Recalling the lumbering, deferential couplets in Swift’s Mary the Cook-Maid’s Letter to Dr. Sheridan and The Humble Petition of Frances Harris (for which see note to Possum now wishes to explain his silence 16–17, in “Other Verses”).
5 Mousehole: in Cornwall, five miles from Land’s End.
[Poems I 307–308 · Textual History II 615]
LINES
Addressed to Geoffrey Faber Esquire, on his Return from a Voyage to the Bahamas, and the Parts about New Spain
Aug 1943. Geoffrey Faber had sent both TSE and Hayward a seven-page “Epistle” in heroic couplets (King’s), to which each felt obliged to reply. TSE to Hayward [15 Aug]: “I have been cudgelling my brains, as I make no doubt you have also, under greater compulsion and I hope to better purpose, to discover what is the proper acknowledgement (without too great effluxion of energy) of a copy of verses (a carbon copy) addressed to J-hn H-yw-rd Esq. by the Rhyming Squire.” Hayward to TSE, 22 Aug: “Though gratified I was not a little alarmed by ye Chairman’s voluble Pilgrimes. It seemed, to say the least, churlish not to attempt an answer in kind; but the burden weighed heavily on me and I don’t know how I managed as well as I did to turn out 96 lines of doggerel · · · I sent you a copy, for it seems that our efforts are meant to be circulated; but I rather hope that no further demands will be made upon my feeble ability.” TSE to Hayward, 29 Aug: “Your Epistle to Geoffrey Faber Esq. does you no discredit. A much more witty, learned and ingenious riposte than my own, and I fear cost more labour. I have a suspicion, from a merry look in the Chairman’s eye, that this is not the end of it · · · unless the whisky gives out we may expect another elegant pass of pate. He considers your verses more Augustan than his own. I had entertained the notion of an account of the Banquet in the manner of Paradise Lost, with an enumeration of the places of origin of all the guests and all the plats, such as maize from Orinokoo, which with occidental pomp | Panoplied in Quebec, great Winston gnaw’d | With toothless gums etc., but dear me! one hasn’t really time: how is [it] that one ever had time for these frisks, I wonder?” (Hamlet V i: “Cudgel thy brains no more”. The Tempest IV i: “an excellent pass of pate”.) Hayward to TSE, 16 Dec 1943: “Geoffrey has written me another set of jingles which I shall have to acknowledge in kind.”
4 feasts and frolicks and funereal games: Geoffrey Faber’s verses told of his late arrival at a dinner and the danger that this would “o’er the Feast spread the Funereal Pall”. funereal games: athletic competitions held to mark the deaths of Greek heroes.
7 He told of polyphemes, and clashing rocks: “anfractuous rocks · · · (Nausicaa and Polypheme)”, Sweeney Erect 3, 10. polyphemes: OED “polypheme”: “Name of a Cyclops or one-eyed giant in Homer’s Odyssey”. clashing rocks: the Symplegades, at the entrance to the Bosphorus.
8 darning and un-darning: for “unweave, unwind, unravel” and Ulysses’ wife Penelope, see note to The Dry Salvages I 35–41. To Enid Faber, 17 May 1943: “I look forward, as do you, to the return of Ulysses.”
12 ten years: length of the Trojan War.
13 FABRICIUS: Roman consul and censor, admired for austerity, high principle and incorruptibility. In his verses Faber referred to himself as “thy Fabius”. See letter to Hayward, 8 Feb 1940, quoted in note to Clerihews II (in “Other Verses”).
16 Which of the three could draw the longest bow: only Ulysses could draw his unique bow, and it was by this that Penelope recognised him. OED “bow” n.1 4c: “to draw the longbow: to make exaggerated statements”, with Byron: “At speaking truth perhaps they are less clever, | But draw the long bow better now than ever”, Don Juan XVI i. The rhyme of “avow · · · bow” invites a theatrical comparison.
Morgan Tries Again
Date unknown, but after Mar 1944, when Morgan joined the strength at Faber & Faber. See headnote to Cat Morgan Introduces Himself.
12–13 Miss ’Ile · · · Miss Swan: as telephonist at Faber, Ethel Swan was renowned for her knowledge of the firm’s workings. TSE to his secretary, 2 Aug 1933: “If there should be anything really urgent · · · put the call through yourself as there is no need for Miss Swan to be aware of my movements at present.” A note on the typescript of this poem, probably added years later, reads: “The devoted receptionist for many years at Faber & Faber, 24 Russell Square, London, who welcomed me always on visits to the publishing house. Emily Hale”.
16 a kipper a line: OED “penny-a-line”: “to write at a penny a line”, from 1849.
[Poems I 308–309 · Textual History II 615–16]
Montpelier Row
Date: Feb 1947.
Published with an Editor’s Note by Joe Griffiths, Walter de la Mare Society Magazine July 2002, then TLS 16 Aug 2002. The notes below draw upon Griffiths.
Although this poem was published in 2002 as independent of TSE’s To Walter de la Mare (and so appears independently here), the date indicates some relation between Montpelier Row and the published tribute. Since there is no evidence that de la Mare received Montpelier Row directly from TSE, it may have been a first venture, sent either to W. R. Bett (so subsequently reaching de la Mare?) or to one of TSE’s friendly advisers such as Hayward or Dobrée. If so, the author’s notes were probably not intended for print but for discussion, as suggested by the question “Stream is weak, but what can you do with Thames?” Hayward had heard such a question before, when TSE sent his clerihew “Mr. John Hayward”, 8 Feb 1940: “I could not do anything better · · · But what can you do with a name like that?” (see Clerihews II in “Other Verses”).
The observation that “a series of sonnets may ensue” anticipates the sonnets TSE drafted before To Walter de la Mare reached its final form (see Textual History).
Walter de la Mare lived at South End House, Montpelier Row, Twickenham, with a view of Marble Hill Park. TSE went to tea there, along with Owen Barfield, on 7 May 1946. See To Walter de la Mare and headnote.
1 delicate: “the delicate, invisible web you wove”, To Walter de la Mare 31.
1–4 delicate · · · tea and porcelain · · · window: “Sit by a window drinking tea · · · translucent porcelain”, Mandarins 2 16.
2–4 tea · · · initiate · · · against the window pane: “hibernate · · · across the window panes · · · and tea”, Interlude in London 1–3.
7, 10 the old enchanter · · · make real the dream: de la Mare: “And all the enchanted realm of dream”, Sleep. De la Mare was the author of A Song of Enchantment and The Enchanted Hill.
8 marmoset: “the scampering marmoset”, Whispers of Immortality 22.
14 there drifts the visible swan: Yeats: “Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood”, Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931 48, in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933).
Notes 1 both backwards and forwards: Empson had written that according as lines 11 and 12 of Whispers of Immortality “go forwards or backwards, there are two versions of the syntax · · · Of course, you may say the lines are carefully punctuated, so that the grammar can only be taken one way, but in each case it is the less obvious grammar which is insisted on by the punctuation”, Seven Types of Ambiguity ch. II.
Notes 5 Hanoverian: Alexander Pope and Lord Bathurst were among those who helped Henrietta Howard to plan the gardens at Marble Hill.
[Poem I 309–10 · Textual History II 616]
Notes 9 habits of the amphisbaena: in the epigraph to The Amphisbæna: or The Limits of Human Knowledge, Housman quotes “‘Amphisbæna: a serpent supposed to have two heads, and by consequence to move with either end foremost’—JOHNSON” (revision of the Dictionary by H. J. Todd, 1818). Housman’s poem was published anonymously in the University College London Union Magazine June 1906, then in Three Poems: The Parallelogram The Amphisbaena The Crocodile, privately printed at UCL (1935). TSE to Janet Adam Smith, 24 Feb 1947: “It was very kind of you to send the ‘Parallelogram’ poem, but how very odd that the Librarian did not know that Housman was the author · · · I cannot now remember who it was who showed me the copy of t
he periodical with the poem in it. Perhaps one day it will come to me in a flash. Meanwhile I hope the Librarian will unearth the ‘Amphisbaena’ for you.” habits of ichneumon: in Conan Doyle’s story The Crooked Man, Teddy the ichneumon has to be retrieved, having run up the curtain. TSE to Sally Cobden-Sanderson, 13 Dec 1927: “Mongeese (Ichneumons) are very Usefull (see Oxford Dictionary) for they eat Crocodiles’ Eggs.”
Let quacks, empirics, dolts debate
Published in Gala Day London (1953), accompanying one of the photographs by Izis Bidermanas, showing a cat on a park bench in Clarence Gardens, Regent’s Park.
Mrs. M. Harari of the Harvill Press wrote to TSE in Feb 1952, enclosing photographs and asking him to choose one and return the others. TSE, 7 Mar: “As the photographs are not numbered or identified in any way, I can only say that a cat is sitting on a bench in a square. I will keep this in the hope of finding a few appropriate words, but that is a great difficulty.”
1–2 Let quacks, empirics, dolts debate · · · State: Pope: “For Forms of Government let fools contest”, An Essay on Man III 303. Johnson: “While Ladies interpose, and Slaves debate”, The Vanity of Human Wishes 214. Browning: “The quack, the cheat, the liar · · · they are hooting the empiric, | The ignorant and incapable fool”, Paracelsus V 142–49. quacks: OED n.1 1: “An ignorant pretender to medical or surgical skill; one who boasts to have a knowledge of wonderful remedies; an empiric”. (TSE: “Henry VIII found out that monks were quacks”, A Fable for Feasters 2.) n.2: “The harsh cry characteristic of a duck · · · humorously, A duck.” empirics: OED 1: “A member of the sect among ancient physicians · · · who · · · drew their rules of practice entirely from experience, to the exclusion of philosophical theory.” 2. “An untrained practitioner in physic or surgery; a quack.” 2b: “transf. A pretender, impostor, charlatan.” For ancient physicians, see note to Whispers of Immortality 19–20.
[Poems I 310–11 · Textual History II 616]
4 Cultural Congress: the Congress for Cultural Freedom was founded in 1950. “World conferences and congresses, European and local conferences and congresses, follow each other in endless succession: the public thirst for words about poetry, and for words from poets about almost anything—in contrast to its thirst for poetry itself—seems insatiable. In short, the compulsions and solicitations to a poet to write about poetry, and to talk about poetry, instead of writing poetry, begin early in life and continue to the end”, TSE’s Introduction to The Art of Poetry by Paul Valéry (1958).
5 Contemplative: The Cloud of Unknowing ch. 8: “there be two manner of lives in Holy Church · · · Active is the lower, and contemplative is the higher · · · although they differ in part, yet neither of them may be had fully without some part of the other. Because that part that is the higher part of active life, that same part is the lower part of contemplative life. So that a man may not be fully active, except he be in part contemplative; nor yet fully contemplative · · · except he be in part active”. TSE scored the central part of this passage.
7–8 The Sage, disposed to sit and stare | With a vacant mind in a vacant square: W. H. Davies: “What is this life if, full of care, | We have no time to stand and stare?” Leisure. (Although Davies was not a “Faber poet”, the firm published his Moss and Feather as an Ariel Poem in 1928, and Common Joys and Other Poems as a Sesame Book in 1941.) TSE: “One sits delaying in the vacant square | Forced to endure the blind inconscient stare”, First Debate between the Body and Soul 9–10. To John Hayward, 12 July 1943: “I have walked about · · · and, apart from reading Coupland’s report on India, and the Lives of the Poets, have enjoyed vacancy of mind.” Sage: “If Time and Space, as Sages say”, A Lyric 1.
Inscriptions to Sir Geoffrey Faber on the occasion of his knighthood
The two “Inscriptions to Sir Geoffrey Faber on the occasion of his knighthood” (as Hayward phrased the half-title page which he bound with the drafts) were offered in 1954 as alternatives for a tribute to be engraved upon a commemorative glass. Beneath them on the first draft: “If the Second Attempt is preferred, and if it is too much for the Engraver, I would will attempt to shorten it. If neither is Acceptable, the Bard* will try Again. T.S.E. [note: Laureate of Russell Square.]” Then on another leaf: “P.S. In case of Doubt, or anything like Doubt, I would humbly suggest that the shorter set of Verses (or some lines to the same number) be inscribed upon the Glass; and that the longer set of Verses (for it impossible to do justice to such Merit in such a little space) should be Indicted upon fair paper of the most excellent quality, by one of our major Scribes (such as Bernard [Berthold] Wolpe) to be presented to the Chairman, and forcibly rehearsed in his presence by the Bard, on the Occasion of the Presentation of the Engraved Bathroom Glass. T. S. E.” (“Bathroom Glass” was probably not a misapprehension but comic deprecation. Mary Trevelyan had given TSE an antique glass goblet for his birthday.)
The shorter verse was engraved by Laurence Whistler on a Georgian rummer presented to Sir Geoffrey by the Faber directors, and was published in the introduction of Whistler’s Engraved Glass 1952–1958 (1959), while the longer was declaimed by Charles Monteith “at a dinner given by Richard de la Mare and his wife, at Much Hadham Hall, Hertfordshire, to all the Directors and their wives, on the return of Sir Geoffrey and Lady Faber from their visit to South Africa, which coincided exactly with the knighthood” (Peter du Sautoy to Donald Gallup, 22 Mar 1961; Faber archive).
[Poems I 311–13 · Textual History II 616–17]
TSE to Sir Geoffrey, 5 June 1954: “If my verses satisfied, as they seemed to do, the desire of those whose affection and content, as well as my own, they were designed to express, and if they gave pleasure to the recipient, as I hoped they might do, then with your letter I am more than repaid. I think that the only proper subscription, however, is that of ANON., to indicate the collective rather than individual inspiration; and the artist has gone beyond my intention if he incised my initials beneath those on the beaker. I regret the presence of one appalling blemish in each set of verses: had I been allowed a month, instead of a weekend, in which to compose them, these faults would have been spotted and removed.” (In the first, perhaps the ambiguity of subject and object, 5–6. In the second, perhaps the rhythm of “Eximious”, 9.)
AMAZ’D astronomers did late descry
1–2 AMAZ’D astronomers · · · A new great luminary in the sky: Keats: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies | When a new planet swims into his ken”, On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer 9–10.
3] Attrib. Alfred Austin: “Across the wires the electric message came | ‘He is no better, he is much the same’”, On the Illness of the Prince of Wales, Afterwards Edward VII (see Possum now wishes to explain his silence 17).
5 “Sir Geoffrey let it be”: Pope: “Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night: | God said, Let Newton be! and all was light”, Epitaph. Intended for Sir Isaac Newton, In Westminster-Abbey.
VERSES
To Honour and Magnify Sir Geoffrey Faber Kt.
Title Sir Geoffrey Faber Kt.: see note to Coriolan II. Difficulties of a Statesman 3–4, “Knights of the British Empire”. Feodaries: OED 1: “One who holds lands of an overlord on condition of homage”. 2: “A subject, dependant, retainer, servant.” 4: obs. “A confederate.”
1–2 A Man ſo various that he ſeem’d to be | A ſcore of Crichtons in epitome: Dryden: “A man so various that he seem’d to be | Not one, but all Mankinds Epitome”, Absalom and Achitophel 545–46, quoted in John Dryden (1930). Monteith refers to VERSES To Honour and Magnify Sir Geoffrey Faber Kt. as “an elegant Dryden pastiche”.
2 Crichtons: the Scottish prodigy James Crichton (1560–82, pronounced Cryton) was described in John Johnson’s Heroes Scoti (1603) as “omnibus in studiis admirabilis” and became known as “the Admirable Crichton”. He was the subject of Sir Thomas Urquhart’s The Discovery of a most Exquisite Jewel (1652). Though not historically related, J. M. Barrie’s play The Admirable Crichton (1902) popularised t
he soubriquet. TSE to Philippa Whibley, 3 July 1930, proposing an editor for a ms of Urquhart’s epigrams: “Hamish Miles occurs to me immediately · · · he edited or at least wrote an excellent introduction to Urquhart’s Admirable Crichton, which was published by the Pleiad Press” (1927).
[Poems I 312–13 · Textual History II 617]
4 Cunning: OED 2a: “Possessing practical knowledge or skill; able, skilful, expert, dextrous, clever. (Formerly the prevailing sense; now only a literary archaism.)” TSE: “cunning with dice”, Mr. Mistoffelees 28.
4 footnote St. Jameſ’s: the monarch’s diplomatic court. Old Bailey: the Central Criminal Court. Having won the Eldon Law Scholarship, Faber was called to the Bar in 1921, though he never practised.
4 footnote variant Buck House: knowing slang for Buckingham Palace (formerly Buckingham House).
6, 8, 10 Country Squire · · · burſar · · · Compost-land to till: Faber had been Estates Bursar of All Souls College, Oxford. TSE: “It has struck me that his knowledge of farm administration gained as Estates Bursar may have stood him in good stead when, as a country squire, he turned his attention to the breeding of pedigree cattle”, Geoffrey Faber 1889–1961 15–16.
7–8 And, in the Space of one revolving Moon, | As ſcholar, poet, burſar and patroon: “But, in the course of one revolving Moon, | Was Chymist, Fidler, States-Man, and Buffoon”, Absalom and Achitophel 549–50.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 185
