T. S. Eliot the Poems, Volume 2
Page 5
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
After Practical Cats, TSE used Old Possum again for a series of plates, in the manner of Edward Lear’s Nonsense Botany (Faber archive). TSE sent these to Geoffrey and Enid Faber, in an envelope of 12 Feb 1940 marked “ORDER YOUR SPRING PLANTS NOW. See Inside”, and another addressed to “Mrs. Faber, | The Herbaceous Border”. The first six spoof botanical plates, drawn by him in ink and with elaborate descriptions, were headed “OLD POSSUM’S BOOK OF ‘Flowers shown to the Children’”, and the last two, drawn and watercoloured by TSE, were of “OLD POSSUM’S ‘CHILDREN SHOWN TO THE FLOWERS’ (including “Plate 1. Possum Pie”).
2. OLD POSSUM’S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS
Old Moore’s Almanac (1700– ), a book of astrological prophecies, was an established annual bestseller. Practical guides, another publishing stalwart, included Audels Handy Book of Practical Electricity (1924), and pet books included A Practical Guide on the Diseases, Care and Treatment of the Angora Cat (1899).
TSE’s Practical may invoke the earliest recorded sense: OED II 5: “That practises art or craft; crafty, scheming, artful. Obs.” with sole example from 1570. TSE’s The Columbiad st. 48 begins “King Bolo’s big black bastard Kween | (That practickle Bacchante)”. See TSE to Tom Faber, 7 May 1931, in headnote to The Practical Cat. To Pound, 12 Feb [1935], declining to start a libel case: “you aint Practical · · · Old Ike Carver of Mosquito Cove was Practical · · · Podesta again you aint Practical.” 22 Dec 1936, referring to Buddhist scriptures: “remember what is stated in the Digha Nikaya: that the Practical Cat (Dirghakarna) has no Theories”.
When the BBC was planning a broadcast of poems by TSE for Christmas 1937, TSE wrote to Ian Cox, 30 Nov: “Very well: I agree with you that it would be best to confine yourselves to cats for the Christmas programme · · · I suggest that the heading had better be Practical Cats, as that term is much more comprehensive than Jellicle · · · I must also demand a fee from the BBC for the reading, and I am likely to ask more for unpublished poems than I should for poems previously published.” (Five poems were broadcast, but in reply to a request from J. R. Ackerley of the Listener, TSE wrote, 13 Dec: “I am sorry to appear ungracious, but I really would prefer that none of the Cat poems should be published until I am able to make a book of them. It seems to me that one by itself looks rather silly, whereas a number together might, I hope, appear to have some reason for existence.”) To Pound, “Childermass 1937”: “Best wishes for the New Year from [signed] TP | Ole Possum & his Performin Practical Cats”.
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
On 30 Oct 1937, TSE sent Geoffrey Faber an immensely elaborate “Provisional Order of Proceedings for Mr. & Mrs. Faber’s 20th Anniversary”, which began and ended with salvos of 20 giant crackers, and included: “9.30am: Arrival of Old Possums Gift: two duralumin wheel chairs, fitted with trafficators etc” and “1.00 LUNCH: Lobster, champagne, cheese (20 yrs. old) and practical jokes.” The crackers were a memory of a boardroom practical joke, which TSE had relayed to Hayward on 19 Sept 1935: “We can confidently recommend the new giant crackers on sale at Hamley’s at prices ranging from eighteen pence to half-a-crown. One of these petards was hoisted at Messrs. Faber & Faber’s Book Committee yesterday, on the occasion of the return of the Chairman from the grouse moors. While the attention of the Committee was distracted, at the tea interval, by the presentation of a large chocolate cake bearing an inscription WELCOME, CHIEF!, the cracker was produced from under the table and successfully fired. It exploded with a loud report, and scattered about the room multi-coloured festoons, some of which draped themselves on the chandelier, others on the head of the Chairman. At this point another novelty, called ‘Snake-in-the-grass’, was introduced: one of them escaped and set fire to the festoons. After the conflagration had been extinguished the business of the committee was resumed, and an enjoyable time was had by all.” Writing to Hayward on 2 Jan 1936, TSE mentioned exploding cigarettes. (The Chairman was “genially tolerant of the practical jokes and horse play with which some of us, in the early days, would occasionally disorganise the meeting”, Geoffrey Faber 1889–1961 17–18.) Thanking Enid Faber, 14 Sept 1938, for a holiday spent in Wales, TSE wrote: “And it is most pleasant to think that we are to meet again for the evening of Monday the 19th and Harold Lloyd, so I hope nothing will go wrong meanwhile, and so I will close.” (Harold Lloyd’s new comedy film was Professor Beware.)
W. H. Auden: “In Eliot the critic, as in Eliot the man, there is a lot, to be sure, of a conscientious church-warden, but there was also a twelve-year-old boy, who likes to surprise over-solemn wigs by offering them explosive cigars, or cushions which fart when sat upon. It is this practical joker who suddenly interrupts the church-warden to remark that Milton or Goethe are no good”, T. S. Eliot, O.M.: A Tribute in Listener 7 Jan 1965.
TSE’s four godchildren were: Tom Faber (b. 1927), Alison Tandy (b. 1930), Susanna Morley (b. 1932) and Adam Roberts (b. 1940); see note to Preface. For TSE’s understanding of his responsibilities, see letter to K. de B. Codrington, 18 Sept 1934.
In 1940, Polly Tandy, wife of the museum curator and broadcaster Geoffrey Tandy, was considering whether to evacuate their children Richard and Alison to America. TSE wrote to her, 3 July 1940 (opening as though a BBC broadcast): “This is Possum speaking · · · A line in haste, to say that if you and Geoffrey should change your minds, I have relatives in America who wish, and others who ought to be made to, take British children. I can’t advise, and I don’t think I ought to take that responsibility anyhow · · · but if you DID decide that America was the best place, I would keep the cables hot telegraphing about it.”
3. COMPOSITION
“Lear and Carroll wrote for children, but for particular friends of theirs. Children like their works, but this is only incidental; our adult enjoyment is what really matters”, Mr. Eliot Sets his Audience Puzzle in Lecture (1933).
Acknowledging his brother’s detective novel The Rumble Murders (1932), TSE wrote, 3 May: “I am quite sure that I could never write a detective story myself; my only possible resource for adding to my income would be to write children’s verses or stories, having had a little success in writing letters to children (and illustrating them of course).”
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
To Virginia Woolf, 16 Aug 1933, after his lecture tour in the US: “I have since my return [from America] been living quietly in the country, playing Patience, observing the habits of finches and wagtails, composing nonsense verse.” This followed the publication of Five-Finger Exercises in January, and may refer to the beginnings of Practical Cats.
To Aurelia Hodgson, 25 Mar 1934, sending the lyric “When I was a lad what had almost no sense” from The Rock (67–68): “I have been working very hard · · · and have been writing no end of verses not poetry for a Paggeant which is to be produced in June · · · When this is done I have a Nonsense Book which I have been working on by fits and starts.” To Parker Tyler, Galleon Press, NY, 5 Apr 1934: “I have literally nothing to show, by which I should care to be judged, that is to say, I have only a few scraps of more or less humorous verse of no interest as poetry.” On 2 Feb 1936 he told his Aunt Susie that he had “a speech and two essays to write, and to prepare my book of nonsense verse”, but sending his Collected Poems 1909–1935 to John Cournos, 8 Apr, he wrote: “As for the nonsense poems, I fear that those are indefinitely postponed.”
The earliest appearance of cats in his writing had been in Fireside No. 4, where a page is devoted to the headline “FAT QUAKER CATS” and a comic drawing of a cat. After their father’s death, TSE wrote to his brother Henry, 29 Feb 1919: “I find that I think more of his own youthful possibilities that never came to anything: and yet with a great deal of satisfaction; his old-fashioned scholarship! his flute-playing, his drawing. Two of the Cats that I have seem to me quite remarkable.”
Before and after the publication of Practical Cats, the crea
tures and these poems were a recurrent topic in TSE’s correspondence with the Tandys. To Polly Tandy, 4 Nov 1934: “So far in my experience there are cheifly 4 kinds of Cat the Old Gumbie Cat the Practical Cat the Porpentine Cat and the Big Bravo Cat; I suspect that yours is a Bravo Cat by the look of things.” 9 Dec 1936: “When a Cat adopts you, and I am not superstitious at all I don’t mean only Black cats there is nothing to be done about it except to put up with it and wait until the wind changes.” (See headnote to The Practical Cat.) To Enid Faber, 16 Aug 1937: “My black cat (Tumblecat) has turned up again: he really belongs next door.” Postcard to Geoffrey Tandy, 2 Aug 1938:
?????I waited for you till 6.20??????
??????????at Gordon’s????????????
??????????and you did not come???
??????????and, for the matter of that
??????What is a Tantamile Cat?????
tp.
For “Tantomile” as a name for a witch’s cat, see Valerie Eliot in 8. APROPOS OF PRACTICAL CATS (below). TSE to Polly Tandy, 12 Sept 1949: “our housekeeper being in the hospital · · · now we have her cat on our hands which is I am sorry to say a Tantamile Cat if ever there was one”.
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
In June 1935, TSE listed among “all I can bother with” of his publications, “Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats (unfinished at this time)”, Harvard College Class of 1910, Seventh Report (1935). The Faber catalogue for Spring 1936 then listed for publication: Mr. Eliot’s Book of Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats as Recited to Him by the Man in White Spats:
Mr. Eliot informs the Publishers that his book of Children’s Verses should be completed by Easter, 1936. If this statement (for which the Publishers accept no responsibility) proves to be true, the book will certainly be published this year with the least possible delay. There is no doubt that Mr. Eliot is writing it; for several of the poems, illustrated by the author, have been in private circulation in the Publishers’ various families for a considerable time, and at least one of them has been recorded on the gramophone. (N.B.—There is only one record in this country, and there is believed to be another in America. Applications for duplicates will be thrown into the wastepaper basket.) Mr. Eliot intends to illustrate the book himself; but it is not yet possible to be sure that reproduction of the illustrations will be within the scope of any existing process. No announcement can, therefore, be made about the price of this book, but every endeavour will be made to keep it within reason.
(Gallup E6b)
The recording was of TSE’s INVITATION TO ALL POLLICLE DOGS & JELLICLE CATS TO COME TO THE BIRTHDAY OF THOMAS FABER from 1931 (see “Other Verses”). It survives on a cylinder at the British Library.
On 6 Mar 1936, TSE sent Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats to Geoffrey Faber, along with a typed memorandum “(Take your time over it)” and (separately) three pencil sketches:
I am more and more doubtful of my ability to write a successful book of this kind, and I had rather find out early that I can’t do it, than waste a lot of time for nothing. And this sort of thing is flatter if it is flat, than serious verse [addition: can be]. Nobody wants to make a fool of himself when he might be better employed.
I append the introductory verses and three rough sketches. I should have to do them much larger to get in any refinement of expression, and naturally I can’t draw difficult things like stools in a hurry. The idea of the volume was to have different poems on appropriate subjects, such as you already know, recited by the Man in White Spats. They would be of course in a variety of metres and stanzas, not that of the narrative which connects them. After this opening there would only be short passages or interludes between the Man in White Spats and myself. At the end they all go up in a balloon, self, Spats, and dogs and cats.
“Up up up past the Russell Hotel,
Up up up to the Heaviside Layer.”
There are several ways in which this might be a failure. The various Poems (how many should there be?) might not be good enough. The matter such as here attached may be not at all amusing: a book simply of collected animal poems might be better. Finally, the contents and general treatment may be too mixed: there might be a part that children wouldn’t like and part that adults wouldn’t like and part that nobody would like. The mise-en-scène may not please. There seem to be many more ways of going wrong than of going right.
The Heaviside layer is an ionized layer in the upper atmosphere able to reflect long radio waves (OED). William Empson: “Their arch of promise the wide Heaviside layer | They rise above a vault into the air”, Doctrinal Point (in Poems, 1935). TSE: “What ambush lies beyond the heather | And behind the Standing Stones? | Beyond the Heaviside Layer | And behind the smiling moon?”, The Family Reunion II iii (Raine 98). When TSE spoke on Yeats at Harvard in March 1933, The Cat and the Moon (about “Black Minnaloushe”) was among the poems he discussed. For “Jellicle Moon” see note to Song of the Jellicles 28.
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
To Enid Faber, 21 Feb 1938: “When I have cleared up these Cats (labouring over two more, but I fear the vein is exhausted) I shall be able to turn my mind to the great Sherlock Holmes play.”
To Christina Morley, 7 Apr 1938: “Miss Evans has plenty to do, because she is typing out my Complete Cats, which will presently be offered to Faber & Faber.”
To Mrs. F. M. McNeille, 31 Jan 1939: “at the present moment I cannot help you by providing you with a text of the poems you mention. I fear that it will be impossible to submit these to the criticism of tutorial classes until they have been published, which I hope may be in the autumn. At the moment, the Pollicle Dogs have been suppressed, and the Jellicle Cats are in the melting pot; and until they have assumed their final shape after this ordeal, I fear that they must remain in seclusion.”
Some of the Possum poems appear to have been written concurrently. The earliest certain indication of each appears below, some from dates of posting. Those with asterisks do not appear in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, but can be found in the present edition in “Uncollected Poems”. See also Cat’s Prologue [Apr?] 1934 in “Other Verses”.
7 Jan 1936 The Naming of Cats to Tom Faber
6 Mar 1936 Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats* to Geoffrey Faber
before 10 Nov 1936 The Old Gumbie Cat to Alison Tandy
20 Nov 1936 The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs* to Polly Tandy
(mentioned)
21 Nov 1936 Growltiger’s Last Stand to Bonamy Dobrée
(mentioned)
6 Jan 1937 The Rum Tum Tugger to Alison Tandy
25 Jan 1937 The Song of the Jellicles to John Hayward
12 Sept 1937 How to Pick a Possum* to Alison Tandy
21 Oct 1937 Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer to Alison Tandy
15 Nov 1937 Old Deuteronomy to Enid Faber & Alison Tandy
15 Nov 1937 The Practical Cat* to Alison Tandy
[uncertain] The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles to Tandy family
[uncertain] Mister Mistoffelees to Tandy family
8 Dec 1937 Macavity: The Mystery Cat to Geoffrey Tandy
(BBC)
8 Dec 1937 Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat to Geoffrey Tandy
8 Dec 1937 The Ad-dressing of Cats to Geoffrey Tandy
6 Feb 1938 Gus: The Theatre Cat to Enid Faber
28 Feb 1938 Bustopher Jones: The Cat about Town to Enid Faber
[uncertain] Billy M’Caw: The Remarkable Parrot* to Tandy family
30 Oct 1944 Cat Morgan Introduces Himself to Mary Trevelyan
(quoted)
In conversation with Donald Hall, Paris Review (1959):
INTERVIEWER: Do you write anything now in the vein of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats or King Bolo?
[Poems II 1–35 · Textual History II 621–41]
ELIOT: Those things do come from time to time! I keep a few notes of such verse, and there are one or two incomplete cats that probably will never be written. There’s one about a
glamour cat. It turned out too sad. This would never do. I can’t make my children weep over a cat who’s gone wrong. She had a very questionable career, did this cat. It wouldn’t do for the audience of my previous volume of cats. I’ve never done any dogs. Of course dogs don’t seem to lend themselves to verse quite so well, collectively, as cats. I may eventually do an enlarged edition of my cats. That’s more likely than another volume. I did add one poem, which was originally done as an advertisement for Faber and Faber [Cat Morgan Introduces Himself]. It seemed to be fairly successful. Oh, yes, one wants to keep one’s hand in, you know, in every type of poem, serious and frivolous and proper and improper. One doesn’t want to lose one’s skill.
Pollicle Dogs was a corruption, in the style of Edward Lear, of “poor little dogs”. Jellicle Cats, a corruption of “dear little cats”. W. S. Gilbert: “White Cat · · · sly ickle · · · White Cat”, The Precocious Baby in Bab Ballads. (In Prairie Schooner Spring 1960, “Felix Clowder” quizzed “Jellicle” as “either a deliberately sly shortening of Evangelical or an accurate rendition of middle-class speech”; in the Review Nov 1962, John Fuller suggested angelical.) TSE addressed letters to Polly Tandy as “Dear Pollicle ma’am” or simply “Dear Pollicle”. At Christmas 1937, he suggested to her a labrador puppy as a possible Christmas present for the children. The epithet came to mean “dog”, as when TSE wrote to Alison Tandy, 20 Dec 1940 about the household where he was lodging for Christmas: “There are also two dogs · · · There is also a small pollicle which is Australian, and another pollicle is expected by post from Devon.” Similarly, “Tantamile” was first a kind of Cat, then (as “Tantomile”) a name for a witch’s cat. “Morgan” may have become a generic name for staff (see headnote to Cat Morgan Introduces Himself). In the letters to Bonamy Dobrée containing Improper Rhymes, “Wux” is a name, a prefix, a version of “worse” and an indeterminate part of speech with indeterminate meaning. See note to East Coker II 41, “grimpen”.