoing on the staircase · · · feet of chambermaids scudding along the passages · · · From the street came the tumult of the pavements · · · foot-tramp · · · rattle · · · Eliot’s pulpit · · · I felt a hesitation about plunging into this muddy tide · · · It suited me better to · · · hover in the air above it · · · out of the window · · · an apology for a garden · · · this area · · · high above the roof of the houses · · · the area · · · a cat · · · creeping along the low, flat roofs · · · all looked into the same area · · · housemaids · · · I cast my eyes downward to the lower regions · · · the kitchen-range · · · an Irish man-servant · · · threw away the fragments of a china dish which, unquestionably, he had just broken · · · All at once, this dove · · · launching herself in the air · · · flew upward, and vanished.
Title, 1, 3–4, 9 Morning at the Window · · · rattling · · · damp souls · · · Sprouting · · · along the level of the roofs: “morning air · · · then sprang up a little damp dead breeze | That rattled at the window · · · and along the stair”, Oh little voices of the throats of men 38, 45–46, 48.
Title, 2–4, 7 at the Window · · · trampled edges of the street · · · housemaids · · · area gates · · · the street · · · muddy skirts: to Henry Eliot, 7 Sept [1914], also anticipating other poems in the volume: “The noise hereabouts is like hell turned upside down · · · pianos, street piano accordions, singers, hummers, whistlers · · · Ten o’clock in the evening · · · men with late editions · · · windows · · · a dreadful old woman,
her skirt trailing on the street · · · windows · · · the housemaid resumes her conversation at the area gate.”
[Poem I 21 · Textual History II 330–31]
Title, 2, 7, 9 at the Window · · · the street · · · a passer-by · · · And vanishes: Irving Babbitt: “The absolute in this sense is a metaphysical illusion. The attempt of the mind to set up a theory of itself is equally illusory. It is as though a man should look out of a window in order to see himself pass by in the street”, The Masters of Modern French Criticism (1912) 195. (See note to Preludes III 10–11, IV 8–9.) TSE gave Babbitt as a referee when applying in Oct 1916 to join the local lecturing staff of Cambridge University, offering courses on “Contemporary France · · · French and English Literature and on Philosophy”.
1–9 breakfast plates · · · area gates · · · in the air · · · vanishes: Dickens: “‘fond of spoons I find, and silver-plate in general, whenever area-gates is left open’ · · · vanished long ago, and these remarks had been bestowed on empty air”, Barnaby Rudge ch. XXXV, concluding lines.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 41
