by T. S. Eliot
On 3 Dec 1959, Alie Rehnquist of Bonnier Litterära Magasin, Stockholm, wrote to John Hayward enclosing “a small piece of light-verse purporting to be written by Mr Eliot”, beginning “Old king Bolo’s big black queen | who’s bum was big as a soup tureen”.
A. David Moody wrote that in autumn 1988, together with the leaves at the Beinecke, he saw “a small black hard-covered notebook, containing a fair copy of the full King Bolo or Colombo epic, written in a very neat small hand, together with a considerable number of other similar verses. I should think that it was this fair copy, rather than the miscellaneous drafts and fragments, which EP [Pound] referred to as ‘his earlier EPOS on King Bolo.’ In 1994 Donald Gallup told me the notebook was no longer in the Beinecke Pound archive”, Ezra Pound: Poet I: The Young Genius (2007) 471.
The present composite text of The Columbiad is given without variants, but examples can be seen by comparing st. 30 with st. 46, and comparing st. 19–20 with the versions later sent to Bonamy Dobrée (15 Aug 1927), shown above (and in Letters 3).
The Columbiad
Let a tucket be sounded on the hautboys. Enter the king and queen.
(st. 1)
Columbo he lived over in Spain
Where doctors are not many
The only doctor in his town
Was a bastard jew named Benny
To Benny then Columbo went
With countenance so placid
And Benny filled Columbo’s prick
With Muriatic Acid.
(st. 2)
One day the king queen of Spain
They gave a royal banquet
Columbo having passed away
Was brought in on a blanket
The queen she took an oyster fork
And pricked Columbo’s navel
Columbo hoisted up his ass
And shat upon the table.
(st. 3)
Columbo and his merry men
They set sail from Genoa
Queen Isabella was aboard
That famous Spanish whore.
(st. 4)
Columbo and his mariners
They were a merry chorus
One Sunday evening after tea
They went to storm a whore house.
As they were scrambling up the steps
Molto vivace > Twas then Columbo his got
A great big whore from the seventh story window
She floored him with a pisspot.
(st. 5)
The cabin boy they had aboard
His name was Orlandino
A child of upright character
But his language was obscene-o.
“Fuck Spiders” was his chief remark
In accents mild and dulcet —
They asked him what there was for lunch
And he simply answered “Bullshit.”
(st. 6)
King Bolo’s swarthy bodyguard
Were called the Jersey Lilies
A bold and hardy set of blacks
Undaunted by syphilis.
They wore the national uniform
Of a garland of verbenas
And a pair of great big hairy balls
And a big black knotty penis.
(st. 7)
King Bolo’s swarthy bodyguard
They numbered three and thirty
An innocent and playful lot
But most disgusting dirty.
st. 5 “Fuck Spiders” was his chief remark: “syphilitic spider”, He said: this universe is very clever 6 (see note).
st. 6 swarthy · · · hardy: the two versions in Valerie’s Own Book both read “royal · · · bestial”. The first of them was published in The Faber Book of Blue Verse. Jersey Lilies: Lillie Langtry, actress and mistress of Edward VII, was known as Jersey Lily (having been born on the island). bold: March Hare read “wild” in error. Undaunted by syphilis: Henry Ware Eliot (TSE’s father) to Thomas Lamb Eliot (TSE’s uncle), 7 Mar 1914: “I hope that a cure for Syphilis will never be discovered. It is God’s punishment for nastiness. Take it away and there will be more nastiness, and it will be necessary to emasculate our children to keep them clean.” hairy balls: Valerie’s Own Book 79 reads “testacles”.
5
And Bolo lay down in the shade
His royal breast uncovering
They mounted in a banyan tree
And shat upon their sovereign.
(st. 8)
One day Columbo and his men
They took and went ashore
Columbo sniffed around the air
And muttered “I smell whore”
And ere they’d taken twenty steps
Among the Cuban jungles
They found King Bolo his queen
A-sitting on their bungholes.
(st.9)
She put the gunner to the bad
The first mate, cook, and bo’sun,
But when she saw Columbos balls
She jumped into the ocean—
(st. 10)
One Sunday morning out at sea
The vessel passed Gibraltar
Columbo sat upon the poop§
A-reading in the psalter.
st. 7 And Bolo lay: March Hare reads “King Bolo lay”, but just as “lay” was written over “sat”, so “And” was written over “King”. They mounted in a banyan tree | And shat upon their sovereign: Swift: the Yahoos “leaped up into the Tree, from whence they began to discharge their Excrements on my Head”, Gulliver’s Travels bk. IV, ch. I. TSE: “Under the · · · banyan”, Sweeney Agonistes: Fragment of an Agon 63.
st. 8 bungholes: recurrent in Urquhart’s Rabelais. TSE on Tudor translations: “If comparison could be made at all, I should single out, after the Bible, Florio’s Montaigne, Holland’s translation of another work of Plutarch, the Moralia, and Sir Thomas Urquhart’s Rabelais, The Tudor Translators (1929).
st. 9 She put the gunner to the bad: (emending March Hare). Partridge “bad, go to the”: “To be ruined; become depraved · · · From ca. 1860”. Chambers “bad: have someone to the bad”: “[1900s] to put someone at a disadvantage”.
st. 10 poop: OED n1: “The aftermost part of a ship” (for Shakespeare’s usage, see note to The Waste Land [III] 279). OED n2 2: “slang (orig. children’s). An act of breaking wind or of defecation; faeces.” Partridge dates this, as a verb, “(? late) C.19–20”
The bosuns wife came up on deck
With a bucket full of cowshit
Columbo grabbed her round the neck
And raped her on the bowsprit.
(st. 11)
Now when they were three weeks at sea
Columbo he grew rooty
He took his cock in both his hands
And swore it was a beauty.
The cabin boy appeared on deck
And scampered up the mast-o
Columbo grasped him by the balls
And buggered him in the ass-o.
(st. 12)
One day Columbo and the queen
They fell into a quarrel
Columbo showed his disrespect
By farting in a barrel.
The queen she called him horse’s ass
And “dirty Spanish loafer”
They terminated the affair
By fucking on the sofa.
(st. 13)
Before another day had passed
Columbo he fell sick-o
He filled the pump with argyrol
And rammed it up his prick-o.
And when they touched Cadiz he cried
(And let down both his anchors):
“We’ll see if there’s a doctor here
Can cure the whistling chancres.”
st. 13 argyrol: antiseptic introduced in the US 1901 and used particularly to treat gonorrhea. Cadiz · · · chancres: Byron on escaping cannibalism on board: “he saved himself · · · his saving clause, | Was a small present made to him at Cadiz, | By general subscription of the ladies”, Don Juan II lxxxi. The voyages of Chr
istopher Columbus, two of which set out from Cadiz, are believed to have brought syphilis to Europe in the 1490s. whistling: OED “whistle” 11: “To smell unpleasantly or strongly. slang. rare”, citing only Auden and Isherwood, The Dog Beneath the Skin II v: “Cor! I don’t ’alf whistle!” (Perhaps the derivation also of “Now whistleprick! Columbo cried”.)
(st. 14)
Columbo and his merry men
They went to storm a castle
A bullet came along the road
And up Columbo’s asshole.
Columbo grew so angry then
He nearly shit his breeches.
“Come on my merry men,” he cried
“We’ll kill the sons of bitches.”
(st. 15)
“Avast my men” Columbo cried
In accents mild and dulcet
“The cargo that we have aboard
Is forty tons of bullshit.”
The merry men set up a cheer
On hearing this reparty.
And the band struck up “The Whore House Ball”
In accents deep and farty.
(st. 16)
On Sunday morning after prayers
They took their recreation
The crew assembled on the deck
And practiced masturbation.
Columbo being full of rum
He fell down in a stupor.
They turned his asshole S.S.W.
And he cried “I’ll die a pooper!”
st. 15 In accents mild: Carroll: “His accents mild took up the tale”, Through the Looking-Glass ch. VIII, the White Knight’s song. The Whore House Ball: “And come to the Whore House Ball!”, refrain of Ballade pour la grosse Lulu. “at the undertakers’ ball”, Opera 17. “Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball · · · saving themselves to be right | For the Jellicle Moon and the Jellicle Ball”, The Song of the Jellicles 4, 35–36.
st. 16 practiced masturbation: to Hayward, 2 Apr 1936: “I presume that your reference to the organ is an allusion to that Gilbertian character, Master Bates, who practised every evening upon that intrument.” die a pooper: more usually, a pauper. Martin Tupper: “we count him happy who did not die a pauper”, The Crock of Gold ch. I. Variant readings of the last line were “And he let a noble pooper” and “And he fired off a pooper.”
(st. 17)
Among the heroes of the fleet
Was a pimp named Buck McManus
Who had the entertaining trick
Of whistling through his anus.
(st. 18)
One day King Bolo from the shore
Began to cheer and chortle.
He cried “I see Columbo’s ass
A shitting through a porthole.”
His big black queen set up a shout
And all his swarthy vassals
And the band struck up the national hymn
Of “Hairy Balls and Ass-Holes”.
(st. 19)
The flagship of Columbo’s Fleet
Was named the “Virgin Mary”
An able vessel fully manned
With sailors short and hairy.
The other ships came on behind
The “Holy Ghost” and “Jesus”
And people on the shore remarked
An odour as of cheeses.
(st. 20)
The cook who served them pork and beans
Was known as Careless Cora.
A dame of pure Australian blood
With a tincture of Angora.
She wore a sweater short and red
Which closely did her shape fit
And the hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe ape shit.
(st. 21)
One day the king queen of Spain
They gave a royal dinner
To Chris Columbo of Genoa
That famous old prickskinner.
They sat around the groaning board
On cushions, (trimmed with tassels)
the queen served up a steaming dish
Of buttered-hot-apes’-assholes.
(st. 22)
One day the chaplain came aboard
With a bunch of big verbenas.
Columbo sat upon the hatch
A rubbing of his penis.
The bosuns wife sat on the rail
A eating jam and crackers.
The mate was in the bathtub and
The cook was in the backhouse.
(st. 23)
Columbo thought that he would take
A safeguard and precaution.
So to a medium he went
For telling of his fortune.
The medium was so very wise
It really was a miracle.
She gaze went into a trance and cried
“I see your balls are spherical.”
(st. 24)
The cabin boy they had aboard
His name was Orlandino,
A child of manners most refined
Though his language was obscene-o.
His prick was 13 inches long
And wound around with marlin.
Columbo sketched his character
When he called him “Whorehouse Darling.”
st. 22 The bosuns wife · · · bathtub: “The queen was in the parlour, | Eating bread and honey, | The maid was in the garden”, Sing a song of sixpence, nursery rhyme, with many obscene variations (Richard Luckett, personal communication). backhouse: U.S. a privy (Webster 1847). The rhyme “crackers · · · backhouse” may exploit the propensity to reduce the suffix as in malt-house (where OED gives both pronunciations). Similarly with “bitters · · · shit-house”, st. 30.
st. 23 The medium was so very wise · · · She: “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante · · · Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe”, The Waste Land [I] 43–45.
(st. 25)
One day Columbo slapped his thigh
And said “I feel like frigging!”
He chased the chaplain round the deck
And up among the rigging.
The chaplain he that good old man
Had no one to protect him.
Columbo grasped him by the balls
And buggered him (in the rectum).
(st. 26)
Now whistleprick! Columbo cried
Regard the tranquil waters:
The sea is calm, the sea is still,
Lets go and fuck a tortoise.
The beast was caught, the beast was fucked,
And christened (name of Jumbo);
And the merry men set up a cheer
For their captain, bold Columbo.
(st. 27)
King Bolo and his big black queen
Those two prodigious bastards,
They swarmed aboard Columbo’s ship
In a rattling fire of assturds—
They sat around upon the deck
On cushions trimmed with tassels
And the first word that the monarch spake
Was “Let us talk of assholes”.
(st. 28)
The hottest sailor in the fleet
Was Bill from Barcelona.
For coons his passion was so marked
That they called him Desdemona.
st. 27 swarmed aboard · · · In a rattling fire of assturds: “With a frightful burst of fireworks the Chinks they swarmed aboard”, Growltiger’s Last Stand 42. This stanxo’s “swarmed” is an emendation of “came”, which is the reading of the version on leaf E (v).
st. 27–28 And the first word that the monarch spake | Was “Let us talk of assholes”. | | The hottest sailor in the fleet: Lewis Carroll: “To talk of many things: | Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— | Of cabbages—and kings— | And why the sea is boiling hot”, The Walrus and the Carpenter.
Though coarsened by experience
His soul was not embittered.
He looked the whole world in the face—
A fucked up blueballed shittard.
(st. 29)
&nb
sp; Now when the KING and QUEEN of Spain
Were filling up their glasses
In burst Columbo his crew
Of brawny horses asses.
He introduced the queen all round
To all his royal navy
And punctuated his address
By spitting in the gravy.
(st. 30)
Now bugger my ear! the bosun said
Now where does all my rum go?
My reason leads me to suspect
That great big bitch Columbo.
Columbo sat upon the hatch
Consuming orange bitters
He took the bosun by the drawers
And rammed him down the shit-house.
(st. 31)
King Bolo’s big black bastard queen
She was extremely lecherous.
She kissed the chaplain on the ear
In fashion most impetuous.
The chaplain he that good old man
Was reading out of Pascal.
He skipped so quickly round the mast
He buggered himself (in the asshole).
