The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I

by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Ricks

  [Poem I 193 · Textual History II 503]

  I 9–10 Unhonoured, unpropitiated · · · waiting, watching and waiting: Clough: “Ah, let me look, let me watch, let me wait, unhurried, unprompted! · · · Waiting, and watching, and looking!” Amours de Voyage II xii (Murray). unpropitiated: pronounced unpropissiated in TSE’s recording of 1946–47.

  I 10 worshippers of the machine: J. H. B. De St. Pierre: “a savage · · · feels himself disposed to fall down and worship the machine”, Studies of Nature (tr. L. T. Rede, 1803) 322. TSE: “It is impossible, certainly, for the Christian not to strive and hope for a better state of things on earth, though without that false assumption of the excessive value of the future which communism inherits from nineteenth century Liberalism, and without that worship of the machine, that faith in gadgets and inventions”, The Christian and the Modern World (1935).

  I 11 His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom: to Marquis W. Childs, 8 Aug 1930: “The River also made a deep impression on me; and it was a great treat to be taken down to the Eads Bridge in flood time · · · I feel that there is something in having passed one’s childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those who have not”, quoted in From a Distinguished Former St. Louisan (1930).

  I 11–14 the nursery bedroom, | In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard · · · the evening: of his childhood home at 2635 Locust Street and the Mary Institute schoolyard: “There was at the front of our house a sort of picket fence which divided our front yard from the schoolyard. This picket fence merged a little later · · · into a high brick wall which concealed our back garden from the schoolyard and also concealed the schoolyard from our back garden. There was a door in this wall and there was a key to this door. Now, when the young ladies had left the school in the afternoon · · · When the girls had left in the afternoon, the schoolyard was mine for a playground, first of all under the supervision of my nurse · · · I remember a mound on which stood a huge ailanthus tree · · · I have a photograph of myself standing against this ailanthus tree at the age of seven or eight”, From Mary to You (1959; after delivering this centennial address at the school, TSE read The Dry Salvages). Henry James: “following the nursery-maid with unequal step and sniffing up the strange odour of the ailantus-trees”; “the ailantus-trees beyond the wooden paling. The peculiar fragrance of this vegetation used to diffuse itself in the evening air”, Washington Square ch. III, ch. XXXIV. the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard: Whitman: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d (title and first line); see notes to IV 14–15. ailanthus: OED: “said to mean ‘Tree of the gods’” (“gods”, I 1). Pronounced al-anthus in TSE’s recording of 1946–47. dooryard: OED (with this line as latest citation): “U.S. A yard or garden-patch about the door of a house.”

  I 13–14 grapes on the autumn table, | And the evening circle in the winter gaslight: to his mother, 14 Oct 1917: “I always think of return to St. Louis as meaning Concord grapes on the table in the blue fruit basket.” To Hayward, 27 Dec 1939: “One of my strongest associations is that of the smell of grapes and of the charwoman (an old family retainer) which always greeted me on returning in the autumn to our house in St. Louis, after the summer at ‘The Downs’, Eastern Point, Gloucester, Mass.” Emma D. E. N. Southworth: “events of the day had thrown a shade of seriousness over the evening circle · · · gathered around the centre-table”, The Two Sisters (1859) 299. TSE: “circles of the stormy moon · · · table cloth · · · hothouse grapes”, Sweeney Among the Nightingales 5, 13, 20. “The evening with the photograph album”, East Coker V 28.

  [Poem I 193 · Textual History II 503–504]

  I 15 the sea is all about us: Kipling: “The Jungle is all about us!” The King’s Ankus.

  I 19 horseshoe crab: to Hayward, 12 Jan 1945: “At the bottom of the first page of The Dry Salvages in the four Quartets please alter hermit crab to horse-shoe crab. I do not know how I came to make such a blunder (though obviously the wrong crab scans better). I have written a letter to the New English Weekly to point this out, and I shall have it altered in the next printing, whenever that is, and send you a copy. How could one find the remains of a hermit crab on a beach? All there could be would be the shell of some other crustacean. I am surprised that neither you nor anyone else has spotted this.” NEW 25 Jan 1945:

  In his review of my Four Quartets in The New English Weekly several weeks ago, Mr. Snell mentioned my note of acknowledgement to friends for their help, and observed that he could find only three or four minor changes from the text as originally printed in your columns. He is quite correct, and correct also in suggesting that one of the changes was of doubtful value [Burnt Norton II 5]. But the “improvements of word and phrase” for which I made acknowledgement were incorporated before the poems were printed in any form, and therefore remain invisible.

  There is, however, one error in the text which has escaped the observation of any of my friends or critics, and of which I have only just myself become aware. In the first section of The Dry Salvages, “hermit crab” should be “horse-shoe crab.” It was, of course, the horse-shoe crab that I had in mind: the slip must have been due to the fact that I did not want a spondee in that place. What is more curious is that the term “hermit crab” should have continued to do duty for “horse-shoe crab” in my mind, in this context, from the date of original publication of the poem until last week. I shall be grateful to any of your readers who may possess the poem, if they will kindly make the alteration.

  [Poem I 193 · Textual History II 504]

  To Richard de la Mare, 6 Feb 1945: “There is an error of my own to be corrected the next time the Quartets are reprinted. I know that there is a new impression which has not yet come in, so that this may be some time ahead, but if I do not put it in writing now I shall forget when the time comes. At the bottom of the first page of The Dry Salvages, I want ‘Hermit Crab’ changed to HORSESHOE CRAB [with: ‘but not in capitals’]. This was a curious slip because I meant Horse-shoe Crab the whole time. I want to get it put right before somebody accuses me of ignorance” (Faber archive). TSE corrected Alton Peters’s copy of the pamphlet The Dry Salvages (Pierpont Morgan).

  Henry Eliot wrote to Henry B. Harvey, 10 Oct 1946, that TSE was still “much worried because he meant to write ‘horse-shoe crab’ instead of hermit crab.” TSE had not forgotten the mistake in 1952: “On re-reading the poem some time after the final text had been published, I was horrified to observe that I had referred to the wrong kind of crab—the hermit crab which has no shell of its own, but takes for a habitation the shell of some other deceased crustacean. The hermit crab, having no shell of its own, could hardly be identified by a shell on the beach; and indeed, I am not sure that I have ever seen a hermit crab. The crab I had in mind was the horseshoe crab. I knew the difference perfectly well: how was it that after spending months in re-writing and revising that poem, I had failed to notice that I continued to associate the name of one kind of crab with the mental picture of another? Simply because the sound of the word hermit fitted perfectly for my line, and the sound of horseshoe was harsh. In such a dilemma, there was only one choice: to put in the right crab, and sacrifice the right sound”, Scylla and Charybdis (1952). To Robert Beare, 10 Mar 1953: “One difference between a New York and London edition is that I corrected the English edition of The Dry Salvages but have left an error in the New York edition which also occurs in the first English edition: ‘hermit crab’; the correct text is ‘horseshoe crab’.” American impressions of Four Quartets were still appearing with the error later than 1948. A typed note apparently by TSE in the back of Hayward’s copy of 1944 (King’s) reads: “HORSESHOE CRAB, according to Manson: Crabe des Moluques, or limule. According to Manson also, crabe des Moluques or limule is KING-CRAB.” Henry Adams: “One was almost glad to act the part of horseshoe crab in Quincy Bay, and admit that all was uniform—that nothing ever changed—and that the woman would swim about the ocean of future time, as she had swum in the past · · · unable to cha
nge”, The Education of Henry Adams ch. XXX (George M. Spangler, N&Q Aug 1968). Irving Babbitt wrote of Descartes having conceived of the soul as “living quite apart from the body, having its seat in the pineal gland, in much the same way, to quote a recent writer, ‘as the hermit crab resides in its borrowed shell’”, The Masters of Modern French Criticism (1912) 236. (Frederic Burk: “The fundamental conception of the soul which flourished when men believed that it resided in the pineal gland, as the hermit crab resides in its borrowed shell, dominates our education to-day. The new conception of the child is radically different from the old · · · the child is made up of blind instincts and impulses which well up from within”, The Training of Teachers: The Old View of Childhood and the New in Atlantic Monthly Oct 1897. For “a child of ten · · · peering through sea-water”, see note to I 20–21.) crab: TSE: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws | Scuttling across the floors of silent seas”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 73–74.

  I 20 The pools · · · curiosity: “It would almost seem that the one object of his curiosity was—himself. He reminds us of Narcissus gazing into the pool”, Introduction to The Art of Poetry by Paul Valéry (1958) (Ricks 276).

  [Poem I 193 · Textual History II 504]

  I 20–21 The pools where it offers to our curiosity · · · algae · · · sea-anemone: “The sea-anemone which accepts or rejects a proffered morsel is thereby relating an idea to the sea-anemone’s world”, Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley 44 (Ricks 279). For some poets, arriving at originality is “a progressive absorption in, and absorption of, and rejection (but never a total rejection) of other writers. Others, like Crosby, have little of this absorptive and rejective faculty”, Transit of Venus: Poems by Harry Crosby (1931), Preface. Levy 1965: “He summed up experiences with a rare brevity, as in this comment on the Germans after six weeks of formal and informal meetings: ‘They are like sponges or sea anemones, soaking up foreign influence for a while, then rejecting it all.’” For “reject”, see note to Ash-Wednesday II 16.

  TSE quoted with approval Marianne Moore, “the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp, rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur” (My Apish Cousins) in Marianne Moore (1923). TSE: “I should say that the mind of any poet would be magnetised in its own way, to select automatically, in his reading (from picture papers and cheap novels, indeed, as well as serious books, and least likely from works of an abstract nature, though even these are aliment for some poetic minds) the material—an image, a phrase, a word—which may be of use to him later. And this selection probably runs through the whole of his sensitive life. There might be the experience of a child of ten, a small boy peering through sea-water in a rock-pool, and finding a sea-anemone for the first time: the simple experience (not so simple, for an exceptional child, as it looks) might lie dormant in his mind for twenty years, and re-appear transformed in some verse-context charged with great imaginative pressure”, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 78–79. Murder in the Cathedral II chorus: “I have lain on the floor of the sea and breathed with the breathing of the sea-anenome, swallowed with ingurgitation of the sponge.”

  William James: “Had we no concepts we should live simply ‘getting’ each successive moment of experience, as the sessile sea-anemone on its rock receives whatever nourishment the wash of the waves may bring”, Some Problems of Philosophy ch. IV. TSE: “Truth on our level is a different thing from truth for the jellyfish, and there must certainly be analogies for truth and error in jellyfish life”, Knowledge and Experience 166. “We are not to say that there is one real world to which the system corresponds, for so far as the system is complete and exact, it is the real world. But it is not the same world as that of the plowboy or the jellyfish, except for the metaphysician who is inside of his own system”, Content, Objectivity and Existence (1914).

  Bradley: “It is no human ideal to lead ‘the life of an oyster’. We have no right first to find out just what we happen to be and to have, and then to contract our wants to that limit”, Ethical Studies Essay II. TSE to Geoffrey Faber [18 Sept 1927]: “Plato has something valuable to say about the theory of value. Remember his oyster” (Plato: “if you had no memory you would not recollect that you had ever been pleased · · · your life would be the life, not of a man, but of an oyster”, Philebus 21c, tr. Benjamin Jowett. For a different translation, see note to Five-Finger Exercises I. Lines to a Persian Cat 6.) TSE: “Then he knew that he had been a fish”, The Death of Saint Narcissus 24. TSE praised unspecified lines in Rupert Brooke’s The Fish for “a really amazing felicity and command of language”, Reflections on Contemporary Poetry I (1917). For fear of or longing for the submarine, see notes to Mr. Apollinax 11–15.

  I 20–34 pools · · · sea-anemone · · · fog · · · wave · · · sea voices · · · groaner · · · seagull · · · fog: Archibald MacLeish: “fog · · · pools among | The sea anemones · · · gulls · · · the wave sound · · · moan · · · Cry of gulls”, Land’s End III in Criterion July 1927 (see note to Ash-Wednesday III 17–19).

  I 21 delicate algae: Pound: “And one gropes in these things as delicate | Algæ reach up and out beneath | Pale slow green surgings of the underwave”, Sub Mare, included by TSE in Pound’s Selected Poems. algae: pronounced al-ghee in TSE’s recording of 1946–47. (OED recommends a soft g.) After reading three new cantos, TSE had “only one query” for Pound, 22 Oct 1936: “‘see weed’ etc. To one raised on the shore of the manymermaidcrowded sea, this collocation suggest algae such as a child I dried and classified on the shores of Massachusetts” (Crawford 32).

  I 21–22 algae · · · torn: “the torn algae”, Those are pearls that were his eyes. See! 3.

  [Poem I 193 · Textual History II 504]

  I 22 tosses up our losses: Hayward’s Queries: “Tosses—losses—flotsam, jetsam, wrack. × 5 times earlier spinithrift—”. tosses · · · losses · · · torn: see note to Ash-Wednesday V 22, VI 4. our losses: for these words in Elizabeth Barrett Browning, see note to Little Gidding II 67–96, first venture in verse [22]. seine: OED: “A fishing net designed to hang vertically in the water, the ends being drawn together to inclose the fish”. Within yards of the Eliots’ summer house in Gloucester was Seine Field, where fishermen mended nets (Jayme Stayer, personal communication).

  I 24 the gear of foreign dead men: “the army gear”, Anabasis VI x.

  I 24–25 The sea has many voices, | Many gods and many voices: Tennyson: “the deep | Moans round with many voices”, Ulysses 55–56. TSE called the second of Tennyson’s lines “a true specimen of Tennyson-Virgilianism · · · too poetical in comparison with Dante, to be the highest poetry”, Dante (1929) I (see Virgil’s Aeneid in note to II 70–75). “the sea with many voices | Moaned all about us”, WLComposite 516–17.

  I 28 Often together heard: the whine: Milton: “We · · · both together heard | What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn”, Lycidas 27–28. together heard: Hayward’s Queries: “(inversion)”. For “as though together fused” in the Temple translation of Paradiso, see note to Little Gidding V 44–46. TSE to A. L. Rowse, 3 Jan 1936, of a typescript by Rowse: “‘This protest make’ seems to me a bad inversion. There are good inversions as well as bad ones, but the good ones are uncommon. This seems to me quite bad.”

  I 28–32 variant rigging · · · soothing menace · · · wailing warning · · · approaching · · · heaving: participle endings underlined by Geoffrey Faber in ts4, with “rather a lot of –ing terminations”. TSE marked this and emended “soothing menace” to “menace and caress”. See note to II 1–4.

  I 30 rote: OED n. 6: “Now U.S. The roaring of the sea or surf”, with this line among the citations.

  I 31 wailing warning: “to warn of rocks which lie below”, To the Class of 1905 5.

  I 32 heaving groaner: Hayward’s Queries: “rote? – groaner?? groiner??” TSE to Hayward, 4 Jan 1941: “‘Groaner’. Yes, I was waiting to see what you would make of this. It is the New England word for
a ‘whistling buoy’, which by some arrangement of valves, makes a groaning noise as it rises and falls on the swell. There must be some English equivalent, but that would give the wrong effect. I noted absence from O.E.D. This is a pretty problem too.” Hayward, 7 Jan: “My first reaction to ‘groaner’ was that it was a buoy of some kind. Then O.E.D. shook me and I assumed it must be a type of vessel (though still with a local name) on account of the following words: rounded homewards—which I then took to refer to the creaking, groaning play of the ship’s timbers as, turning the headland, she set a course for home; the springing of timber being a characteristic sea-voice. This is a bit of a problem. At the moment I can only suggest changing the qualifying adjective to one that would, by implication, suggest that ‘groaner’ is a navigational signal and not a vessel. What about ‘warning groaner’? (‘moaning’ would be a good word but for the repetition of the broad ‘o’ sound). The trouble is that ‘heaving’ is too good to lose. But something may occur to you along the line of my suggestion that ‘groaner’ should be explained by its epithet.” TSE explained the word in his parenthetical note at the head of the poem. OED has added “groaner”, with first citation from 1903, then this line.