by T. S. Eliot
Notes on the Waste Land 64 (typed slip with blue ink, adopted 1963)
Notes on the Waste Land 92 (pencil adopted CP 1959, and later pencil, adopted 1963)
Notes on the Waste Land 210 (blue ink, adopted 1963)
Notes on the Waste Land 218 (pencil, adopted CP 1959; ballpoint, adopted 1963 and blue ink, adopted 1963 but with new misspelling 1963)
Notes on the Waste Land 357 (blue ink, confirmed in pencil, adopted CP 1959)
Notes on the Waste Land 411 (typed slip with blue ink emending Dante, partially adopted 1963; ballpoint, adopted 1963)
Notes on the Waste Land 427 (typed slip with blue ink, adopted 1963)
Ash-Wednesday V 8 (pencil and ballpoint, adopted CP 1961)
Journey of the Magi 22 and 24 (later pencil, adopted 1963)
Sweeney Agonistes: Fragment of an Agon 97 speaker name (pencil, adopted CP 1959)
Five-Finger Exercises V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg 2 noting broken type (pencil)
Landscapes V. Cape Ann 12 ^ 13] line space (pencil, adopted 1963)
Lines for an Old Man 13 ^ 14] line space (pencil, adopted 1963)
Other instructions written by David Bland in the volume concern the taking in of The Cultivation of Christmas Trees and Four Quartets (the pages of Burnt Norton being paperclipped together in accordance with his note: “Here take in The Four Quartets (set from file copy herewith, and page as rough dummy herewith)”.
5. THE MARCH HARE NOTEBOOK AND ACCOMPANYING LEAVES
Apart from juvenilia and the doggerel letter Dear Charlotte, | Hoping you are better (“Other Verses”), the earliest poetic manuscripts by TSE to survive are those in the March Hare Notebook and its accompanying leaves. They comprise
1) one of the seven poems printed in the Harvard Advocate: Humouresque (“Uncollected Poems”)
2) seven of the twelve poems in Prufrock and Other Observations, plus Prufrock’s Pervigilium, a 32-line addition to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (see Textual History, after 69)
3) eleven poems from Ara Vos Prec and Poems (1920), one of which, Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”), was published only in Ara Vos Prec and never collected
4) thirty-five poems published in Inventions of the March Hare (1996), which in the present edition appear in “Uncollected Poems”.
In order of publication in their respective volumes, the poems are:
Notebook Laid-in Leaves Loose Leaves
Prufrock and Other Observations
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Portrait of a Lady
Preludes (I–III)
Morning at the Window
Conversation Galante
Preludes (IV)
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Mr. Apollinax
Ara Vos Prec / Poems (1920)
(Ordered as in Poems (1920) and later editions)
Gerontion
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
Sweeney Erect
A Cooking Egg
Mélange Adultère de Tout
Lune de Miel
Dans le Restaurant
Whispers of Immortality
Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”) Ara Vos Prec only)
Poems Written in Early Youth
Humouresque (Published in Harvard Advocate then privately printed in Undergraduate Poems)
Inventions of the March Hare
Convictions (Curtain Raiser)
First Caprice in North Cambridge
Fourth Caprice in Montparnasse
Second Caprice in North Cambridge
Interlude in London
Opera
Silence
Mandarins
Easter: Sensations of April I
Goldfish (Essence of Summer Magazines)
Suite Clownesque
[Prufrock’s Pervigilium]
Entretien dans un parc
Interlude: in a Bar
Afternoon
Suppressed Complex
Easter: Sensations of April II
Paysage Triste
In the Department Store
The Little Passion: From “An Agony in the Garret”
Introspection
To Helen
The Burnt Dancer
First Debate between the Body and Soul
Bacchus and Ariadne: 2nd Debate between the Body and Soul
The smoke that gathers blue and sinks
He said: this universe is very clever
Inside the gloom
Oh little voices of the throats of men
The Love Song of St. Sebastian
Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think?
Hidden under the heron’s wing
O lord, have patience
Airs of Palestine, No. 2
Petit Epître
Tristan Corbière
The Engine
plus copies by TSE of two of the Rondels pour après from Tristan Corbière’s Les Amours jaunes, written on versos of unnumbered leaves and upside-down in relation to the front of the volume (see headnote to Tristan Corbière)
plus two further Rondels by Corbière (see headnote to Tristan Corbière)
plus typescript of Autour d’une Traduction d’Euripide (1916), an unpublished review in French
Between 1968 and 1996, leaves excised from the Notebook came to light among the Ezra Pound papers (Beinecke). In the catalogue of an exhibition in honour of Pound, Donald Gallup explained that “On various occasions, over many years, Ezra Pound expressed his admiration for a series of vigorously scatological poems that Eliot had begun while at Harvard, dealing with two redoubtable characters, King Bolo and his Queen”, and that when TSE sold the Notebook to Quinn, “he took the precaution of excising those leaves containing parts of the Bolo series. He seems to have given them, along with scraps of other versions · · · to Pound” (Gallup 1976, item 69). For these, see “Improper Rhymes”.
The quarter-leather Notebook was bought by TSE in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and in Gallup’s judgment TSE used it “beginning after January and before April 1910” (although TSE’s own account puts it slightly earlier). Blue ink, black ink and pencil were used, the blue ink preceding the black. A detailed bibliographical description appeared in Gallup 1968:
Originally it must have contained 72 leaves of ruled white paper, of which 12 have been excised, 10 leaving traces of stubs. Eight leaves contain manuscript on rectos only, two on versos only, 22 on both rectos and versos, and 28 are blank. The leaves or pages actually written upon (with the exception of the last two) are numbered from 1 to 52, possibly by T. S. Eliot at a later date.
(As in March Hare, the numbering, 1–52, is followed in the present edition.) A manuscript endpaper to the Notebook with the title INVENTIONS | OF THE | MARCH HARE was reproduced as the half-title page of the edition of 1996. For TSE’s description of the Notebook, its sale to John Quinn along with the gift of the drafts of The Waste Land, and the story of their disappearance and rediscovery, see headnote to The Waste Land, 11. THE FATE OF THE DRAFTS.
6. VALERIE’S OWN BOOK
Two exercise books entitled “VALERIE’S OWN BOOK | OF POEMS BY T. S. ELIOT” (Valerie Eliot collection), the second of which is priced in pencil, “4/-”. TSE copied into them for his wife a wide range of his poetry, in blue ink, on rectos only except for The Blameless Sister of Publicola (on 148), a substitute stanzo of The Columbiad (on 92), and occasional notes and corrections. Variations of the ink and interruptions in, for instance, East Coker suggest that some rectos too were left blank and filled in later. The exercise books perhaps date from the late 1950s, although Cat’s Prologue was transcribed after 18 Sept 1961. For convenience, the pages of both books are here allotted consecutive page numbers, including blank versos.
Vol I
1: “VALERIE’S OWN BOOK | OF POEMS BY T. S. ELIOT”
3–17: The Love Song of J. Alfred P
rufrock
19: Chandos Clerihews
21–23: How the Tall Girl and I Play Together
25–73: The Waste Land
75: Columbiad: 2 stanzos
“Columbo thought that he would take” (st. 23)
“Columbo and his caravels” (st. 42)
77: A Dedication [A Dedication to my Wife]
79: Landscapes: I. New Hampshire
81: Columbiad: 2 stanzos
“’Twas Christmas on the Spanish main” (st. 41)
“King Bolo’s royal body guard” (st. 6)
83: Landscapes: II. Virginia
85: III. Usk
87: IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe
89: Sleeping together includes a little waking
91: [Landscapes:] V. Cape Ann
93: Grizabella: The Glamour Cat
94–95: Columbiad: 2 stanzos
“The Ladies of King Bolo’s Court” (st. 44)
“King Bolo’s Royal Body Guard” (st. 6, here struck out)
“Now while King Bolo and his Queen” (st. 43)
97–99: How the Tall Girl’s Breasts Are
101–107: Of the Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles
109–15: East Coker (I & II)
117–21: Journey of the Magi
123–25: Animula
127: There was a young girl of Siberia
Columbiad: 1 stanzo
“’Twas Christmas on the Spanish main” (st. 41)
129–43: East Coker continued (II–V)
145: Stanzos
“One day King Bolo, from the beach” (st. 18)
“King Bolo crowned his Big Black Queen” (st. 45)
147: 2 stanzos
“The cook who served them pork and beans” (st. 20)
“Now when they’d been three months at sea” (a version of America Discover’d, sent to Bonamy Dobrée, [Sept 1927?])
149: East Coker continued (V completed)
150: The Blameless Sister of Publicola
151 and rear paste-down: Contents of Vol. I
Vol. II
front paste-down: “VALERIE’S OWN BOOK | OF POEMS BY T. S. ELIOT | VOL. II”
153–55: Of Cows: A Poem [A Country Walk]
155: Columbiad: A Stanzo
“‘Now buggar my ear!’ the bo’sun cried” (st. 46)
157: Eyes that last I saw in tears
159–63: Whispers of Immortality
165: The wind sprang up at four o’clock
166–69: For the Indian Soldiers who died in Africa
171: W. J. C. [He who in ceaseless labours took delight]
173–77: Preludes
179: A stanzo
“King Bolo’s big black cousin Hugh” (st. 47)
180–85: The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs
187: Lines spoken by the Cat in the little scene in “The Rock”
[Cat’s Prologue]
188–91: There’s No One Left to Press my Pants
193: Dedication II
195: Lines to the Editor of the Westminster Gazette
197–99: Defence of the Islands
201–205: Montpelier Row
207–11: A Song for Simeon
213–41: Little Gidding
242–end: blank
7. ON COMPOSITION AND MANUSCRIPTS
TSE to William Spens, 4 May 1931: “I am a person who destroys nothing and loses everything.”
To Harry Crosby, 8 Sept 1927, responding to an offer to buy the drafts of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock or La Figlia Che Piange: “I am sorry to have to tell you that I gave away the manuscripts of those two poems some years ago. And of recent years I never have any manuscripts for the reason that I compose on the typewriter and the nearest approach to a manuscript I ever have is the first draft with pencil corrections.”
To Godfrey Childe, 18 Feb 1936: “I never have anything of interest in the way of manuscripts. I work on my verse from a few rough indecipherable notes, followed by a succession of typed versions, and all my prose I produce at once on the typewriter · · · I am not even sure that I like the idea of selling manuscript, unless in this case it is going to be of some personal use to yourself.”
Sending some manuscript notes towards Murder in the Cathedral to Childe, 26 Feb 1936:
My practice is to start a passage with a few pencilled pages, and then when I get going I usually continue it on the typewriter, so that I should never have a complete pencilled manuscript of any poem of any length, and I never have any ink manuscripts at all, unless I prepare them especially. In sending you these specimen pages there are two points I want to make.
i. The amount of my manuscript of any sort in existence is very small. The manuscript of some of my early poems, and the typescript of The Waste Land with corrections by myself and Ezra Pound belonged to the late John Quinn of New York. Since his death both these are untraceable, and I should think it was as likely as not that they had been destroyed. The typescript-manuscripts of Anabasis and The Rock are in the possession of the Bodleian Library. There are two short poems in ink in the possession of some unknown stockbroker. Besides these, the 14 pages of Murder in the Cathedral are practically all that exists. I mention this point in order to justify placing a rather higher value on my manuscript than I otherwise should, especially as I have been told that occasionally letters of mine of no importance have been sold at auctions.
ii. If we should agree about the price I do not want to accept any money myself for the manuscript, as I don’t like the idea of selling manuscript unless one is in a state of destitution. I should therefore ask the purchaser to make out the cheque in another name for a charitable purpose which I have in mind.
To C. D. Abbott, 15 Dec 1936: “I have your letter of November 27th, and should be glad to help the Lockwood Memorial Library if I had any manuscripts which could be of any use to you. Unfortunately all my manuscripts up to the last two years have been disposed of in one way or another. I say ‘manuscripts’, but in recent years it would be truer to say that I never make any manuscripts. My method of composition of verse is to put down a few scraps at a time in illegible notes in pencil and develop them by successive drafts on the typewriter, and I am in the habit of consigning these to the wastepaper basket.”
TSE to Henry Eliot, 30 Dec 1936: “As for manuscripts, I do all my prose stuff straight onto the typewriter, so there is never anything of that; and as for verse, I usually make a few rough notes and then draft and redraft on the machine. Sometimes I start with a pencil and then when I have got going work straight on with the typewriter. I gave two mixed manuscripts of this kind, Anabasis and The Rock, to the Bodleian.” To John Hayward, 25 Sept 1940 (autograph): “A full description of Belvedere [Hotel] society · · · must await the flow of the machine.”
To Christopher Lee, 25 Apr 1957: “I thank you for your enquiry of the 24th April but can not say honestly that I now have any MSS. of my own poems. In the first place, it is only occasionally that I set down bits of the first draft of a poem in pencil and these first drafts usually get destroyed. I am entirely dependent on the typewriter and do most of my composition on that machine. I do not possess any drafts of my works. There are some, I think, in the Houghton Library at Harvard University; there are one or two in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and a few in the Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Practically nothing has remained in my possession after the publication of any work.”
Paris Review interview (1959): “As a rule, with me an unfinished thing is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It’s better, if there’s something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it’s in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.”
Prufrock and Other Observations
VOLUME VARIANTS
Seven of the twelve poems in Prufrock and Other Observations are found in the March Hare Notebook and its accompanying leaves. The Notebook also conta
ins Prufrock’s Pervigilium, a 32-line addition to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (printed Textual History, after 69), which TSE suppressed, on the advice, he later said, of Conrad Aiken.
Section-title page] The exact form of this crystallised over a long period, though its constituents appear on the front free endpaper of the March Hare Notebook, which, with TSE’s signature in blue ink and the rest in black ink, has:
COMPLETE POEMS OF
T. S. Eliot
FOR
JEAN VERDENAL
1889–1915,
MORT AUX DARDANELLES
… TU SE’ OMBRE ED OMBRA VEDI.
… PUOI, LA QUANTITATE
COMPRENDER DEL AMOR CH’ A TE MI SCALDA,
QUANDO DISMENTO NOSTRA VANITATE
TRATTANDO L’OMBRE COME COSA SALDA.
PURG. XXI.
Having only one group of poems, 1917 has no section-title page. In AraVP the section-title page introducing the second half of the book read simply “PRUFROCK.” There was no equivalent in US 1920, where the Prufrock poems follow straight after Sweeney Among the Nightingales. The section-title page in 1925 expanded the title to “PRUFROCK | AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS | 1917” and added the dedication and the epigraph, although without the attribution and not in final form. The combined dedication and full, corrected epigraph appeared first in US 1952 (with the first poem beginning—with its own epigraph—immediately beneath). The combined dedication and full, corrected epigraph and attribution first appeared in Britain in Sel Poems 1954.
