The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
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14, 17 variant I shall meet · · · Company: Webster on defiance of death: DUCHESS: “Who would be afraid on’t, | Knowing to meet such excellent company | In the other world?” The Duchess of Malfi IV ii (for the scene, see notes to 24 and to The Waste Land [II] 117–23).
15 We two shall lie: Rossetti: “‘We two will lie i’ the shadow of | That living mystic tree’”, The Blessed Damozel 85–86 (Grover Smith 50).
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15–16 lapt | In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond: “plenty of money, | Wrapped up in a five pound note”, Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat 3–4. Tennyson: “There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, | And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law”, Locksley Hall 129–30. “Poems (1920)” has several clipped past tenses: “kist” and “wrapt” (The Hippopotamus 34, 36; also “past” for “passed” in early editions at 22), “Blest” (Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service 28), “drest” (A Cooking Egg 24 ^ 25 variant). The practice goes back to TSE’s earliest poetry (“drencht · · · soakt”, A Fable for Feasters 33, 35) and continued in a draft for The Waste Land (“pact”, ms1 [13] variant), Ash-Wednesday (“drest”, III 15) and Five-Finger Exercises II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier (“crookt”, 2). Commenting on lines by Bonamy Dobrée, “The wind shivered the cropt grass, and the small bright clouds | Passed evenly over the sky”, TSE wrote in a letter [?1927]: “Passed: why not print ‘past’?” a five per cent. Exchequer Bond: the outbreak of war in Aug 1914 immediately forced the pound off the gold standard, enabling the government to print money to prosecute the war. War loans were then issued, the first paying 3½ per cent, the third, of Jan 1917, paying 5 per cent. Glasgow Herald 27 May 1916: “people have come to regard the giving of money for the prosecution of the War · · · as a profit- making medium”. Nation, June 1917: “when the War is over · · · the propertied men in this country will be several thousand million pounds the wealthier”. In June 1919, the so-called “Joy Bond” promised interest of 5% until 1960, which the Manchester Guardian of 13 June 1919 described as “a gift of thousands of millions of pounds unearned increment to the investor out of the taxpayer’s pocket”. (Thomas Johnson, The Financiers and the Nation, 1934, ch. VI, “Usury on the Great War”.)
Pope: “While with the silent growth of ten per Cent, | In Dirt and darkness, hundreds stink content”, The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated 132–33. Kipling: “The widow and the orphan | That pray for ten per cent”, The Broken Men (acknowledged by TSE as influencing the title The Hollow Men). TSE’s mother had substantial holdings in bonds as well as commercial property (see her correspondence with TSE’s brother Henry, Houghton).
18 Lucretia Borgia · · · Bride: as illegitimate daughter of the Spanish cardinal who became Pope Alexander VI, three-times married Lucretia Borgia (1480–1519) was notorious for the kinds of excess depicted in Webster’s plays. William Bodham Donne reported to Fanny Kemble on 20 Jan 1857 that Edward FitzGerald had taken new rooms, less than three months after his doomed marriage: “and he says that ‘his contemporary’—which, being interpreted, means his wife! looks in this chamber of horrors like Lucrezia Borgia”, quoted William Bodham Donne and His Friends, ed. Catharine B. Johnson (1905) 217.
18–24 Pound’s annotation (ts1a): “le preux Bayard mirrour of Chivalry Coriolanus. Cola da Rienzi”. Pierre Terrail, the “doughty” Chevalier de Bayard (1473–1524). Byron: “So much for chivalry · · · Before the days of Bayard”, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Preface. Cola di Rienzi, 14th-century senator. Byron: “hope of Italy— | Rienzi! last of Romans!” Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV st. 114.
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20 experience: various senses; OED 7a: “Knowledge resulting from actual observation or from what one has undergone”. 8: “The state of having been occupied in any department of study or practice, in affairs generally, or in the intercourse of life; the extent to which, or the length of time during which, one has been so occupied; the aptitudes, skill, judgement, etc. thereby acquired”. 4b: “A state of mind or feeling forming part of the inner religious life; the mental history (of a person) with regard to religious emotion”. Locke: “Let us then suppose the mind to be · · · without any ideas · · · Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself”, Essay Concerning Human Understanding bk. II ch. 1 §2. The nature and significance of experience were of much concern to the philosophers TSE studied, including Josiah Royce (whose seminars he attended). Bradley: “Sentient experience, in short, is reality, and what is not this is not real”, Appearance and Reality ch. XIV; underlined by TSE. Bradley: “Everything is experience, and also experience is one”, ch. XXVI; TSE, alongside: “But experience is only experience internally. The complex, looked at from the outside, is not experience. So there is no experience as such, and no truth as such.” Alongside a paragraph beginning “The total unity of experience”, ch. XXVII, TSE: “Has not ‘experience’ here become as meaningless as ‘personality’?” Recommending a study of Shaw, Gide, Freud and Russell: “he finds · · · they all approve three cults: that of ‘personality’, that of ‘experience’, and that of ‘irresponsibility’”, “Our Present Philosophy of Life” by Montgomery Belgion, reader’s report (1929).
Inf. XXVI 94–99, Ulysses speaks: “neither fondness for my son, nor reverence for my aged father, nor the due love that should have cheered Penelope, could conquer in me the ardour that I had to gain experience of the world, and of human vice and worth.” Pater on Aristippus: “The persuasion that all is vanity · · · became the stimulus towards every kind of activity, and prompted a perpetual, inextinguishable thirst after experience”, Marius the Epicurean ch. VIII, “Animula Vagula” (see note to Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think? 1). TSE: “that averted look without surprise | Which only the experienced can wear”, Paysage Triste 4–5. [Eeldrop:] “What curiosity and passion for experience!” [Appleplex:] “· · · her passion for experience has taken her to a Russian pianist in Bayswater · · · the passion for experience—have you remained so impregnably Pre-Raphaelite as to believe in that? What real person, with the genuine resources of instinct, has ever believed in the passion for experience? The passion for experience is a criticism of the sincere, a creed only of the histrionic”, Eeldrop and Appleplex II (1917). TSE, outlining a story for “F. M.”: “Mrs. Molden—the ex-midwife. Had brought 3 corpses into the world & therefore person of experience · · · Mrs. M and her experiences fill Fanny with a kind of horror” (verso of draft leaf of Letters of the Moment II (1924), U. Maryland). “des expériences”, Dans le Restaurant 23.
On Shakespeare: “experience, for the poet, is a very different thing from experience for the stockbroker. A love affair, successful or fatal, might cause a successful or bad investment; it cannot, without a great many other and alien experiences of which the ordinary man is incapable, cause good poetry. Nowhere is the public, in general, more at fault than in its decipherings of the meaning of poems according to some ‘experience.’ A fine poem which appears to be the record of a particular experience may be the work of a man who has never had that experience; a poem which is the record of a particular experience may bear no trace of that or of any experience. About good poetry, the public (including often critics and experts) is usually quite wrong: the experience it sees behind the poem is its own, not the poet’s. I do not say that poetry is not ‘autobiographical’: but this autobiography is written by a foreign man in a foreign tongue, which can never be translated”, The Problems of the Shakespeare Sonnets (1927). “And finally · · · many people act upon the assumption that the mere accumulation of ‘experiences’, including literary and intellectual experiences, as well as amorous and picaresque ones, is—like the accumulation of money—valuable in itself”, After Strange Gods 34. On modern literature: “its tendency is to encourage its readers t
o get what they can out of life while it lasts, to miss no ‘experience’ that presents itself”, Religion and Literature (1935). See also note to epigraph for quotation from The New Elizabethans and the Old (1919) on valuable experience brought by age; and headnote to Marina for letter to Hayward, 29 Nov 1939, on “lack of experience”.
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21–23 in Heaven: | Madame Blavatsky will instruct me | In the Seven Sacred Trances: Psalm 32: 8: “I will instruct thee in the way which thou shalt go.” Deuteronomy 4: 36: “Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee.” Song of Solomon 8: 2: “bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me.” Heaven · · · Seven Sacred Trances: Emerson: “And pine in vain the sacred Seven · · · Find me, and turn thy back on heaven”, Brahma 14–16. For Emerson see note to Sweeney Erect 25–26. Madame Blavatsky · · · Seven Sacred Trances: the Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky (1831–91) lived in America, India and then England. Yeats joined her Theosophical Society in 1888. Her magnum opus explains how super-sensuous states “can be perceived by the SEER or the Adept during the hours of trance, under the Sushumna ray—the first of the Seven Mystic rays of the Sun. [Footnote: The names of the Seven Rays · · · are all mystical, and each has its distinct application in a distinct state of consciousness, for occult purposes]”, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy (1888, repr. 1993) I 515 (Childs 94).
24 Piccarda de Donati: a nun, whose brother, Forese Donati, tells Dante (Purg. XXIV 10–15) that she is already in heaven. For her reply to Dante’s question in Paradiso (and TSE’s opinion “it is great poetry, and there is a great philosophy behind it”), see note to Ash-Wednesday VI 30–33, “Our peace in His will”. TSE, quoting The Duchess of Malfi IV ii: “If the duchess had insisted on being ‘Duchess of Malfi still,’ she would not have been admitted to Dante’s heaven at all. Piccarda had been a great lady herself, but when she got to Heaven she did not talk like that”, John Webster (1928). (TSE saw the Phoenix Society’s production of Webster’s play in Nov 1919 and a letter from him in support of the society appeared in the Athenæneum 27 Feb 1920. Harold Child lists 24 Phoenix Society revivals of 16th–18th-century dramas excluding Shakespeare, and some three dozen by other companies, 1919–25, in RES Apr 1926.) conduct: OED 2: “To guide or direct to a certain course of action. 1557: ‘Thy good spirite shall conduite me into the lande of rightfulness.’”
25 penny world: Stevenson on his discovery of Skelt’s juvenile dramas: “The world was plain before I knew him, a poor penny world; but soon it was all coloured with romance”, Memories and Portraits ch. 13, “A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured” (R. G. Howarth, N&Q 23 Nov 1940). Dickens: “a penny bun is a penny bun, always the same size at the same shop, whether prices be high or low”, Dainty Bread in All the Year Round 10 Sept 1870 (TSE: “scones and crumpets”, 31).
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25, 29 where is · · · Where are: Ubi sunt [Where are] was a turn common in mediaeval Latin poetry. Villon, tr. Rossetti: “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” [But where are the snows of yester-year?], Ballade des dames du temps jadis [Ballade of the Ladies of Former Times]. And “Où sont les gracieux gallans | Que je suivoye au temps jadis” [Where are the gracious gallants whom I followed in former times], Le Grand Testament XXIX.
Péguy: “Où sont vos martyrs? Où sont vos héros? Où sont seulement vos victimes?” [Where are your martyrs? Where are your heroes? Where are your victims, even?], À nos amis, à nos abonnés [To Our Friends, To Our Subscribers] (20 June 1909). For this passage of Péguy, see note to Burnt Norton II 1–2. TSE: “Charles Péguy · · · was one of the most illustrious of the dead who have fallen in this war · · · There may be passages in his verse which are pure poetry; there are certainly passages in his prose which are of the best prose · · · in Paris which had seen the termination of an epoch · · · Paris given up to radical and reactionary movements which were largely movements for the sake of moving, Péguy · · · stood for a real re-creation, a return to the sources · · · a witness to the eternal fertility of the French soil · · · Péguy on the Marne is an essential part of this Péguy”, Charles Péguy (1916); for this review of Avec Charles Péguy de la Lorraine à la Marne (août–septembre, 1914), a memoir by Victor Boudon, his commanding officer, see note to Animula 32, 33, 36. “Péguy had the ability to combine a variety of doctrines by a force of imagination which sometimes concealed and usually atoned for incoherence”, A Commentary in Criterion Apr 1934. TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934) includes “Peguy: Oeuv. Choisies”. To Robert Waller, 1 Sept 1945: “Péguy was a very great writer, I think perhaps the greatest of my time, or a little before. I know some of his prose a good deal better than I know his ‘poetry’, though I admire the latter too. I believe that if I had his complete works, which were voluminous, I should read them all.”
25–32 penny world · · · creeping | From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green · · · Where are the eagles and the trumpets? · · · Weeping, weeping: TSE in the margin of Thayer’s AraVP: “Blake. What are the golden builders doing | In melancholy, ever weeping Paddington?”, referring to Blake’s To the Jews:
The fields from Islington to Marylebone,
To Primrose Hill and Saint John’s Wood,
Were builded over with pillars of gold,
And there Jerusalem’s pillars stood.
· · ·
Pancras & Kentish Town repose
Among her golden pillars high · · ·
· · ·
What are those golden builders doing
Near mournful ever-weeping Paddington,
Standing above that mighty ruin
Where Satan the first victory won
Quatrain section of Jerusalem I, Plate 27
TSE referred to the same lines in his Clark Lecture VII:
Blake is I think in one aspect like Chapman, and rather like Mr. Yeats, in being a poet of juxtaposition of two worlds, rather than a metaphysical.
What are these golden builders doing
In melancholy, ever-weeping Paddington?
The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 205
26 behind the screen: Austin Dobson’s The Screen in the Lumber Room ends “I kissed you first behind it”. Dobson has “aunt” three times and his volume is Vers de Société (TSE: “great great aunts”, 6; “Society”, 17) (Ricks 1998). Charlie Chaplin, Behind the Screen (1916) (Ben Mazer, personal communication).
27 The red-eyed scavengers: Dickens: “The last few red-eyed stragglers”, Barnaby Rudge ch. LV. scavengers: OED 2a: “A person whose employment is to clean streets, by scraping or sweeping together and removing dirt.”
27, 28 scavengers · · · Kentish Town: Jonson, A Tale of a Tub III i, Kentish Town. TURFE: “I had rather be mark’d out Tom Scavinger, | And with a shovel make clean the highways.”
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27, 29 scavengers · · · eagles: Charles Allston Collins: “These wrinkly-necked and scavenger vultures proclaim, as most things do, their nature by their foul outside. How different are these from the eagles! The vulture is as large as the eagle”, Our Eye-Witness and a Salamander in Dickens’s All the Year Round 19 May 1860. TSE’s first printed story concerned vultures: “The dead lay scattered about in great heaps, which were already black with the countless scavengers who had scented them from afar”, The Birds of Prey (1905). To Emily Hale, 27 Nov 1956: “I had assumed that the letters of mine which you are giving to Princeton University would be sealed up at once · · · My God! does this mean that a complete stranger, a professional librarian, is already reading letters which were composed for your eye alone? I seem to have heard of dying travellers in a desert, with the vultures starting to dismember them before the end. I feel somewhat like that.” See TSE to Geoffrey Faber, 21 Jan 1941, quoted in headnote to The Dry Salvages, 3. COMPOSITION.
28 Golder’s Green: often “Golders”, but TSE generally used the apo
strophe, as for instance in the Bolo lines sent to Aiken, 10 Jan 1916 (see “Improper Rhymes”) and in writing to Virginia Woolf (26 Jan 1940). To James Joyce, 21 May 1921, on the publication of Ulysses as a book:
I am delighted to hear that even a limited and very expensive edition is to appear. Has it been properly circularised in England? If not, I might supply a few names. I wish that Miss Beach would bring out a limited edition of my epic ballad on the life of Christopher Columbus and his friend King Bolo, but
Bolo’s big black bastard queen
Was so obscene
She shocked the folk of Golder’s Green.
29–30 eagles · · · snow-deep Alps: OED “eagle” 2: “an ensign in the Roman army, and … an ensign and badge in the French army under the empire”. Hannibal and his Carthaginian army crossed the Alps into Italy in Oct 218 BC through deep snow. Napoleon’s army crossed the Alps in spring 1800.
29–31 the eagles · · · buttered scones and crumpets: Psalm 103: 5: “who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s”. eagles · · · trumpets · · · Alps · · · scones · · · crumpets: Job 39: 24–27: “He swalloweth the ground · · · the trumpets · · · Doth the eagle mount up · · · and make her nest on high?” TSE: “But how many eagles! and how many trumpets! · · · crumpets”, Coriolan I. Triumphal March 42–45.
30 snow-deep Alps: Hannibal and his Carthaginian army crossed the Alps into Italy in Oct 218 BC through deep snow.
31–32 Over buttered scones and crumpets | Weeping: Psalm 102: 9: “eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping”.