T. S. Eliot the Poems, Volume 2

by T. S. Eliot

  Again making use of the 18th-century nursery rhyme

  Robin and Richard were two pretty men

  They lay in bed till the clock struck ten

  TSE wrote an impromptu quatrain concerning the two Lords Chancellor Simon and Simmonds, which was recorded by Mary Trevelyan in 1952, in her memoir The Pope of Russell Square, to which the present editors have not been granted access.

  Your cablegram arrived too late

  Your cablegram arrived too late

  And insufficiently addressed

  So you confuse my modest muse

  Who none the less cannot refuse

  5

  Compliance with your kind request

  To greet The Harvard Advocate.

  Telegram to the editor of the Harvard Advocate on the occasion of the magazine’s move to a new home. Printed in George H. Watson’s Mother Advocate Removes from Bow to South Street in Harvard Crimson 20 May 1957, from which this text is taken (and newly lineated).

  He who in ceaseless labours took delight

  He who in ceaseless labours took delight,

  And scarcely ate or slept, by day or night:

  Let this obedient engine as it mows

  Teach him with Grace to enjoy well-earned repose.

  Printed on the menu card for the dinner in W. J. Crawley’s honour, 1 June 1961, and engraved upon a plate for the lawnmower that was his retirement present. Published in The Times 5 Apr 1969; TLS 20 July 2007. (When the printed card from which the plate was engraved was sold at Bloomsbury Book Auctions, 6 Sept 1990, the catalogue erroneously claimed it was for “Mr Lister, the Faber & Faber caretaker”.)

  Monteith: “when W. J. Crawley, our elderly sales director—almost incredibly hardworking, often maddeningly obstinate, nearly always lovable—finally retired, he was presented by the board with a new and rather grand lawn-mower: a devoted gardener, he had particularly asked for it. At lunch, when the purchase was announced, I asked Eliot if he would compose a suitable short verse which could be engraved on a brass plate and be attached to the mower. The following week he produced it.” TSE to W. H. Auden, 22 Oct 1942: “our Sales Manager, Mr. Crawley · · · a very sapient person”.

  The plate on the lawnmower and the menu card for the retirement dinner, 1 June 1961 (Gallup E2m), have no variants. Because the menu card breaks the last line, Monteith printed it as though it were two (“enjoy | Well-earned repose.”) TSE’s transcription in Valerie’s Own Book is headed W. J. C. but has no other variants.

  4 Teach him · · · to enjoy well-earned repose: “Teach us to sit still”, Ash-Wednesday I 39. Grace: Crawley’s wife.

  Dearest Mr. Groucho Marx

  Dearest Mr. Groucho Marx,

  I’m sending a request

  I’d like a signed picture

  You’ll know which one is best

  5

  My esteemed Mr. Marx,

  I am your biggest fan

  So please do not disappoint me

  That would be completely underhand

  With respect, Mr. Marx,

  10

  Your humour has me on the floor

  I’m not that known for laughing

  But your comedy I adore

  So Julius—that’s your real name—

  Please make my day, month, year,

  15

  By sending me a photograph

  And I will give a cheer.

  Oh brother of Chicolini

  Sibling of silent Harpist

  Please use a fountain-pen to sign

  20

  (If a pencil, use the sharpest)

  To put you next to Paul Valéry,

  You’ll be snuggled up to Yeats

  I’d like you as Rufus T. Firefly

  Or perhaps on roller-skates

  25

  Forgive me this lengthy piece

  For several months I have been grappling

  So if you don’t send me a signed photo

  I shall switch my allegiance to Chaplin.

  TSE wrote to Groucho Marx in 1961, requesting a photograph. Disappointed with the picture he received, he asked for one in character, which he had framed for his office. After a correspondence, TSE and Valerie Eliot entertained Groucho and his third wife to dinner in 1964, their only meeting. See The Groucho Letters (1967).

  13 Julius: Groucho disliked his given name, Julius.

  17 Chicolini: the character played by Chico Marx in Duck Soup (1933).

  18 silent Harpist: Harpo Marx played a mute in the Marx Brothers films.

  21–22 Valéry, Yeats: these poets, as well as other friends and Groucho with a cigar, can be seen in photographs of TSE’s office.

  23 Rufus T. Firefly: the character played by Groucho in Duck Soup.

  24 roller-skates: Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx roller-skate through a department store to escape a criminal in The Big Store (1941). The roller-skating figures of Mr. Eliot and the Man in White Spats appear in a drawing by TSE on the back of the jacket of the original unillustrated edition of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

  28 Chaplin: “Charlie Chaplin is not English, or American, but a universal figure, feeding the idealism of hungry millions in Czecho-Slovakia and Peru”, The Romantic Englishman, the Comic Spirit, and the Function of Criticism (1921). For “Charles, the Chaplain”, see letter to Conrad Aiken, 10 Jan 1916, in “Improper Rhymes”.

  NOCTES

  BINANIANÆ

  Certain Voluntary and Satyrical

  Verses and Compliments as were lately

  Exchang’d between some

  of the Choicest Wits of the Age

  LONDON

  Collected with the greatest care

  and now printed without

  castration after the most correct copies

  MCMXXXIX

  Noctes Binanianæ

  1. Title 2. Composition and Contributors’ Pet Names 3. Printing 4. After Distribution

  1. TITLE

  Noctes Binanianæ, printed privately in an edition of 25 copies in summer 1939, contains verses by TSE, John Hayward, Geoffrey Faber and another director of Faber & Faber, Frank Morley. These four dined regularly, with occasional guests, at Hayward’s London flat at 22 Bina Gardens in Kensington (a short walk from TSE’s home at the time).

  The volume was named after Noctes Ambrosianæ, a popular series of 71 imaginary conversations in Ambrose’s Tavern in Edinburgh, which were devised by J. G. Lockhart and written largely by John Wilson. Published first in Blackwood’s Magazine 1822–35, they were subsequently collected. (OED “ambrosial” 1: “Immortal, divine · · · orig. in the Greek mythology: Belonging to or worthy of the gods, as their food, anointing oil · · · etc.” Lockhart and Wilson’s title itself recalled Aulus Gellius’ commonplace book Noctes Atticæ [Attic Nights]).

  The title page alludes to the kind seen in volumes collected by Hayward as an editor of Rochester, such as The Canting Academy · · · with several new Catches and Songs, compos’d by the Choicest Wits of the Age (1673) or Poems on Affairs of State from the time of Oliver Cromwell, to the abdication of K. James the Second. Written by the greatest wits of the age. Viz. Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Rochester, Lord Bu——st, Sir John Denham, Andrew Marvell, Esq; Mr. Milton, Mr. Dryden, Mr. Sprat, Mr. Waller, Mr. Ayloffe, &c. With some miscellany poems by the same: most whereof never before printed. Now carefully examined with the originals, and published without any castration (1697). OED “castrate” 4: “To mutilate (a book, etc.) by removing a sheet or portion of it; esp. to remove obscene or objectionable passages from; to expurgate”, with Boswell on Johnson: “Talking of Rochester’s Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens to castrate for the edition of the poets.”

  In proof, the blocks of type were eccentrically arranged, and the date on the title page read “MDCXXXIX”.

  2. COMPOSITION AND CONTRIBUTORS’ PET NAMES

  Manuscript note by Hayward:

  The following poetical effusions were composed for the most part in the summer and autumn of
the year 1937. The pieces in French, Latin and German belong to the latter part of the following year. The authors were Mr. Geoffrey Faber, Chairman of the publishing house of Faber & Faber Ltd., Mr. T. S. Eliot and Mr. F. V. Morley, partners in the same, & Mr. John Hayward, their friend. The pieces, now printed, circulated among the authors in MS. for many months, until, through the kind offices of Mr. MacKnight Kauffer, the artist, Mr. Eric Gregory, a genial and generous printer, undertook to see them through the press at his own charge. The edition of 25 copies was distributed as follows:

  Copies 1–6. John Hayward, who prepared the copy for the printer.

  7. E. MacKnight Kauffer.

  8. Anne Ridler, who typed the fair copy.

  9–12. T. S. Eliot

  13–16. Geoffrey Faber

  17–20. F. V. Morley

  21–22. Eric Gregory

  23–25. Reserved for the files of the Printers, Lund Humphries, Ltd.

  Helen Gardner: “After Eliot’s return from his visit to America of 1932–3, a group of friends, all directors of Faber and Faber, began to meet regularly at Bina Gardens. The host, John Hayward, was nicknamed Tarantula, being at the centre of the web and having, as all his friends were aware, considerable power of stinging; Eliot was the Elephant, presumably because he ‘never forgot’, though he retained his old nickname of Possum; Faber was the Coot, presumably because of his baldness; and Frank Morley, for reasons I cannot guess at, was the Whale or Leviathan”, Composition FQ 7. Morley had been on a whaling expedition as an observer, and was joint author with J. S. Hodgson of Whaling North and South (1926).

  TSE to Bonamy Dobrée, 29 July 1927: “I am afraid that I cannot accept your Identification with either the Ibex or the Ape. My family tradition is that we are descended from the White Elephant; not the Siamese, but the Indian White Elephant. ‘Eliot’ is merely a corruption of ‘Elephant’.” (Referring to the corruption—perhaps an urban myth?—of the Infanta of Castile into the Elephant and Castle. TSE had signed another letter to Dobrée earlier that day: “I Remain your obliged obt. servt. | T. S. Eliot | or Elephant Castle.”)

  An elephant’s head appears on the bookplate TSE used from his Harvard days until at least 1922, and he used an elephant seal on a letter to Mrs. I. A. Richards, 15 Nov 1935. In his childhood he may have read of the Indian elephant that “In captivity he is very docile and gentle, but sometimes, when provoked, will take a very ample revenge. Of this propensity many anecdotes are told”, J. G. Wood, The Boy’s Own Book of Natural History [1893].

  For the friends’ continuing poetic exchanges, see note to Lines Addressed to Geoffrey Faber Esquire. TSE to Hayward, 13 Dec [1938]: “I fear that there is to be another explosion of poetry. I have received a neatly typed copy of some couplets addressed by the Whale to the Tarantula, but I don’t propose to intervene (in either persona) at the moment.” With this he enclosed Morley’s couplets, The Mark of the Spider is 666 (King’s). Early in the war, Hayward sent Geoffrey Faber A Gratulatory Epistle, beginning “Airborne, courageous COOT” (McCue collection). Morley moved to Connecticut in 1939.

  The present edition reprints TSE’s contributions to the 1939 volume (Gallup B34), with poems by others to which he (nominally) responded. The item numbers follow A. S. G. Edwards’s T. S. Eliot and Friends: “Noctes Binanianae” (1939) in Book Collector Winter 2009 (which lists the then whereabouts of printed copies).

  [1] How to Pick a Possum

  [2] [“An Answer to the Foregoing Poem” by Geoffrey Faber]

  [3] The O’Possum Strikes Back

  [4] The Whale and the Elephant: A Fable

  [10] Ode to a Roman Coot

  [13] [“Nobody knows how I feel about you” by Geoffrey Faber]

  [14] Three Sonnets

  [16] Vers pour la Foulque

  [17] Translation into English of “Verses for the Coot”

  [20] Abschied zur Bina

  Five other items by Faber, two by Hayward and three by Morley are not reprinted in the present edition, although their positions in the volume are marked within the sequence.

  3. PRINTING

  Hayward’s “Copy of Verses by T. S. Eliot sent to me in September, 1937” in the vol. Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses which he had bound up contains: How to Pick a Possum, Geoffrey Faber’s Sonnet [An Answer to the Foregoing Poem], The O’Possum Strikes Back, Ode to a Roman Coot, Three Sonnets, Vers pour la Foulque, Translation: “Verses for the Coot”, Festschriftgeschenck [Abschied zur Bina] and two postcards.

  King’s also has Hayward’s bound tss:

  The Whale and the Elephant

  [Fable XIV – Morley, two copies]

  [Expostulatory Epistle of a Coot – Faber]

  [A Refutation – Morley]

  [Thoughts of a Briton on his Country’s Subjugation to America – Faber]

  [A Fig for a Foolish One or Faber in a Firkin – Hayward]

  [Portion of a Soliloquy – Faber]

  [Nobody knows how I feel about you – Faber]

  [Tarantula tarantulae – Faber]

  [Album Leaflet No. 2 (Revised Edition) – Faber]

  A letter from Hayward to Morley, 15 Nov 1937 (King’s), gave a preliminary list of contents, and TSE added notes as to the whereabouts of the typescripts. Hayward ended: “Could you compare this list with your own and with those of your co-director? When agreement is reached on the canon, Dick [de la Mare] can go ahead with his plan to preserve these rare effusions—not for an age, but for all time!” (Jonson: “He was not of an age, but for all time”, To the memory of my beloved, The Author Mr. William Shakespeare, prefaced to the First Folio, 1623.)

  The title of the volume appears first in a letter from TSE to Hayward, 31 Mar 1937, before a trip to Scotland: “On the eve of my departure for the Northern Kingdom, I employ a short respite to pen these hasty lines by way of valedictory. From the frequentation of my society, and my abundant conversation (it afflicts me to think how often I must have wearied you with my dilatations on this and other topicks) (O noctes Binanianae!!) you will be fully acquainted with my abhorrence of the uncouth manners, the barbarous repasts, and the heady liquours of our northern neighbours.” To Hayward, 19 Nov [1937], concerning a title for the volume:

  Your suggestion is admirable in itself but I wonder … I mean … perhaps there is enough Vapulation of the Coot in the text, and I should like the Title to suggest collaboration between the Coot and others … Besides, the possum should not be too forward … perhaps some such title as originally proposed by me:

  NOCTES BINANIANAE

  Wherein are contained such Voluntary & Satyrical Compliments and Verses as were lately Exchang’d between some of the Choicest [in margin: Younger] Wits and Most Profound Deipnosophists of the AGE

  (Ornament or Emblem of a Coot,

  or other Absurd Bird, or Figure

  in which is tapester’d an Elephant,

  upon whose back capers a Whale, upon

  whose head a Coot with wings extended,

  holding in his mouth a stockfish, and

  above all a Vesperal Spider suspended,

  which spinneth his Web about all.)

  Imprinted for Rchd. de la Mare, His Maiestie’s Printer, dwellinge in Paules Churchyard, at the South west doore of Saint Paules Church, and are there to be had.

  But am I mixing the periods. Anyway, what about the capital point?

  OED “Deipnosophist”: “A master of the art of dining: taken from the title of the Greek work of Athenæus, in which a number of learned men are represented as dining together and discussing subjects which range from the dishes before them to literary criticism and miscellaneous topics of every description.” See Deipnosophistic, a verse sent to Bonamy Dobrée, 29 Sept [1927], in “Improper Rhymes”. For the “Vesperal Spider suspended”, see Translation into English of “Verses for the Coot” and “What will the spider do, | Suspend its operations …?” Gerontion 65–66. From 1564, books from the printing office of Richard Jones were to be had at his shop “at the Southwest door of S
t. Paul’s church”. Printers used similar imprints for two centuries. TSE’s letter suggested, alternatively: “Frognal’s Helicon? A Paradise of …” (Geoffrey Faber lived in Frognal, a district of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden; see note to Ode to a Roman Coot 9. A Paradise of Dainty Devices was published in 1576, England’s Helicon in 1600 and Hayward’s Love’s Helicon in 1940.)

  Hayward thanked Anne Bradby (later Ridler) for typing out Noctes Binanianæ, 1 May 1939 (BL). He wrote to Morley on 14 Aug 1939 to say that “the treasurable little booklets” had arrived, and copies were in the post “under separate cover”.

  4. AFTER DISTRIBUTION

  TSE to Henry Eliot, 14 Oct 1939: “Dear Me! I am somewhat embarrassed by having this pamphlet taken so seriously: it is merely the last flicker of expiring civilisation, a commemoration of the elegant pastimes of gentlemen and scholars. The verses were not, of course, composed with a view to publication; but after the accumulation of a year or two, Hayward arranged with a nice man named Gregory, who has a printing business, to have a few copies printed, as a Festschrift for Faber’s birthday, and in commemoration of pleasant evenings that are past. The company is dispersed. What else is there to say about the verses? They naturally contain a number of private allusions, of little interest or value to posterity. But the name of Madame de Margerie, wife of the First Secretary of the French Embassy, should be kept green.”